Public Child‐Care Expansion and Changing Gender Ideologies of Parents in Germany

This study investigates whether the expansion of public child care for children aged younger than 3 years in Germany has been associated with individual‐level change in gender ideologies. The authors develop and test a theoretical framework of the short‐term impact of family policy institutions on ideology change. The analysis links the German Family Panel pairfam (2008 to 2015) with administrative records on county‐level child‐care provision for those aged younger than 3 years and applies fixed effects panel models. The findings show that the child‐care expansion has been associated with moderate changes toward less‐traditional gender ideologies only among mothers in West Germany and mostly among mothers without a college degree. In East Germany, the authors found evidence of more traditional gender ideologies among mothers without a college degree as the child‐care reform unfolded. The results provide evidence that policy reforms may alter gender ideologies also in the short‐term.     

Hochtechnologische Unternehmen im Spiegel des „Varieties-of-Capitalism“-Ansatzes

What role do national institutions of labor regulation as well as work and employment systems at the company level play for the development of “new economy” industries? The article is based on eleven company case studies in the Swedish, Polish and German video game industry as well as on an analysis of industry-related expert interviews and data. Power relations between hardware, publishing and development companies play a significant role in the industry. Independent development firms are the weakest link in the value chain; they have to carry the greatest risks. The results show that the lack of a financial system for the high risky software development is a decisive factor for the low international competitiveness of the industry in all three countries. They demonstrate as well that, especially in the field of labor regulation, the “Varieties of Capitalism”-approach underestimates the divergence of industries in national economies and a leeway for flexibility in institutional systems. For instance, employment flexibility of video game development firms is very high. The comparison of the “coordinated market economies” of Germany and Sweden reveals differences regarding the integration of the industry into nation-specific institutional systems, such as the establishment of adequate vocational education and interest representation by unions.     

A proposed multistage evaluation approach for Higher Education Institutions based on network Data envelopment analysis: A Brazilian experience

The evaluation of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) is a challenging task, due to the complexity inherent in the context in which they are inserted, the different institutional profiles, the variety of resources used and the results offered in the performance of their mission. In this way, the present study proposes an evaluative approach that aims to measure efficiency taking into account the diverse activities characteristic of university institutions. To this end, a data envelopment analysis (DEA) approach, known as Network DEA, is used, which encompasses the different processes and subprocesses that take place within these institutions. In all, the evaluation considers eleven variables organized in three distinct stages, which reflect the performance of the HEIs in different perspectives: financial, undergraduate level and graduate level (student training and scientific production and innovation). Finally, the model was applied at 45 Brazilian federal universities. This case study allows a comprehensive efficiency analysis to be carried out for the set of institutions considered, from each perspective taken into account in the approach.     

Globalization and the German model of capitalism – erosion or survival?

The German business system has been regarded as a particularly tightly coupled system, with embeddedness of even multinational companies (MNCs) in their home base as particularly deep. A study of the impact of companies' changing internationalization, if not globalization, strategies is therefore especially suited to test competing claims about their effects on the German business system. Are we experiencing an erosion of this system, an adaptation in a largely path‐dependent way, or even a greater specialization and stronger crystallization of the German business system? To investigate these questions, the paper examines a small number of German MNCs in their domestic and international context. More particularly, the work focuses on whether and how their emergent globalization activities affect the reproduction or erosion of the three institutional complexes which shape the factors of production: the financial system; the innovation system; and the industrial relations system. The paper concludes that a new type of transformation – hybridization – is emerging. It is regarded as a consequence of German companies' growing integration into a global economic system.     

Germany at the crossroads: national identity and the challenges of immigration

"In Germany the discussion [of immigration] is taking place between two extreme positions, one that denies Germany is de facto an immigration country...and one that compares Germany with traditional immigration societies like the United States, Canada, or Australia. As will be demonstrated, both arguments are too simplistic.... To illustrate the importance of migration movements for Germany's national fabric, first an overview of the history of pre- and postwar migrations and refugee movements as well as their effects on the domestic situation in Germany are presented. Next, the origins of the contradictory nature of the current asylum, citizenship and naturalization regulations and the need to redefine Germany's legal framework, immigration policy, and national identity after unification are discussed."     

Adopting a financial capability and asset-building curriculum at historically Black colleges and universities

ABSTRACT

Social workers currently engage in financial capability practice with low-income and financially vulnerable individuals and families in diverse practice settings, but typically lack professional preparation for this work. In response, several schools of social work have begun adopting financial capability curricula. Using an in-depth interview methodology, this study examines the adoption of a curriculum in financial capability and asset building (FCAB) from the perspectives of faculty and administrators (N = 19) at four historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs). Findings show that key reasons for curriculum adoption are prior working relationships and trust, relevance of FCAB content to student and community needs, and alignment with program, institutional, and professional goals. Using the diffusion of innovation theory to understand curriculum adoption in HBCUs suggests that perhaps trust and relationship building are particularly important in the case of minority serving institutions.     

知识流动与深圳创新型城市建设

知识经济时代,知识资本成为城市的核心资源,争夺知识资源成为城市最高级的竞争方式。本文在探讨创新型城市和知识流动关系的基础上,针对深圳自主创新的优势和短板,从知识流动视角为其构建创新型城市提供建议。     

Outsiders and Intrapreneurs: The Institutional Embeddedness of Social Entrepreneurship in Germany

The social entrepreneurship discourse in Germany has become more prominent at a time when the deeply rooted corporatist traditions of social provision have come under pressure for marketization. This article examines the potential role of “social entrepreneurs” in the institutionally established German welfare state. The article analyzes the opportunities and constraints that new players face. Drawing on survey data and case studies in the areas of elderly care and advancement of children with immigrant background, the analysis retraces the structure and diffusion of social entrepreneurial projects. It concludes that the simple transfer of the social entrepreneurship model is unlikely. The analysis suggests that successful social ventures in Germany adapt the notion of social entrepreneurship to prevalent institutional realities. In the context of more encompassing social services, dense decentralized networks, and different cultures of philanthropism, new players have a complementary role that stimulates rather than dominates the process of social innovation.     

FAMILY POLICIES IN FRANCE AND GERMANY

Welfare state literature almost always positions France and Germany in the same category, that of conservative–corporative regimes. Family policies, in particular, have much in common: both are explicit and generous in terms of taxation system and family allowance schemes. However, France strongly differs from Germany with regard to childcare policy and public support to mothers’ employment. France, along with the Scandinavian countries, leads the European Union in public childcare provision. In Germany, despite recent changes, there are still considerable gaps, at least where children under three years of age are concerned and the ‘male breadwinner/female part-time carer’ model is being actively promoted. However, there is a growing discordance between the aspirations of young German women with regard to paid work and the norms and values that still govern childcare and caring time policies. Therefore, a host of institutional and cultural factors shape the level and terms of mothers’ labour force participation in both countries. The impact of motherhood has a stronger effect on employment patterns in Germany than in France. French mothers are more frequently employed on a full-time basis and at the same time have more children than their German counterparts.     

An institutional approach to research on public procurement of innovation

The role of public procurement as a means to stimulate innovation has been increasingly emphasized during the last few years. The general argument is that, by applying intelligent demand, public agencies can stimulate private sector innovation that will eventually sustain competitive advantage in a global economy. The emphasis on public procurement used as an innovation policy instrument challenges current institutional practices and skills. The article is based on the assumption that the innovation research community could inform this policy discourse, in particular by drawing on institutional theory, but in order to fully utilize this potential, further revision of the research perspectives seen is needed. The article therefore discusses an institutional approach based on three modes: “multilevel institutional analysis”, “endogenous and exogenous institutions” and “institutions as rationalities”, arguing that such an approach would help to increase innovation research quality and policy relevance.     

Explaining Gender Inequalities That Follow Couple Migration

By exploiting the unique social and economic differences between East and West Germany, the authors investigated how macro‐level opportunities interact with couple‐level decision making to explain gender differences in the determinants and economic outcomes of household migration. By incorporating regional socioeconomic conditions into household bargaining theory, 4 hypotheses for each region were derived. The hypotheses were tested using cross‐classified multilevel regressions and the German Socio‐Economic Panel (1992–2012) combined with regional economic indicators. First, gender‐specific determinants of couples' West–West (i.e., within West Germany) and East‐to‐West migration were analyzed; second, subsequent economic consequences were investigated by comparing couples with singles. The results confirm that gender differences in macro‐conditions can impose decision logics that seemingly contradict the initial power relation within couples. Despite more traditional gender arrangements in West Germany, well‐educated partnered women earn significant absolute and relative income gains from migration; their egalitarian East German counterparts suffer significant losses compared with single women and East German men.     

Institutioneller Wettbewerb und Karrierechancen von Nachwuchswissenschaftlern in der Chemie

This paper examines the interplay between intensifying competition among scientific institutions, on the one hand, and career opportunities of young scientist, on the other hand, using chemistry-departments in German universities and non-academic research institutes as an example. Drawing on Bourdieu, we construct and analyze the filed in which institutional competition takes place. The power relations in the field are structured by the relative amount of “pure scientific capital” and/or “institutional capital” available. In an analysis of professorial appointments we show that the field’s structure has little impact on junior scientsits’ career opportunities. In contrast to the US, where pervasive institutional competition goes hand in hand with a high degree of social closure in academic careers, we find that career opportunities are (still) relatively open in the German case, in spite of growing competition. This openness is due to the special institutional framework that provides the German academic field with a relatively high degree of autonomy. As recent changes in science policy aim to alter the institutional framework, they also jeopardize the autonomy of the academic field.     

Mutual benefit as outcome indicator: Factors influencing perceptions of benefit in organization–public relationships

The notion of mutual benefit has been a foundational assumption for scholars who use the relationship management perspective. Although many studies have inferred that mutual benefit links to organizational outcomes, no study to date has linked quantitatively key public member perception of benefit to positive organizational results. The current investigation sought to quantify the link between respondent perception of benefit and traditional organizational outcomes such as satisfaction and behavioral intent.     

The Challenge of Activist Coalition Governance: Accommodating Diversity to Create Institutions—An Approach Via the Inter-Relationships Between Action,Project and Instrument

This paper addresses the governance of hybrid forms of organisation arising in new social movements, characterised by diverse institutional logics and democratic decision making. Our theoretical framework encompasses the governance theory of Kooiman with insights from new developments in institutional theory. This framework allows us to examine governance as the capacity to link together disparate institutions from the perspective of interactions between action, project and instrument, and to explore the institutional work that results from these interactions. By studying a French activist coalition, we explore the micro-processes that make it possible to accommodate diversity in an organisation intended to produce solid institutions. Our results show that the three elements of governance—action, project and instrument—have an impact on the cohesion of diversity-based organisations and on building and consolidating institutions. When these elements are flexible and versatile enough, and when they mutually nurture each other, a plurality of logics is possible, the coalition goes forward, and true institutional work can be accomplished. When one of these elements of governance—instruments in particular—becomes autonomous and rigid, diversity is more difficult to achieve and one logic is likely to prevail over the others, compromising the very survival of the coalition and impeding the emergence of a new institution.     

The persistence of national differences in a globalizing world: the Japanese struggle for competitiveness in advanced information technologies

This paper represents a critique of that aspect of globalization theory that predicts the convergence of national economic institutions and practices toward some single optimal model. This is done through the examination of the innovative practices of Japanese firms and government within the context of US–Japanese competition in high-technology industries. A profile of Japanese innovative competencies is developed through an overview of competition in consumer electronics and personal computing and the emerging wireless Internet industry. The paper argues that different national systems of innovation result in levels of competitiveness that vary according to the technological profile in a given industry, thus undermining one of the basic premises of convergence theory.     

Technology supported learning Tensions between innovation,and control and organisational and professional cultures

Abstract

The use of technology to support learning in institutions of Further and Higher Education has become almost ubiquitous. Institutions normally start with strategies aimed at introducing these innovations, but there is much about the organisational and cultural nature of educational institutions that acts as a barrier to innovation. Staffordshire University started this process in 1997, and by 2002 reached a point where innovation had slowed and the embedding of what had been achieved was at best partial. An embedding process based around the review and implementation of policy ensued which, by 2005, had proved highly successful in terms of embedding, but due to cultural and organisational factors, this had been at the expense of sustaining innovation and had created tensions within the organisation. This was compounded by changes in technology and the advent of new web-based services, which stimulated innovative practitioners. New initiatives to address the tensions between the need of the organisation to control its processes and the needs of practitioners to experiment and innovate have begun. These have highlighted the requirement for tools to enable strategy and policy to be considered against the processes making up the learning experience in terms of ownership and control.     

上海科技型中小企业协同创新模式识别与评价

上海科技型中小企业主要的协同创新模式可以归纳为专利和技术服务购买、技术引进、委托研发或研发外包、产学研合作、联盟、创新要素共享和转移、网络组织、创新平台等8种模式.这些模式可以帮助企业以较低的成本取得技术创新所需的资源,进而使得创新效率得到提高.提升上海科技型中小企业协同创新能力,需要构建协同创新的政策和制度环境,提高企业的协同创新能力,强化不同协同主体的支撑程度,构建创新主体间的协同互动网络.     

'Du hast jar keene Ahnung': African American English dubbed into German

This paper explores the translation of sociolinguistic variation by examining the ways that African American English (AAE) is dubbed into German. In discussing this ubiquitous yet poorly studied area of language use, I show that ideas about language as an index to social groupings are transferable to the degree that the ideas overlap in the cultures in question. In the case of German, if the character being dubbed is young, male and tied to the street cultures of the urban inner city, then AAE is dubbed using a form of German that has links to the urban youth cultures of north‐central Germany. The transferability of sociolinguistic variation is important to issues related to cross‐cultural communication and the ideologies that may play a role in the outcomes of that communication as well as to linguistic creativity and language style more generally.     

De Jure vs. De Facto Rights: A Response to “Human Rights: What the United States Might Learn from the Rest of the World and,Yes, from American Sociology”

Blau's ( 2016 ) argument for a Constitutional Project implies that changes in the U.S. Constitution would ensure fundamental adherence to human rights standards. We disagree with the assumption that legal and institutional instruments are guarantors of human rights practice. Instead, we see rights practices as the function of power struggles that include but go far beyond formal law. Instead, we emphasize an important distinction between de jure human rights instruments and de facto human rights practice, arguing that the focus on de jure instruments and legal discourse misses the significant effect of social movements and direct action that secure rights practice. De jure instruments may codify human rights and enumerate them as important, but they do not carry the authority of enforcement. We argue that the pursuit of human rights must be reframed to include both de jure and de facto human rights terrains. While charitable provisions from generous states can temporarily relieve specific human rights abuses, universal human rights practice requires establishing the fundamental political primacy of the people through the processes of the human rights enterprise.     

青少年创新能力培养策略研究

每一次科技革命和知识革新都为社会带来巨大的进步，也使人们认识到科技创新、知识创新与人才培养之间的密切关系。国外青少年创新能力培养起步早，积累了一定经验，我国目前青少年创新能力培养虽然存在教育模式、创新教育氛围等的缺失，但是也具有开放社会青少年主体性创新人格和创新内容增加的优势。因此，要建立专门教育机构以提供技术支持，增强青少年的主体意识，提高创新能力培养在教育目标中的比重，完善青少年创新能力培养的社会氛围。