Gender equality and family changes in the work–family culture in Southern Europe1

The wider context of the trade-off between work and family is not just a matter of changing preferences. The focus of the literature in this area has been strongly concerned with the identification of factors promoting high levels of female employment than with the location of policy determinants of cross-national fertility variation. Work–family reconciliation is considered as a political action that gives quite limited and unstable support to encourage women’s labour market participation, this results in the poor development of external services and in fewer benefits for women, who have to undertake multiple roles inside and outside the family. The Southern European countries (SEC) model take a specific family-oriented approach to work–family reconciliation. They are family-oriented in that they entrust the family with more responsibilities that in other countries and take a conservative/corporatist-family-oriented approach to work–family reconciliation. The key role and the interconnection between fertility and employment among women, as well as the influence of the gender system and, on the whole, of the welfare system depend on the specific culture of different countries. Based on these theoretical premises, this paper reviews the academic discussion of the meaning of work–family balance concept in the cultural context of SEC from a comparative perspective, taking in account the gender equality debate.     

Caring for Individuals with Chronic Illness and Minor Depression: Latino Perceptions of Caregiver Burden

ABSTRACT

Informal caregiving can be fundamental to disease management. Yet, the psychosocial, physical, and financial burden experienced by caregivers can be significant. In the US, Latinos experience increasing rates of chronic conditions, the highest uninsured rates in the country, and a growing dependence on informal caregivers. This article explores the impact of caregiving on caregivers of individuals with comorbid chronic disease and depression. Findings highlight the impact of caregiving on financial insecurity, balancing competing demands, increased emotional distress, and community supports. Findings support the inclusion of caregivers in disease management programs to enhance psychosocial outcomes for both caregivers and their patients.     

Dynamic Models for the Time Series of Industrial Conflict in the Labour Market

ABSTRACT: In the aim to investigate the behaviour of some indicators for the industrial conflict and to detect the relation between such variables and the cost of labour in Italy, this paper suggests the use of Box-Jenkins’time series analysis. By fitting a different stochastic process for each series, it can be shown that every indicator gives a different kind of information about the industrial conflict, so that they can't be indifferently substituted by each other. In a second step, cross correlation function estimates between cost of labour and each indicator suggest the different role played by 'strike frequency’and strike duration during any contract renewal.     

Transition to fatherhood: New perspectives in the global context of changing men's identities

The proposed thematic session aims to highlight the main challenges that the cultural and structural changes within the families and in gender relations and the changing social expectations about men's involvement in the care of children and about fatherhood pose to men's and fathers’ identity. Fathering in contemporary society requires men to be simultaneously provider, guide, household help and nurturer. The difficulties of these roles, and the tensions they sometimes produce, challenge men's relationships with their female partners, the meaning and place of work in their lives and their sense of self as competent adults. We will also explore the relationship between transitions to fatherhoods and the challenges of balancing work and family obligations. How to balance paid work, other interests and relationships with responsibilities, anxieties and pleasures of childrearing are today concerns for both men and women.     

Social processes among mothers in centres for children and parents in three countries

Professionally run centres have been created in a number of countries over the past few decades to provide a place for parents and their young children to meet. They provide children with play opportunities and social contacts with peers, but they are also intended to tackle the potential negative consequences of mother–child isolation in modern societies by providing mothers with some social support. Many mothers find their participation in the centres to be supportive. This study uses ethnographic observations of mothers′ social experience in centres in France, Italy and Japan with the aim of better understanding the potential beneficial effects of attending the centres. Beyond organizational and cultural differences in the centres across countries, this joint analysis of observations highlighted important similarities in the social processes occurring among mothers in the centres and supported the hypothesis that positive social experiences are the basic potential source of psychological benefits that the centres provide to mothers.     

CEO Duality,Agency Costs,and Internal Capital Allocation Efficiency

This study examines the impact of CEO duality on firms’ internal capital allocation efficiency. We observe that when the CEO is also chair of the board, diversified firms make inefficient investments, as they allocate more capital to business segments with relatively low growth opportunities over segments with high growth opportunities. The adverse impact of CEO duality on investment efficiency prevails only among firms that face high agency problems, as captured by high free cash flows, staggered board structure and low board independence. Depending on the severity of the agency problem, CEO duality is associated with a decrease in industry‐adjusted investment in high‐growth segments of 1% to 2.1% over the following year, relative to that in low‐growth segments. However, CEOs’ equity‐based compensation curbs the negative effect of CEO duality on internal capital allocation efficiency. Overall, the findings of this study offer strong support for the agency theory and postulate the internal capital allocation policy as an important channel through which CEO duality lowers firm value in diversified firms.     

Mixed Consequences of Government Aid for New Venture Creation: Evidence from Italy

Most countries have designed programsto stimulate the birth and development of new firms.One of the most important issues in evaluating theimpact of public entrepreneurial policies is toanalyze their influence on the post-entry performanceof the new ventures. This paper examines how the mostimportant government program to encourageentrepreneurship in Italy (the Law 44 program) affectsseveral aspects of the early performance of new firms.A sample of new firms receiving government aid iscompared to a matched sample of new firms notreceiving public assistance, i.e., ``control' firms. The control firms were born in the same year, launchedtheir business in the same geographical area andoperate in the same industry classification. Resultsshow that the public program produces mixed effects.Government aid allows firms to have a higher level oftechnology. However, government funding gives rise toentrepreneurial start-ups, which are not fullyefficient. A discussion of these findings andsuggestions for future research are presented.     

Bayesian analysis of outlier problems using the Gibbs sampler

We consider the Bayesian analysis of outlier models. We show that the Gibbs sampler brings considerable conceptual and computational simplicity to the problem of calculating posterior marginals. Although other techniques for finding posterior marginals are available, the Gibbs sampling approach is notable for its ease of implementation. Allowing the probability of an outlier to be unknown introduces an extra parameter into the model but this turns out to involve only minor modification to the algorithm. We illustrate these ideas using a contaminated Gaussian distribution, at-distribution, a contaminated binomial model and logistic regression.     

Veränderungen der Rollenstruktur von Arbeitsgruppen im Rahmen einer Software-Implementierung

Introducing new technologies in organizations often brings about tremendous changes regarding structures and processes that also impact procedures, communication and cooperation in working groups. In this study we investigate whether the structure of working teams changed in the course of a software implementation process, what kind of impact these changes had on the teams, and how these changes could be used to shape the implementation process in a positive way. To that end, working teams from different organizations and sectors were analyzed using sociometric methods prior to and after a software implementation process. Results show typical changes in role structures that can be used to shape the implementation process. Implications for research and practice are discussed.