Der Beitrag des Beratungsinstruments „Kollegiale Fallberatung“ zur Praxisentwicklung von Kooperationskreisen Schule-Jugendhilfe

This article presents a method to guide intervision groups in schools about how to moderate ?case counseling among collegiates“ and shows in a developmental report how to transfer this kind of counseling to a cooperation of school and youth services.The contributions of the ?case counseling among collegiates“ which deal with the understanding of the case and the team development within the cooperation project, are discussed from the viewpoint of theoretical models of social constructivism, of experiential philosophy and neurosciences as well as of the authors practical experience of teams and cooperation. The emphasis is on the implicit influence this method has on expanding a psycho-social competence of the participating teachers and on developing a culture of communicating within the counseling team.     

Die Dynamik von Führung, Vertrauen und Konflikt in virtuellen Teams

The importance of virtual teams for collaboration of globally networked organizations has long been debated. But although this new form of division of labor appears in nearly all companies, which poses special challenges to managers and team members, scientific findings and recommendations have not sufficiently been integrated into practice so far. This article discusses on the one hand the challenges and opportunities of virtual teams, on the other hand wants by the presenting of scientific findings both provide food for thought, as well as concrete recommendations for implementation in practice.     

Gelassenheit und Handlungsfähigkeit durch Introvision als Methode der mentalen Selbstregulation – eine Einführung

Introvision is a new method of mental self regulation. Its development is the result of a long term research program at the University of Hamburg headed by the author. Introvision aims at resolving inner conflicts and mental blocks and hence regaining equanimity and a clear mind in difficult situations. It is based on the assumption that inner restlessness is the result of cognitive affective introference, a process of overwriting cognitions which entails selectively linking them with increased arousal, tension and inhibition. Introvision aims at extinguishing such automatic introference in two steps. Step 1 entails finding the core conflict by a set procedure which is based on the theory of subjective imperatives. In step 2, the subject is asked to focus his or her attention on this cognition without actively introfering with it awareness of-what-is in order to extinguish the automatic Interference coupled with this cognition. This method needs to be practiced beforehand over a period of several weeks.     

Führung virtueller Teams

Thanks to an ever-advancing technology and the ensuing development of new media, the boundaries between private and professional life become rather blurred, with digital tools enabling affordable, easy and fast communication, cooperation, organization and production. Organizations everywhere are recognizing the possibilities and benefits to be derived, and are developing cross-border work models to accommodate the new “economic world order”, where nothing is bound to a stationary, existing location anymore. Prime targets are, in particular, virtual teams, whose team members predominantly communicate by information and communication technologies (ICT). There are, however, new challenges to face and solutions to be found. What exactly lies ahead of us? What factors are key to a successful virtual team? Where do present virtual teams stand, and what will future virtual teams look like? The global management consulting firm Hay Group in collaboration with FKI – Führungskräfte Institut have asked both experts and leadership in a survey to share their opinion (N = 289). The results of the survey have shown that virtual teams are a very common form of cross-border work and will gain importance in the future. Furthermore, those six factors determining the success of a virtual team in particular degree, could be identified by the survey. Worth mentioning here in particular are the development of trust and the team leader.     

Macht und Führung

The article highlights the relation between leadership and power in organizations. Paradoxes and dilemmas related to the power endowment of the leadership role are analyzed from a systems-theory perspective. The article closes with recommendations for the shaping of the supervisor role.     

Klassenführung und Gruppendynamik in der Grundschule – Eine empirische Untersuchung zur Popularität und Trivialität von Klassenführung

Teacher surveys indicate continued intense discipline problems in elementary school classes. What can you do about it? As the teacher behavior has a strong relationship with active cooperation and misbehavior of students, a skillful group or classroom management of the teacher for an undisturbed instruction is important. However evidence suggests that some in the research literature as particularly relevant documented behaviors hardly appear in teachers’ subjective theories of reducing discipline problems. It is therefore presumed that the level of awareness regarding these insights is low in elementary schools and that it is difficult for teachers to recognize their extraordinary relevance solely by teaching practice. The present study tests this hypothesis on a sample of 101 elementary school teachers. The potentially far-reaching implications of the results are discussed.     

Das TIMP-Inventar – Ein Beitrag zur ökonomischen Erfassung von Kern-Faktoren salutogener Führung

Occupational health management and science increasingly focus on the issue of health-promoting leadership. Meanwhile a lot of leadership behaviors have been identified that affect the health of employees. To measure them requires high costs. Therefore, the aim of this study is to identify core-factors of salutogenic leadership and to operationalize them for an efficient diagnosis. As an integrative work-related indicator of employees’ health sense of work coherence (Work-SoC) was chosen. In a deductive and inductive process the TIMP-inventory has been developed that enables the economic assessment of three leadership dimensions: Trust, Incident Management and Pressure. These factors explain with less items more variance of the Work-SoC construct than established general and health-related leadership scales of transformational leadership, consideration, social support, demanding leadership as well as positive and negative health behavior. That is why the TIMP-factors can be recognized as core-factors of health-promoting leadership.     

Effektive Führung heterogener Teams

This article in the journal “Gruppe. Organisation. Interaktion. (GIO)” analyzes theoretical and empirical findings of international research on the role of leadership in diverse teams. While practitioners often tend to expect primarily positive effects of team diversity, research has revealed both positive and negative consequences on team performance. Thereby, realizing positive outcomes of diversity appears to depend on additional boundary conditions; among these, leadership is often considered to be crucial. According to our analysis of the literature, established leadership styles (e.?g., transformational leadership, LMX, leader consideration) may contribute to increased performance of diverse teams. In addition, they will be most effective when leaders perceive and treat their followers as individuals rather than as members of a (sub-)group and when they carefully adjust their behavior to the most critical diversity attribute in the team. Based on these results, we provide practical implications for leadership in diverse teams and discuss how adequate leadership skills can be systematically developed in organizations.     

Fehlschlüsse über die „Weltgesellschaft“

In a contribution to this journal (KZfSS 63/2011) Bettina Heintz und Tobias Werron worked out a reorientation of the theory of world society. They discuss an explanatory model that identifies the conditions under which global structures may emerge along the lines of a theory of institutional differentiation. The following reply critically examines Heintz’ and Werron’s concept concerning the theory of world society. To evaluate their thesis, we need to ask whether the assumption will lead to successful research in this area.     

„Solidarität“ in südasiatischen Gesellschaften

Taking South Asia as an example, it is shown how efforts to designate “solidarity” as a universally valid category are handicapped on the one hand by the ambiguity of the concept, on the other by its culture-specificity. Based on a linguistic, historical and social overview, it is demonstrated that the discourse parameters for “solidarity” as they dominate in the German language discourse are little suited for the South Asian reality. This leads to critical deliberations on the assumption that concepts and notions of the so-called West are to be seen as universally valid and universally binding.     

Kulturen und Spiralen des „Eigentlich“. Hierarchisch gesteuerte Veränderungsprozesse am Beispiel nachgelagerter Dienststellen des österreichischen Bundesministeriums für Bildung

Amidst the current debates on education, in Austria the former academies of the compulsory and vocational teachers’ training shall be transformed to educational “colleges” or even “universities”. The Federal Ministry is driving this process top-down, first and foremost tackling the manifest structures. This gradually unsheathes a latent “culture of eigentlich” within the affected educational institutions. It turns out that this culture, which is functional for the system in dealing with ambiguous, contradictory, or even unattainable requirements, does not disappear, but that it rather absorbs and transforms the manifest demands “from top” in practice “at the bottom”. This again provokes hierarchical interventions top-down, and eventually leads to self-enforcing dynamics between manifest and latent structures, fuelling the spiralling process.