The Re-Emerging Role of the State in Contemporary Russia

I examine ownership structure of Russian firms during the 1998?C2006 period, where a greater emphasis is placed on motivations behind increased government ownership in the latter years, when oligarchs?? opportunistic influence on the firm diminished as state ownership correspondingly increased. As this phenomenon is also correlated with improved corporate growth during the period, I argue that state participation in corporate governance acted as an effective substitute mechanism to constrain wealth-tunnelling behaviour of corporate insiders and local bureaucrats in a country defined by a weak property rights system.     

An ergonomic approach to improve work conditions of older employees in social housing

French companies are legally required to develop action plans to improve employment and work conditions for older workers ("plans seniors"). These plans contain measures oriented towards recruiting, career evolution, skills developme1nt, knowledge transmission and improvement of work conditions. A tool for assessing work situations experienced by council buildings caretakers ("gardiens") was used in such a plan on behalf of the main agency of council housing in Paris, and we developed. This assessment tool was developed after ergonomic work analysis on a sample of 36 older caretakers (age > 57 y.o). The technical inspectors in charge of technical interventions on buildings and managing caretakers were trained to use the assessment tool and apply it to all caretakers aged 50 and over.     

Designing the safety of healthcare. Participation of ergonomics to the design of cooperative systems in radiotherapy

This communication deals with the involvement of ergonomists in a research-action design process of a software platform in radiotherapy. The goal of the design project is to enhance patient safety by designing a workflow software that supports cooperation between professionals producing treatment in radiotherapy. The general framework of our approach is the ergonomics management of a design process, which is based in activity analysis and grounded in participatory design. Two fields are concerned by the present action: a design environment which is a participatory design process that involves software designers, caregivers as future users and ergonomists; and a reference real work setting in radiotherapy. Observations, semi-structured interviews and participatory workshops allow the characterization of activity in radiotherapy dealing with uses of cooperative tools, sources of variability and non-ruled strategies to manage the variability of the situations. This production of knowledge about work searches to enhance the articulation between technocentric and anthropocentric approaches, and helps in clarifying design requirements. An issue of this research-action is to develop a framework to define the parameters of the workflow tool, and the conditions of its deployment.     

Recalling the ‘Islam of the parents’ liberal and secular Muslims redefining the contours of religious authenticity

Scholarship on Islam in Europe has largely invested in examining the generational dynamics in the lived religious experiences of Muslims. Within this perspective, the idea of a generation gap, which revolves around a distinction between ‘tradition’ and ‘religion’, has figured as an important account in assessing some of these religious transformations. Drawing on fieldwork with Belgian Muslims of Moroccan origin, this paper seeks to nuance this perspective by exploring accounts wherein this ‘traditional’ Islam of the parents is actively reclaimed. This was especially the case for respondents who were quite critical of Islamic revivalist trends. In many of these stories, the parents’ Islam was understood as tolerant and open, in a way that was consonant with ‘tradition’. By focusing on these narratives, a first aim of the paper is to understand how genealogy and ancestry figure as distinct criteria in determining the ‘real Islam’. A second aim is to complicate the understanding of the liberal and modern self, and its relationship to the past.     

Collaboration and Internationalization of SMEs: Insights and Recommendations from a Systematic Review

This paper performs a systematic literature review of the undeniably diverse – and somewhat fragmented – current state of research on the collaborations and internationalization of small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs). We analyze key works and synthesize them into a framework that conceptually maps key antecedents, mediators, and moderators that influence the internationalization of SMEs. In addition, we highlight limitations of the literature, most notably in terms of theoretical fragmentation; extant theories are deployed and illustrated but rarely extended in a manner that significantly informs subsequent work. At an applied (but related) level, we argue the need for supplementary work that explores the distinct stages of internationalization – and the scope and scale of this process – rather than assuming closure around particular events. With this, we highlight the need for more rigorous and empirically informed explorations of contextual effects that take account of the consequences of developments in the global economic ecosystem.     

Effekte der Gruppengröße auf die Arbeitsmarktintegration von Migranten

Some ethnic minorities tend to be less successful in the German labour market compared to the indigenous population even when controlling for relevant resources. The paper uses data from the German Mikrozensus to investigate to what extent the remaining ethnic disadvantages can be explained by relative minority group size. On theoretical grounds, ethnic concentration can have an impact on the members of the own minority as well as on members of other ethnic groups. The paper finds empirical evidence that a strong ethnic concentration impedes structural assimilation of Turkish migrants with a higher level of education, as the ethnic mobility trap model would suggest. However, the share of the Turkish population in a county does not only have an impact on the labour market performance of Turkish migrants (endogenous effect) but also affects the economic success of Italians and Germans (exogenous effects). The empirical results indicate, that controlling for regional concentration can – at least for some minority groups and to some extent – explain remaining ethnic disadvantages.     

Robustness of Parameter Estimation Procedures in Multilevel Models When Random Effects are MEP Distributed

In this paper we examine maximum likelihood estimation procedures in multilevel models for two level nesting structures. Usually, for fixed effects and variance components estimation, level-one error terms and random effects are assumed to be normally distributed. Nevertheless, in some circumstances this assumption might not be realistic, especially as concerns random effects. Thus we assume for random effects the family of multivariate exponential power distributions (MEP); subsequently, by means of Monte Carlo simulation procedures, we study robustness of maximum likelihood estimators under normal assumption when, actually, random effects are MEP distributed.     

The Psychology of Working: A New Framework for Counseling Practice and Public Policy

The authors present the psychology‐of‐working perspective (D. L. Blustein, 2006; N. Peterson & R. C. González, 2005; M. S. Richardson, 1993) as an alternative to traditional career development theories, which have primarily explored the lives of those with choice and volition in their working lives. The major historical and conceptual features of the psychology of working are reviewed, with a focus on how this framework provides a more inclusive and, ideally, more just vision for the career counseling field. Implications for career counseling and a case presentation are provided to examine how this new perspective can inform counseling practice. A brief overview of public policy implications concludes the article.     

Resilience and Survival: Black Teenage Mothers ‘Looked After’ by the State Tell their Stories About their Experience of Care

‘Looked after’ young people are among the most disadvantaged members of our society. While their disadvantaged status should not be ignored, poor outcomes are often emphasised at the expense of good ones. This article reports a study that adopts the concept of resilience to understand the narratives of the participants’ experience of care and foster care. A total of 15 young mothers, aged 16–19 and mainly from black African backgrounds, were interviewed. Despite lacking a ‘secure base’, informants invested in a sense of moral identity and a source of self‐directedness, which enabled them to move from victim of circumstances to individuals who overcome their circumstances.