Ethnicity as a risk indicator for musculoskeletal disease, long consultation times and care utilization A prospective visitor study of 438 consecutive adult consultations of a primary health care centre

This article shows the influence of ethnicity (people born outside Sweden and in Sweden) and social class (socioeconomic class) on the distribution of diagnoses, consultation time and health care utilization in primary health care controlled for sex, age, marital status and educational level. The study was designed as a prospective primary health care utilization study during 7 consecutive weeks. Of a total of 439 adults who lived in the residential area, 290 were born in Sweden and 149 were born elsewhere. The data were analysed unmatched with logistic regression and Poisson regression in main effect models. People born outside Sweden received significantly more diagnoses per consultation than people born in Sweden. The strongest independent risk indicator for musculoskeletal disease was being born outside Sweden, with an estimated odds ratio (OR) of 5.01, 95% confidence interval (CI) = 2.70–8.72. Age over 44 was associated with increased odds for musculoskeletal disease. Respiratory disease, as an indicator of less serious disease, were significantly less common among people born outside Sweden (OR = 0.53, 95% CI = 0.33–0.87). Being born outside Sweden was a risk indicator for consultations longer than 30 minutes (OR = 3.03, 95% CI=1.18–7.43). There were no differences between people born in Sweden and those born elsewhere in health and utilization. Social class was not associated with any of the dependent variables.     

Panel data regression for counts

A new panel data model for count data is introduced. We suggest alternative estimators, such as pseudo maximum likelihood and generalized method of moments, of structural and nuisance parameters. In addition, different test statistics of independence and overdispersion are obtained. The small sample performance of the estimators and tests are evaluated in Monte Carlo experiments. The model is applied to the number of days absent in Sweden 1981–1991 for a panel of Swedish male workers.     

Is Sweden Being Torn Apart? Privatization and Old and New Patterns of Welfare State Support

This article examines the potential impact of institutional change on popular welfare support. The encompassing welfare state of Sweden provides an interesting case where the privatization of social service delivery has been widespread over the last decades. We use survey data from five rounds of the Swedish Welfare State Survey (1992, 1997, 2002, 2006 and 2010) in order to study how public preferences for the financing and organization of welfare services have changed over time. Based on a theory describing an ideal‐typical pattern of public support for an encompassing welfare model, we derive three types of public preferences: support for a pure state model, a pure market model and a mixed model (welfare services are funded by taxes but provided by private firms). We begin by tracking the development of these ideal‐typical attitude patterns between 1992 and 2010. We then investigate how preference patterns vary across municipalities displaying different degrees of privatization of social service delivery. Our results show that welfare support among Swedes over the last decades is better characterized as dynamic rather than stable. Swedes seem to take an overall more ideologically based position on the role of the welfare state over time. The share of respondents expressing such ideologically based preferences has increased from 54 per cent in 1992 to 78 per cent in 2010. This change is principally manifested in increased support for the state and mixed models. This trend seems to be parallel to the increasing share of private welfare service providers over the last decade. We also find a link between the municipal degree of privatization and support for our three ideal‐typical welfare models. Public support for a mixed welfare model and, to some extent, a market model, is comparatively stronger in municipalities where welfare services to a large extent are carried out by private actors. Conversely, data shows that public support for the traditional Swedish state model is more widespread in municipalities having a low degree of welfare services privatization. Lastly, we discuss some theoretical implications of our findings.     

Conceptualizing and Measuring Quality of Life for National Policy

The interests in social indicators andsocial reporting started in the 1960s with thenew awareness of poverty in the midst ofaffluence. In this paper I first discuss thepoverty concept and its implication for socialpolicy strategy. The poverty concept should bebut one in a system of concepts that throwslight on the whole distribution of income andwealth and how income from labor as well asincome from capital is generated. The centralconcepts in the system are income and economicstandard, which I explain in differentperspectives on command over resources.The command-over-resources concept is usedto get from a narrow concept of materialwelfare that can be measured in money to awider concept of welfare that includes theuniversal common social concerns. I confess tobeing intrigued by the fact that a list ofsocial concerns can be agreed upon that seemsto be relevant across cultures, politicalsystems and times. I suggest that thissurmised universality springs from the great``life projects'' that all humans face over thelife cycle.I then discuss the role of social indicatorsand social reporting as continuous informationon these common concerns in the context of anepistemology of the democratic process. Socialreporting would serve the democratic processbest if it answers ``how it is'' and leaves theanswers on ``how it ought to be'' and ``whatshould be done'' to come about throughdiscussion among citizens.     

Virtues of SIN: can intensified public efforts help disadvantaged immigrants?

The labor market integration of immigrants is a top political priority throughout the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries. Social and fiscal gains, as well as sustained future labor supply make governments search for effective policies to increase employment among the mostly disadvantaged. The author studies SIN, a Swedish pilot workplace introduction program targeting these groups, using very detailed individual data and allowing for effects through several channels. The results show increased transitions from unemployment to work experience schemes and improved future employment probabilities for those who entered these schemes. A rough calculation suggests that each job year created cost about Euro 30,000.     

Beyond appearances – Do dynamic capabilities of innovative firms actually differ?

Dynamic capabilities are the higher-order capabilities needed for changing operational-level capabilities and learning in new domains, and thus they are critical for innovation activities. The aim of this study is to explore heterogeneity of dynamic capabilities in a comparative setting. We chose four innovative case firms representing a single industry, namely magazine publishing. The similarity of the cases provided a solid foundation for comparing their dynamic capabilities. Based on the results it seems that the practices comprising sensing capabilities are likely to be similar across firms within a single industry, while practices comprising seizing and reconfiguring types of capabilities may differ more between companies. Thus dynamic capabilities have both idiosyncratic and common features across an industry. These findings are relevant to practicing managers in that they illustrate that competing companies within the same industry tend to develop similar types of practices to match the changing requirement of the operating environment. Hence, managers should not be falsely comforted by the current situation within their firms, but proactively develop their unique capabilities to gain advantage over their competitors.     

Linking long-term capacity management for manufacturing and service operations

For firms that combine manufacturing and service operations in one system, the task of managing capacity is not straightforward. New goods and services may not have the same set of competitive priorities, and the models and concepts available in the literature for service operations differ from those for manufacturing operations. We address this problem and review the concepts and models for capacity management in the long term in both streams of literature, i.e. manufacturing and services, to develop a unified framework for manufacturing and service operations. The framework creates transparency between new goods manufacturing and service operations, since the same long-term capacity management structure is used for both product types, as well as between capacity strategy and planning strategy, since new goods and services are treated simultaneously. In the framework, the concepts of chase and level strategies are redefined for service operations to allow for integration with manufacturing operations. A case study demonstrates the usefulness of the integrated approach for long-term capacity management.     

Market Segmentation in Scientific Publications: Research Patterns in American vs European Management Journals1

Ideal science should conform to certain criteria or goals, among them the goals of universalism and commonality. Realization of these goals may be limited, however, through the dividing up of researchers in terms of geographical borders. In this study the general hypothesis is tested that there is a segmentation of the society of management researchers into a North American (US) and a European (E) segment, a segmentation which is furthered by differences in incentive schemes and in paradigms. Four leading management journals from North America and from Europe, respectively, and the 242 articles they contained published in 1993 were selected to represent the different geographical segments. The results provide: support for the existence of two such segments; support for differences in incentive schemes influencing the articles; support for their being paradigm differences between the two segments; and support for a paradigm effect being stronger in US-journals than in E-journals, US-authors are more willing, however, to conform to the E-paradigm than vice versa. We argue for methodological pragmatism in order to reduce the presumed counter-productive effects of paradigmatic rigidity.