On March 16, Apostolis Papakostas, Professor of Sociology at Södertörn University in Stockholm, Sweden gave a presentation of his book ‘Civilizing the Public Sphere: Distrust, Trust and Corruption’ at the HSE Laboratory for Comparative Social Research. Examining the interplay between distrust, trust and corruption, this book maps out the social mechanisms that make actors and organizations in the public sphere perform their activities in a civilized manner.
Most employees and a significant proportion of managers are not briefed on their company's business strategy, while a quarter of all blue and white-collar workers are not informed about operational management issues. While Russian businesses are concerned about employee development, creating bench strength and adopting state-of-the-art ICT solutions, they use the latter only for transmitting orders from the top down. Veronica Kabalina, Kira Reshetnikova and Olga Zelenova of the HSE Department of Human Resources Management examined Russian businesses' approaches to HR development and corporate communications.
On March 11, Seth Bernstein gave a presentation — ‘Burying the Alliance: Interment, Repatriation and the Politics of the Sacred in Occupied Germany’ — at the scholarly seminar of the HSE International Center for the History and Sociology of World War II and Its Consequences where he works as a postdoctoral research fellow.
An elderly person can be described as aging successfully when they maintain good health and engage in fulfilling social activities. According to Larisa Kosova, Director of the HSE Joint Economic and Social Data Archive, poor health and a lack of savings often prevent older people in Russia from enjoying retirement.
The new issue of Higher Education in Russia and Beyond is now available. The topic of this issue is the already famous principle ‘publish or perish’, which is spreading fast across university systems all over the world.
Factors which determine consumer preferences for certain brands are not limited just to income, age and social status; other important considerations are the brand's ‘personality’ and whether it fits with that of the consumer, according to Natalia Antonova, Associate Professor of the Department of Organizational Psychology and Head of the Psychology of Consumer Behavior Research and Study Group, and Veronika Morozova, member of the Group.
Joseph MacInnes has been Assistant Professor at HSE School of Psychology since 2013. He teaches both undergraduate and graduate students of HSE Faculty of Social Sciences. In February he conducted an extended workshop on eyetracking for students of Master’s programme Cognitive Sciences and Technologies: from Neuron to Cognition. Professor MacInnes has talked to HSE News Service about his work at HSE, the nature of his research and shared his recommendations for international students on better adapting to Russian culture.
On March 3, 2016, HSE Rector Yaroslav Kuzminov gave a talk about possible future scenarios for Russia's higher education at the All-Russian Research Centre for Aviation Materials (VIAM) as part of the Syncletos at VIAM series of meetings with prominent guest speakers such as academics, government officials and politicians.
Alan Barenberg, Associate Professor in the Department of History at Texas Tech University, recently gave a presentation entitled ‘From the Margins to the Home Front: Vorkuta at War’ at a seminar held by the HSE International Center for the History and Sociology of World War II and Its Consequences. In his presentation, he sought to provide insights not only about the role of forced labor in the USSR during the Second World War, but also regarding the relationship between the Gulag and Soviet society more broadly.
While being single or married does not usually make much difference in terms of life satisfaction for younger people, single individuals tend to feel less happy as they age, particularly at certain moments of their lives, and most single people experience a peak of unhappiness once they retire, according to Anna Shirokanova, Senior Research Fellow of the HSE Laboratory for Comparative Social Research in St. Petersburg.
