University of Hartford

About: University of Hartford is a education organization based out in West Hartford, Connecticut, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Context (language use). The organization has 1244 authors who have published 2481 publications receiving 48973 citations. The organization is also known as: UHart.

Corporate Governance in Russia: What Model Will it Follow?

Abstract: Developing an effective corporate governance system is key to Russia's future. Russia is now at a crossroads as it decides to either continue pursuing the Anglo-American form of governance with its emphasis on external market controls, or turn to a more Western European model with its emphasis on internal controls, or some combination of the two. To make these challenges more tangible and bring them into sharper focus, we discuss some of the governance challenges facing four bellwether Russian firms - Gazprom, Sberbank, Wimm-Bill-Dann and Mobile TeleSystems. We conclude with a discussion of the key institutional forces that will heavily influence the path taken by Russia in the future, along with predictions for the future.

Sources of Economic Hope: Women's Entrepreneurship

Abstract: The overall thrust of the survey findings presented here and their comparison with prior research, especially analysis of high-tech firms in the Kauffman Firm Survey sample, is that female and male entrepreneurs have a lot in common. They would seem to start their companies for similar reasons, cite similar self-perceived reasons for success, and face similar challenges. Out of this similarity, three differences do stand out. First, the women technology entrepreneurs surveyed here don’t appear to have had inspiring role models as their principal motivation. Second, women entrepreneurs in general appear to respond differently than men do to failure, and cite lessons learned from failure as a big reason for success. Finally, there is a financing gap when it comes to high-tech and high-potential women entrepreneurs. That financing gap turns into a growth gap in terms of company outcomes. Findings ways to fill that financing gap, then, could have huge payoff in job creation and innovation. What, if anything, can government and other organizations do to capitalize on the growth opportunity that exists with women entrepreneurs? First, building the financial capabilities of women and ensuring access to bank financing and equity financing by venture capitalists and angel investors is paramount to having more high-growth entrepreneurship by women. Second, encouraging greater participation by women on the financing and investing side also might be an avenue worth pursuing. Prior research documents the low level of representation of women as investors in angel investing and venture capital funds. A growing number of angel groups, such as Golden Seeds, Astia Angels, and the Pipeline Fellowship, are preparing women to become investors in this space. More is needed to overcome the gender imbalance on the funding side. Other steps also can be taken to support high-growth women’s entrepreneurship in ways that will allow us to tap this greatly underutilized resource. This issue needs to be addressed on multiple fronts: 1) by offering more opportunities in industry that will give women the experience needed to pursue entrepreneurship, 2) by providing more opportunities to learn about starting and growing businesses, and 3) through exposure to successful female entrepreneurs who can share stories and insights from their successes (and challenges). Family-friendly policies that allow women the flexibility to work outside of their homes and schedule activities around family commitments might also encourage women to tackle higher-growth opportunities. A recent paper from the Office of Advocacy at the Small Business Administration (SBA), found that different university programs, even those within the same field, can provide different types of exposure among men and women to entrepreneurial opportunity.4 In fields such as mechanical engineering, where women represent a small share of graduate students, male and female students still have different experiences when it comes to their faculty advisors, interaction with private industry, and entrepreneurship. Given how important prior exposure (whether in industry or in entrepreneurship) was for survey respondents here, finding a way to address the differential structure of these programs could put more women onto the high-growth entrepreneurial pathway. Encouraging and facilitating team startups (men, women, and mixed) is another avenue to pursue, given that our findings highlight the importance of team ownership in securing financial capital, particularly during the critical early years of the firm. There are an increasing number of organizations and events such as Startup Weekend Women’s Edition, Startup Grind, Founder Fridays, and Co-Founder speed dating that serve as encouraging examples of ways to meet this need. Programs that specifically target women-owned, high-growth-potential firms also have shown considerable success. Astia and Springboard Enterprises are two programs that have built successful track records in helping scale women-owned companies by providing them access to equity financing, as well as business mentorship and training. Clearly, more of these types of programs are needed if we are going to truly move the needle on high-growth women’s entrepreneurship.

Mutual-Preference Driven Truthful Auction Mechanism in Mobile Crowdsensing

Abstract: Motivating the mobile users to participate in sensing services for efficient data generation and collection is one of the most critical issues in Mobile Crowdsensing Systems (MCSs). Auction based mechanisms are seen to be promising and effective solutions to incentivize mobile users. However, price is not the unique factor dominating participants' contribution in MCSs. Participant's preference for different sensing tasks is also a pivotal factor which should be considered in the auction mechanisms as assigning the least favorite tasks discourages them to participate in future sensing tasks. Unfortunately, participant's preference has been overlooked by most existing works, which motivates us to fill this gap in this paper. We first propose a new concept "mutual preference degree" to capture participant's preference and then design a preference-based auction mechanism (PreAM) to simultaneously guarantee individual rationality, budget feasibility, preference truthfulness, and price truthfulness. Finally, both the theoretical analysis and simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of PreAM.

Community violence, children's development, and mass media: In pursuit of new insights, new goals, and new strategies

Abstract: Community violence that victimizes children is an unmitigated evil that is exacerbated by vast economic and social forces that leave people in central cities and the rural countryside adrift on seas of rolelessness, hopelessness, group disintegration, and alienation. The contemporary drug scene and the easy availability of guns greatly intensify violence on a local scale, while crimes of violence, especially with guns, appear to be level or declining in the nation as a whole. Claims that the persistently high levels of violence in mass media, mostly television, are largely responsible for violence in society represent narrow views of very large issues. These narrow views overlook essential elements of both phenomena--violence and media. Direct models of interpersonal violence in families and in the community probably give rise to more violent behavior than indirect models in media. Disinhibitory and provocative aspects of media probably do as much or more to trigger violent behavior than violent narratives and violent actions. Comprehensive meta-analysis indicates that prosocial messages on television can have greater effects on behavior than antisocial messages. These data support the contention that mass media can play a strong and positive role in alleviating some of the distress of victims of community violence, and in redirecting the behavior of some of its perpetrators so as to protect the children.