It is generally believed that the impact of Human Resource Practices on internal customer satisfaction can create comparative advantage for the organizational performance. The main objective of this study was to find out the impact of Human Resource Practices on internal customer satisfaction and organizational effectiveness. The impact of human resource practices on the overall performance of organizations has been a leading subject of research and the results have been encouraging, indicative of positive relationship between Human Resource practices and organizational effectiveness. Data was collected through personally administered questionnaire-based survey from 290 banking personnel of Pakistan. Structural equation modeling was used to examine the anticipated model. The results showed that some Human Resource Practices appear to be linked to internal customer satisfaction and organizational effectiveness. The implications for practitioners were to modify and emphasize certain human resource practices, and to emphasize the role of internal customers for organizational effectiveness enhancement. These findings revealed the importance of internal customers in enhancing employee morale, organizational commitment, employee productivity, turnover rate and the organization’s ability to attract talent.

At the beginning of the 21st century, the research and the knowledge of the maritime market prove to be as important as the other elements of the Marketing from the maritime domain. The research of the maritime market can be considered as the first step in tackling the research problems in the Marketing from this domain, which cannot be avoided or ignored. This thing is necessary due to the permanent increase of the competition on the maritime market, to the permanent entrance of new ships and shipping companies, to the development of new transport routes.

The main objective of this paper is to evaluate the impact of leadership in redressing the failed state status of Nigeria with a focus on the present administration (between 2010 and 2012). For the past three years, Nigeria has been keeping the ugly company and ranking consistently as the fourteenth on the list of failed states, but the governing elites have been making spirited campaigns and slow haste in explaining away this situation. Through heavy reliance on secondary sources of data, the utilization of elite theory as framework, backed by the analytical approach to the issues raised/discussed, the paper observed that the ranking of Nigeria on the failed state index ignores some historical facts and current situational realities which make the failed criteria suspect and questionable. There is therefore the need to rethink and tinker with some of these criteria to reflect socio-economic and political performance in realistic terms. Purposeful and people –centered approach to governance capable of redressing the dysfunctions of the Nigerian state is also canvassed.

The last decade has changed again the face of electronic world: from Web 2.0 to open source software; from e-(electronic) to m-(mobile) and now to touch. For Web developers is a real challenge to make compatible interfaces to all existing Internet browsers. This proves to be even more expensive than the application itself (Softnet; 2012; SIVECO, 2012). From the point of view of the big software development companies these events are just new challenges because they afford to have many employees with different skills and by that being able to cope with market demands. But what happens with the e-government projects at the local level? Budgets are small, so hiring a company specialized in Web application development is sometimes too expensive, this responsibility usually falls in many cases on the employees of the IT department (Vrabie, 2011). If we add to this software component the hardware required for hosting the Web page inside, the budgets are already completely exceeded (or obviously they can choose some other cheap solution but whose reliability is very poor – reason for dissatisfaction among citizens). The importance of the Web platforms for interacting with citizens is very well known (Friedman, 2005; Craig; 2006; Baltac, 2011). In this context, this paper aims to examine in terms of costs, the investments in open-source applications in parallel with the use of social networks as used today. The research methodology is using for the first time an adapted version of cost-effectiveness analysis. Empirical research will be carried out on two platforms of e- Government – one of them developed inside on an open-source solution – used to support a complete interaction with the citizens. The working hypothesis starts from the fact that open source software is cheaper than those developed inside – but of course this is a question to debate at.

The life cycle of a ship represents an issue which the ship owner must take into consideration because he must know a series of aspects connected to the exploitation period until the moment of the current and capital repairs, the degree of use of the ship and separately for each installation, the moment of its taking out from service and especially how it can be extended its duration of exploitation. These aspects are not easy to be calculated because there appear a series of aspects connected to the shipping zone, the type of the transported goods, the way of exploitation and maintenance performed by the crews, the number of the exploitation days and many more others. The life cycle of the service performed by the ship, in fact the type of the transported goods is very important taking into account the changes on the maritime market, the competition between shipping companies, the development of the international economy and the requests of the customers of the shipping companies. In this paper, there are analysed the two aspects which a ship represents, as ”a product” and as a performed ”service” and it is presented a type of analyse for a maritime ship.

In the process of adapting the global social system to the competitive market economy, risk factors have multiplied and undue benefits tend to be a structural phenomenon, specialized and professional, which by the informal networks of organizations and individuals can start corrupting the decision makers at higher levels in the political, legislative, administration and judiciary area. The malignant connection with a complex of antisocial deeds, such as: large-scale fraud, embezzlement, tax evasion, increases the sizes of social danger. The underground economy, the gaps or ‘out of sync’ moments of political and normative acts, the economic malfunctions and axiological and moral mutations also feed this phenomenon. This study aims at capturing, by analysis, the incidence of improper benefits received by the public official in various states.

Objective – This study aims to explore the communication process within local public administration as a determinant of citizens` satisfaction. Prior work – Several authors had examined if having contact with certain service providers will affect people’s attitudes toward the service quality, but the researchers have not focused yet on the effect of citizens` contact to local authorities on satisfaction. Approach – This research seeks to address this field using an exploratory approach. Following a quantitative methodological approach, a survey was applied to a sample of 380 citizens within Western Romanian. Findings – By analyzing data it was possible to determine citizen satisfaction and to assess its relationship with costumer contact. In addition it was revealed that in Crisana Region city hall is the most frequented local public institution. Implications – The results showed a negative effect of frequency of access to local authorities on overall customer satisfaction. The effect of citizens` contact to local authorities received less attention from the academic researchers, as a need in the literature is to expand this field. Value – This research is the first to specifically examine the contact to local authorities and the effect of frequency of addressing on citizen satisfaction within Crisana Region.

Migration is a phenomenon which experienced an unprecedented scale in the last twenty years. The socio-geo-political and economic changes which took place in Europe after 1990 led to an influx of people from east to west. Most often those who left their countries came from among the former socialist countries. This paper is a continuation of a study published last year entitled “Employment of Labor Force in Albania and Moldova – Evolution and Trends” in which was made a” snapshot “of the labor situation in the two countries aspiring to accede to the European Union. In this paper, we focused on the Republic of Moldova as Romania’s neighbor, followed by a future study to address the phenomenon of migration in Albania. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the phenomenon of migration from the Republic of Moldova and its immediate consequences upon Romania and the European Union. The hypothesis from which we started this study is that: Romania, as a friend and neighbor country of the Republic of Moldova, attracts a large number of Moldovan citizens who become full citizens, Romanian or of other nationalities in the EU. The study was conducted during 2001-2010 and was based on: the census in Moldova in 2004 (last done in this country), information from the National Bureau of Statistics of the Republic of Moldova, the statistical database respectively, and information processed from the Romanian Statistical Yearbook 2008.

The principle of non discrimination and the principle of equal treatment are today regulated by most of the national law systems, including the administrative documents. The principle of equal treatment enjoys maybe the longest period of regulation as it was inserted two centuries ago in a document of essential value for humanity, namely the Declaration of fundamental human and citizen rights in 1789. At the level of the EU, the equal treatment and non discrimination have the value of fundamental rights of the citizen, while within the European Code of Good Administrative Conduct they have the value of principles of administrative law. The consequence of non compliance with these principles is regulated in the Charter of fundamental rights of the European Union, according to which any discrimination based on certain criteria is unjustified, with exceptions when unequal treatments can be accepted for grounded situations. From this point of view, in the activity of the authorities of the public administration but also in the jurisdictional activity, the principle of non discrimination and equal treatment has been analysed from the perspective of other principles, such as the legality, proportionality, transparency and equivalence. This study focuses on the analysis of the forms of discrimination underlined by the legislation of the EU, being then underlined in the jurisprudence of the EU and mainly of the focus of the influence of the other principles on the non discrimination and equal treatment principles.