Issues The last Soviet anti-alcohol campaign of 1985 resulted in considerably reduced alcohol consumption and saved thousands of lives. But once the campaign's policies were abandoned and the Soviet alcohol monopoly broken up, a steep rise in mortality was observed in many of the newly formed successor countries, although some kept their monopolies. Almost 30 years after the campaign's end, the region faces diverse challenges in relation to alcohol. Approach The present narrative review sheds light on recent drinking trends and alcohol policy developments in the 15 Former Soviet Union (FSU) countries, highlighting the most important setbacks, achievements and best practices. Vignettes of alcohol control policies in Belarus, Estonia, Kazakhstan, Lithuania and Uzbekistan are presented to illustrate the recent developments. <br /> Key Findings Over the past decade, drinking levels have declined in almost all FSU countries, paralleled by the introduction of various alcohol-control measures. The so-called three 'best buys' put forward by the World Health Organization to reduce alcohol-attributable burden (taxation and other measures to increase price, restrictions on alcohol availability and marketing) are relatively well implemented across the countries. Implications In recent years, evidence-based alcohol policies have been actively implemented as a response to the enormous alcohol-attributable burden in many of the countries, although there is big variance across and within different jurisdictions. Conclusion Strong declines in alcohol consumption were observed in the 15 FSU countries, which have introduced various alcohol control measures in recent years, resulting in a reduction of alcohol consumption in the World Health Organization European region overall.

Current business organizations want to be more efficient and constantly evolving to find ways to retain talent. It is well established that visionary leadership plays a vital role in organizational success and contributes to a better working environment. This study aims to determine the effect of visionary leadership on employees' perceived job satisfaction. Specifically, it investigates whether the mediators meaningfulness at work and commitment to the leader impact the relationship. I take support from job demand resource theory to explain the overarching model used in this study and broaden-and-build theory to leverage the use of mediators. To test the hypotheses, evidence was collected in a multi-source, time-lagged design field study of 95 leader-follower dyads. The data was collected in a three-wave study, each survey appearing after one month. Data on employee perception of visionary leadership was collected in T1, data for both mediators were collected in T2, and employee perception of job satisfaction was collected in T3. The findings display that meaningfulness at work and commitment to the leader play positive intervening roles (in the form of a chain) in the indirect influence of visionary leadership on employee perceptions regarding job satisfaction. This research offers contributions to literature and theory by first broadening the existing knowledge on the effects of visionary leadership on employees. Second, it contributes to the literature on constructs meaningfulness at work, commitment to the leader, and job satisfaction. Third, it sheds light on the mediation mechanism dealing with study variables in line with the proposed model. Fourth, it integrates two theories, job demand resource theory and broaden-and-build theory providing further evidence. Additionally, the study provides practical implications for business leaders and HR practitioners. Overall, my study discusses the potential of visionary leadership behavior to elevate employee outcomes. The study aligns with previous research and answers several calls for further research on visionary leadership, job satisfaction, and mediation mechanism with meaningfulness at work and commitment to the leader.

Social Networking Sites (SNSs) are ubiquitous and attract an enormous chair of the digital population. Their functionalities allow users to connect and interact with others and weave complex social networks in which social information is continuously disseminated between users. Besides the social value SNSs are generating, they likewise attract companies and allow for new forms of marketing, thereby creating considerable economic value alike. However, as SNSs grew in popularity, so did concerns about the impact of their use on social interactions in general and the well-being of individual users in particular. While existing scientific evidence points to both risk as well as benefits of SNS use, research still lacks a profound understanding of which aspects of SNSs enable an impact on well-being and which psychological processes on the part of the users underly and explain this relationship. Therefore, this thesis is dedicated to an in-depth exploration of the relationship between SNS use and well-being and aims to answer how SNS use can impact well-being. Primarily, it focuses on the unique technological features that characterize SNSs and enable potential well- being alterations and on specific psychological processes on the part of the users, underlying and explaining the relationship. For this purpose, the thesis first introduces the concept of well- being. It continues by presenting SNSs’ unique technological features, divided into specifics of the content disseminated on SNSs and the network structure of SNSs. Further, the thesis introduces three classes of psychological processes assumed most relevant for the relationship between SNSs and well-being: other-focused, self-focused, and contrastive processes.. It is assumed that the course and quality of these common processes change in the SNS context and that a complex interplay between the unique features of SNSs and these processes determines how SNSs may ultimately affect users' well-being - both in positive and negative ways. The dissertation comprises seven research articles, each of which focusses on a particular set of SNS characteristics, their interplay with one or more of the proposed psychological processes, and ultimately the resulting effects on user well-being or its key resilience and risk factors. The seven articles investigate this relationship using different methodological approaches. Three articles are based on either systematic or narrative literature reviews, one applies an empirical cross-sectional research design, and three articles present an experimental investigation. Thematically, two articles revolve around SNS use’s effect on self-esteem. Three articles examine the specific role of the emotion of envy and its potential to establish and perpetuate a well-being-damaging social climate on SNSs. The two last articles of this thesis revolve around the established assumption that active and passive SNS use, as different modalities of SNS use, cause differential effects on users’ well-being due to the involvement of different psychological processes. The results of this thesis illustrate different ways how SNSs can affect users’ well-being. The results suggest that especially contrastive processes play a decisive role in explaining potential well-being risks for SNS users. Their interplay with certain SNS features seems to foster upward social comparisons and feelings of envy, potentially leading to a complex set of deleterious effects on users’ well-being. At the same time, the findings illuminate ways in which SNSs can benefit users and their self-esteem – especially when SNS use promotes self- focused and social-feedback-based other-focused processes. The thesis and their findings illustrate that the relationship between SNSs and well-being is complex. Therefore, a nuanced perspective, taking into consideration both the technological uniqueness of SNSs and the psychological processes they are enabling, is crucial to understand how these technologies affect their users in good and potentially harmful ways. On the one hand, the gathered insights contribute to research, providing novel insights into the complex relationship between SNS use and well-being. On the other hand, the results enable a focused and action-oriented derivation of recommendations for stakeholders such as individual users, policymakers, and platform providers. The findings of this thesis can help them to better combat SNS-related risks and ultimately ensure a healthy and sustainable environment for users - and thus also the economic values of SNSs - in the long term.

This article contributes to the debate on the incorporation of performance information in European local government budgets. At the core is the development of an analytical model for comparing efforts of performance budgeting (PB). Evidence in ten cases indicates that performance structures and the span of performance differ, that performance indicators are far from always measuring outcomes or outputs, and that future and past performance figures are often absent. Nevertheless similar learning trajectories do exist. Possible explanations for the variation involve the varying degrees of reform implementation, experience with PB and prevailing institutional arrangements.