Summary: To counteract the negative consequences inherent to the emotionally demanding professions like social work, we need to advance the understanding of the resources that preserve the employees’ well-being. This study investigated the role of Psychological Capital (PsyCap) in protecting social workers from developing burnout and Secondary Traumatic Stress (STS). The design of the study builds on the job demands-resources model and the conservation of resources theory. A national sample of 193 Romanian social workers participated in the study. We used the structural equation modeling framework for data analysis. We tested two structural models that had burnout as a mediator for the relationship between PsyCap and STS: A partial mediation model and a total mediation model. Findings: The total mediation model was supported by our data suggesting that PsyCap has a protective role against burnout, and subsequently, STS. Moreover, the results indicate that burnout is the critical link between personal resources and STS. Applications: The results of the study contribute to enhancing the protection of the social workers’ well-being in their professional settings, by advancing the knowledge about the resources that need to be developed in order to prevent or reduce the negative job consequences associated with helping professions. As such, increasing PsyCap levels of employees enhance the sustainability of their working conditions.

Entrepreneurship plays an essential role in modern urban growth and development. Successful businesses engage more growth potential, but also failed ones produce significant losses. Therefore, in order to reduce losses, it becomes important to understand what contributes to entrepreneurial success. Based the character-based approach, the current study considers the entrepreneur a critical agent for the survival and success of the business, and aims to examine the differences between successful and unsuccessful entrepreneurs in terms of human capital and personal characteristics. The sample consisted of 123 Romanian nascent urban entrepreneurs who participated in a government sponsored entrepreneurial support program and competed for a subsidy to start their business. A positive outcome in the competition (achieved by 39 study participants) was considered as entrepreneurial success. Based on the competition outcome, we split the sample in successful and unsuccessful entrepreneurs and analyzed the differences between the two groups from the perspective of human capital and personal characteristics. In terms of human capital (education, professional experience, age, and sex), the results showed small differences between the successful and unsuccessful entrepreneurs in the sample. In terms of personal characteristics, compared to their unsuccessful counterparts, the successful entrepreneurs registered increased levels of entrepreneurial self-efficacy, and of problem-solving confidence, higher levels of trust in their capacity of taking up challenges, increased levels of adaptive assertiveness, and a greater confidence in their ability to control their entrepreneurial behaviour. No significant differences were recorded for the need for autonomy, tolerance of ambiguity, risk-taking propensity, impulsivity, and interpersonal reactivity. The findings indicate that the personal characteristics of entrepreneurs may have different influences on their success, depending on the stage in their entrepreneurial career.

In today’s global context, entrepreneurship is recognized as the engine of sustainable economic growth, competitiveness and employment in the economy of any nation. In order to improve the measures aimed at encouraging the creation of new businesses, an enhanced understanding of the drivers of nascent entrepreneurship seems essential. Drawing on planned behavior theory and the approach of entrepreneurial perceived behavioral control (PBC) as a motivational antecedent in starting a new business, the current study seeks to understand how the personal characteristics of the entrepreneurs influence entrepreneurial PBC. Three types of characteristics were assessed in a sample of 212 Romanian nascent entrepreneurs: personality traits (Big Five model), empathy, and assertiveness. The hierarchical multilinear regression analysis, in which entrepreneurial PBC was treated as a dependent variable, showed that the model with the highest explanatory power for the variance of results of entrepreneurial PBC included characteristics from all three levels: personality traits—Neuroticism, Extraversion, and Openness; empathy—personal distress and perspective-taking; and adaptive assertiveness. Additionally, the findings showed that adaptive assertiveness provides an effect over and above personality factors and empathy on the entrepreneurial PBC. The practical implications of these findings indicate that to enhance the effectiveness of entrepreneurship education programs, components aiming to enhance internal personal resources of entrepreneurs (such as assertive communication skills) should be added.

Based on Social Identity Theory, this study contributes to the understanding of how the attachment felt by students to their university (called here institutional attachment) works as a crucial factor in promoting their life satisfaction and decreasing their dropout intentions. The study aimed to investigate the relations between students' satisfaction with the quality of higher education, their dropout intention and their satisfaction with life while examining the influence of institutional attachment as a mediator. The research was designed as a cross‐sectional study comprising undergraduate students ( N = 457) enrolled in social science programmes at a mid‐sized university in Western Romania. The analysis of the data, conducted using structural equation modelling (SEM), revealed that institutional attachment was a significant predictor of life satisfaction among university students and had a central role in academic persistence, by mediating the relationship between satisfaction with higher education and dropout intention. The results of the study advance the literature on student dropout and elucidate some of the strategies that could help in promoting academic persistence and increasing student success and satisfaction.

In this study we draw on Foucault’s work on governmentality and examine the power dynamics involved in establishing and implementing policies that promote equality in European higher education. Using a qualitative case study design, we selected 17 public universities situated in 13 European countries, from which we collected information about (1) the way these institutions problematize inequality in reference to participation in higher education, by labeling and categorizing vulnerable students and (2) the modes of governing and power tools (designed as support measures) they employ to address inequality. The results of the study show that the most typical profiles of vulnerability with which the universities in the sample engage include: students with disabilities, students from low-income backgrounds and students with children. Additionally, most universities use targeted support measures (as opposed to mainstreaming strategies) which consist in a mix of financial aid and support and adaptation services. The critical analysis of these measures reveals their power to shape students’ identifies and actions, through processes of subjectification, categorization, normalization and responsabilization. In the last section, we discuss the tension that appears between the European universities’ social dimension and the neoliberal policies that shape their functioning.

As the largest ethnic minority in Europe, Roma persons are among the groups with the lowest levels of educational attainment. In Romania, the country with the highest number of Roma persons of all the EU Members States, the situation is even worse, each higher level of education revealing an increasing gap between Roma persons and the general population.Positioned within the framework of Social Capital theory, the current chapter explores the influences of micro- and mezzo-level social networks on educational attainment of Roma persons, trying to explain some of the mechanisms that perpetuate the gap between them and the general population, in terms of educational attainment.Drawing on a qualitative bottom-up study of Roma persons’ experiences of belonging in society, we analysed the interlocking influences of bonding and bridging social capital on the interviewees’ educational attainment. The results of the study point out that both forms of social capital have an important impact on the educational attainment of persons in vulnerable groups, although in different ways, and sometimes they can be mutually reinforcing, depending on the prevailing social arrangements, in either keeping the persons engaged in education, or drawing them away from their educational paths. The results also show that in circumstances of intersecting vulnerabilities, a noticeable imbalance between agency and structure is produced, which corrodes the foundational principles of equity and affects the equality of opportunities.