Childlessness and Psychological Well-Being in Midlife and Old Age: An Examination of Parental Status Effects Across a Range of Outcomes

The study explores and distinguishes links between parental status (childless persons, parents with residential children, and empty nest parents) and a range of psychological well-being outcomes in midlife and old age. Data are from the first wave of the Norwegian Life Course, Ageing and Generation (NorLAG) study (n = 5,189). We separate outcomes into cognitive (life satisfaction and self-esteem) and affective (positive and negative affect, depression, loneliness) components. Parental status has a net effect on cognitive well-being among women, as childless women report significantly lower life satisfaction and self-esteem than both mothers with residential children and empty nest mothers. However, motherhood is inconsequential for affective well-being. Among men, parental status is unrelated to any of the well-being aspects. Parental status effects are not modified by age, marital status, and education. The results demonstrate the importance of investigating the effect of parental status and other objective circumstances on a range of psychological well-being outcomes. Furthermore, the results reviewed and presented indicate somewhat more positive effects of parenthood in the Nordic countries than in the US, highlighting the role of social policies in shaping the impact of parental status on well-being.     

Integrative Entrepreneurship-Forschung — Identifikation von Schnittstellen zwischen soziologischer und ökonomischer Perspektive

In this paper three prominent discourses of Entrepreneurship Research — 1) the Entrepreneur as an actor in society, 2) the embeddedness of the research object of Entrepreneurship Research and 3) the determinants of entrepreneurship processes — are analyzed for possible interfaces between a sociological and economical perspective. This analyses results in a systemized portfolio of research topics, which seem to be especially attractive for such an integrative research approach. The results of a survey of 105 entrepreneurship researchers in the German speaking world underpin the relevance of the identified interfaces and allow for their priorization. That way we contribute to an integration of this field as the presented set of identified interfaces, in a first step, provides a feasible agenda for interdisciplinary (empirical) follow-up research whose results — in a second step — can build elements of an integrative concept of Entrepreneurship Research.     

Integrationspotenziale des Internets für türkische Jugendliche in Wien am Beispiel von Online-Spielen und digitalen Freundschaftsnetzwerken

Based on a cohort of young Austrians of Turkish descent, this paper links the debate on the integration of the second generation (or the lack thereof) with the controversial discourse about the potential usefulness and risks of new media and technologies, specifically the Internet. Various studies have concluded either that the new media and technologies are positive integrative aspects of the society or have devastating impacts on different groups. On the one hand, the Internet allows young people to discover new experiences and gain additional often unorthodox knowledge; on the other hand, observers have warned about the segregating effects of new technologies. A ?digital divide“ has been opened between privileged users and the underprivileged masses, according to these more cautious voices. This divide has caused social deprivation and disintegration amongst the most vulnerable groups, in particular, older people, economically insecure groups and immigrants. Thus, various media life-styles establish a continuum between a media and information elite on the one end and the entertainment under-class on the other. Semi structured interviews with young Turks in Vienna show the positive and negative effects of playing Online Role Playing Games on the Internet in opposition to so-called Social Network Sites such as Netlog.     

From Mothers of the “People's Home” to Biologically Rational Consumers

The aim of the present article is to study how women's alcohol consumption has been defined and contested in the Swedish press from 1955 to 2010 in relation to the development of Swedish society from a social democratic welfare state to a neoliberal competition state. Our material consists of articles published in the largest Swedish national and regional newspapers in 1955, 1965, 1977, 1982, 1995, 2004, and 2010. In the study, we apply Fraser's concepts of recognition and redistribution to analyse how the press contributed to the formation of cultural injustices and counter-claims through its recognition of women's drinking, and how these cultural injustices and counter-claims have conditioned the redistribution of societal resources. Our analysis shows that, during the study period, women were recognized in the Swedish press in limited and stigmatizing subject positions. These dominating representations of drinking women changed over time in an unpredictable way. As collectively shared, widely accepted cultural images, they tended to downplay the possibility of women achieving equal and just participation in cultural interaction, social activities, and healthcare services. In counter-discourses, the possibilities for women to formulate public claims in order to make surrounding structures more “enabling” of their independency, weakened during the study period.     

Coopetition in coworking-spaces: value creation and appropriation tensions in an entrepreneurial space

Coopetition has the potential to improve entrepreneurship and innovation. It will be prevalent in coworking-spaces building a growing field for individual and corporate entrepreneurship. The individuals’ physical closeness in the professional and social space of the coworking-space eases multifaceted transfers of explicit and implicit knowledge, stimulating creation, transfer, overhaul, and implementation of entrepreneurial ideas. While entrepreneurs in these coworking-spaces collaborate on sharing knowledge and resources and on finding creative ideas from which can breed new venture concepts, they simultaneously compete on the appropriation of values. Thus, entrepreneurs in coworking-spaces face coopetitive tensions of creating and appropriating the values. Based  on  interview data and secondary sources, this paper explains four different prototype institutions of coworking-spaces: the corporate coworking-space, the open corporate coworking-space, the consultancy coworking-space, and the independent coworking-space. Study explains different tensions of value creation and appropriation that occur within the coopetition in the different forms of coworking-spaces.     

The disenchantment of Bitcoin: unveiling the myth of a digital currency

Bitcoin and its peculiar, decentralized transaction system, have already ignited interest by professional and retail traders in search for profits and by economists and legal experts, looking for possible regulation to contain illegal uses. We instead examine the unexpected and ongoing success of Bitcoin from a sociological perspective, first questioning its unusual legitimation system, backed by the so called ‘blockchain technology’, instead of by governmental authorities. Then we collect data and elements to reconstruct Bitcoin’s history as a cryptocurrency, starting from the mysterious story surrounding its birth. We then follow its spread and development through social networks and words of mouth, together with its sudden booms and bursts, finally to suggest that both users and institutional regulators should be aware of the risks of Bitcoin and of its alleged power to challenge our very notion of money.     

Participatory Spaces of Mental Health Service User Organizations in the Post-deinstitutional Era: Mapping Roles and Challenges

By applying the concept of participatory spaces, this article maps and analyzes current research on mental health service user organizations (MHSUOs). We have analyzed research literature from 2006 to 2016 to examine how the role of and challenges facing MHSUOs are formulated in the post-deinstitutional era. The current situation is marked by MHSUOs parallel presence in invited, claimed and popular spaces for participation. The post-deinstitutional era is characterized by a shift in focus from gaining access to such participatory spaces, to critically examining the political opportunities available in these. We further argue that the dominance of psychiatry-specific spaces could prevent MHSUOs from fully exploring their potential for participation in broader social issues.     

Cumulative correspondence analysis of ordered categorical data from industrial experiments

Most studies of quality improvement deal with ordered categorical data from industrial experiments. Accounting for the ordering of such data plays an important role in effectively determining the optimal factor level of combination. This paper utilizes the correspondence analysis to develop a procedure to improve the ordered categorical response in a multifactor state system based on Taguchi's statistic. Users may find the proposed procedure in this paper to be attractive because we suggest a simple and also popular statistical tool for graphically identifying the really important factors and determining the levels to improve process quality. A case study for optimizing the polysilicon deposition process in a very large-scale integrated circuit is provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed procedure.