„Lola rennt“ oder: „es hätte auch anders kommen können“ – Über den Möglichkeitsraum gruppendynamischer Intervention

A group of eight Trainers for Groupdynamic analyzed their interventions as trainers of Sensitivity-Groups during the last seven years. They used the methodological approach of Sequential Analysis and the model of the groupdynamic space (Amann, Gruppenprozesse verste-hen, 2001, S. 28). This model combines the three elementary polarities shaping the dynamic in T-Groups: belonging (in or out), power (up or down) and nearness (near or far) and supposes that these three polarities form a kind of dynamical “group-space” in which the three dimensions are simultaneously effective. Thus this model avoids a hydraulic understanding of group processes. Taking into account the model of groupdynamical space the group analyzed Trainer-interventions and asked which alternative intervention could have been possible to underline another dimension of the space. In the analysis of interventions they pointed out which of the three dimensions the trainer-intervention was focussing, which consequences this decision had for the group-process and they asked hypothetically which effects another strategy of intervention could have had. Every intervention is the consequence of a particular interpretation of the current group situation. And each decision could have been taken differently by bringing the attention towards another dimension of the groupdynamical space. This is the core-idea of this essay. Years ago a german movie was released with the title “Lola rennt” and it showed three variations of one moment with three entirely different show downs. This idea inspired us to choose the same titel for our reflections about the practice and richness of groupdynamical interventions. This essay is meant as a contribution to a “second order Groupdynamic” which is interested more in the way trainers perceive group processes than in the theory of the group-process itself.     

What Drives the Demand for Temporary Agency Workers?

As part of the general trend towards increased employment flexibility temporary agency employment has grown steadily in most European countries. The paper examines, first, whether the deregulation of temporary agency employment is responsible for the growth of the flexible staffing industry. Second, we investigate the cyclical behavior of temporary agency employment. Using monthly data for Germany, we show that the liberalization of the law regulating the sector is not the main reason for the surge of this employment form. Our analysis reveals, moreover, that temporary agency employment exhibits strong cyclical behavior and correlates with main economic indicators in real time.     

Communicating Asset Risk: How Name Recognition and the Format of Historic Volatility Information Affect Risk Perception and Investment Decisions

An experiment examined how the type and presentation format of information about investment options affected investors' expectations about asset risk, returns, and volatility and how these expectations related to asset choice. Respondents were provided with the names of 16 domestic and foreign investment options, with 10-year historical return information for these options, or with both. Historical returns were presented either as a bar graph of returns per year or as a continuous density distribution. Provision of asset names allowed for the investigation of the mechanisms underlying the home bias in investment choice and other asset familiarity effects. Respondents provided their expectations of future returns, volatility, and expected risk, and indicated the options they would choose to invest in. Expected returns closely resembled historical expected values. Risk and volatility perceptions both varied significantly as a function of the type and format of information, but in different ways. Expected returns and perceived risk, not predicted volatility, predicted portfolio decisions.     

From Engagement to Co-production: The Contribution of Users and Communities to Outcomes and Public Value

User and community co-production has always been important, but rarely noticed. However, there has recently been a movement towards seeing co-production as a key driver for improving publicly valued outcomes, e.g. through triggering behaviour change and preventing future problems. However, citizens are only willing to co-produce in a relatively narrow range of activities that are genuinely important to them and are keen that their co-production effort is not wasted by public agencies. Moreover, there are concerns that co-production may involve greater risks than professionalised service provision, although services may be quality assured more successfully through involving users and embedding them in the community. While offering potential significant improvements in outcomes, and cost savings, co-production is not resource-free. Co-production may be ??value for money??, but it usually cannot produce value without money.     

The Future Labor Force of an Aging Taiwan: The Importance of Education and Female Labor Supply

This study uses multi-state cohort component projections and detailed vital statistics data to project the future Taiwanese population by age, sex, and education up to 2050. These are the first education-specific population projections for Taiwan, and they reveal how young highly educated cohorts during the next decades will replace older cohorts with lower levels of educational attainment. The results of the population projections enter our estimation of the future composition of the Taiwanese labor force. Incorporating education as an extra dimension in labor force projections allows us to make inferences about the quality of future labor supply in a rapidly aging Taiwan and the leverage of expanding economic activity across the life course, particularly of women. At present, women’s economic activity above age 25 in Taiwan is significantly lower than men’s and also much lower than women's in Western developed nations. Some of the expected adverse economic consequences of population aging can likely be alleviated by having a more educated and consequently more productive labor force. The overall results and conclusions of our study, though based on the Taiwanese context, apply to other Asian economies with rapidly aging populations and currently comparatively low levels of female labor force participation as well.     

Institutional Entrepreneurship and Agency

The notion of institutional entrepreneurship has become very popular in the last decade. Starting from a review of the literature on the topic, I first focus on the use of the idea of individual entrepreneurs and point out three theoretical incongruities it produces. I then discuss notions of collective entrepreneurship and institutional work to see if they can overcome these incongruities. I conclude that although they can remedy some of the problems, these notions run the risk of describing everything until they describe nothing. In order to limit and enable the entrepreneurship literature to discuss agency meaningfully, I argue, it needs to develop analytical frames of agency derived either from existing sociological theories or from further developing its own brand of agency theory.     

A century of population aging in Germany

The population of Germany is becoming progressively more elderly, and this article focuses on the causes and implications of that trend. We discuss the demographic processes that occurred in Germany in the second half of the 20th century and describe the developments that the population of Germany will undergo in the next 50 years, which promise to exert a profound influence on the economic and social future of the country.