Neue Arbeitswelt,Führung und organisationaler WandelNew Economy,Leadership and Organizational Change.

This article of the journal “Gruppe. Interaktion. Organisation.” analyzes and discusses current changes in the working environment with regard to the associated opportunities and risks. Due to the growing dynamism of the markets, digitization, the demographic change and the change of values the importance of flexibility and changeability as central prerequisites for organizational survival is rising constantly. At the same time organizations and employees make higher demands on each other. This shift in the “psychological contract” between employees and organization is discussed in the light of the characteristics of “generation Y”. The article concludes by summarizing consequences of these developments for work in organizations, leadership, change processes and consulting.     

Emergente Teamphänomene – Warum sich Erfolge eines Teams nicht einfach kopieren lassen

Analyzing emergent team phenomena carries the potential to extend previous research findings. However, team phenomena – such as team cognitions and team emotions – do not make research easier. They are difficult to observe, do not follow a clear course, and can only be measured and shaped indirectly. Nonetheless, they offer new perspectives on a more multi-faceted and realistic world, which leads to many new interesting research questions and makes current knowledge appear in a different light. The moments of surprise and unexpected developments characterize teams and make them worthwhile objects of study. Since not all aspects of a team can be measured entirely, managing team dynamics is a demanding as well as essential challenge for adaptable and learning organizations.     

Associations Between Maternal Postpartum Depression,Infant Social Behavior With a Stranger,and Infant Cognitive Development

Maternal postpartum depression (PPD) has been found to be related to infant social withdrawal during mother–infant interaction, and this may spill over on infant interactive behavior in other social contexts and impact infant psychosocial development. We investigated whether PPD was associated with infant social withdrawal during interaction with a tester in a psychological test situation and whether infant social withdrawal in the test situation mediated the association between PPD and infant cognitive scores reported in a previous study. Participants were 28 PPD dyads and 41 control dyads. We assessed infant social behavior and cognitive development with the Alarm Distress Baby Scale and the cognitive scale of the Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development, third edition, at four months. More symptoms of maternal depression were associated with more infant social withdrawal. The association between maternal depressive symptoms and cognitive scores was at most partially mediated by infant social withdrawal in the test situation (<29.6%). Our results add to the existing literature on the effects of PPD on infant social behavior in other contexts than the one constituted by the mother. More research is needed to shed light on the mechanisms through which PPD impacts infant cognitive development.     

Rising powers,people rising: neo-liberalization and its discontents in the BRICS countries

ABSTRACT

The rise of the BRICS countries – Brazil, Russia, China, India, and South Africa – has called into question the future of Western dominance in world markets and geopolitics. However, the developmental trajectories of the BRICS countries are shot through with socio-economic fault lines that relegate large numbers of people to the margins of current growth processes, where life is characterized by multiple and overlapping vulnerabilities. These socio-economic fault lines have, in turn, given rise to political convulsions across the BRICS countries, ranging from single-issue protests to sustained social movements oriented towards structural transformation. This article presents an innovative theoretical framework for theorizing the emerging political economy of development in the BRICS countries centred on neo-liberalization, precarity, and popular struggles. It discusses the contributions to this special issue in terms of how they illuminate the intersection between neo-liberalization, precarity, and popular struggle in Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa.     

Assessing the Benefits and Costs of Homeland Security Research: A Risk-Informed Methodology with Applications for the U.S. Coast Guard

This article describes a methodology for risk-informed benefit–cost analyses of homeland security research products. The methodology is field-tested with 10 research products developed for the U.S. Coast Guard. Risk-informed benefit–cost analysis is a tool for risk management that integrates elements of risk analysis, decision analysis, and benefit–cost analysis. The cost analysis methodology includes a full-cost accounting of research projects, starting with initial fundamental research costs and extending to the costs of implementation of the research products and, where applicable, training, maintenance, and upgrade costs. The benefits analysis methodology is driven by changes in costs and risks leading to five alternative models: cost savings at the same level of security, increased security at the same cost, signal detection improvements, risk reduction by deterrence, and value of information. The U.S. Coast Guard staff selected 10 research projects to test and generalize the methodology. Examples include tools to improve the detection of explosives, reduce the costs of harbor patrols, and provide better predictions of hurricane wind speeds and floods. Benefits models and estimates varied by research project and many input parameters of the benefit estimates were highly uncertain, so risk analysis for sensitivity testing and simulation was important. Aggregating across the 10 research products, we found an overall median net present value of about $385 million, with a range from $54 million (5th percentile) to $877 million (95th percentile). Lessons learned are provided for future applications.     

Learning (to) taste: food,aesthetics, and education in early modern France

ABSTRACT

This paper explores the intersection between taste and education in the early modern period. The first part investigates the close connection between the sense of taste and the sin of gluttony, highlighting taste’s close association with food disorders in the late Middle Ages and early modernity. Silencing taste was by then a key aspect of the education of the body, which needed to be learned from the earliest age, at home as well as at school. The second part charts the rise of a moderate and honest gourmandise from the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries onward, accompanied by the invention of the polite bon goût and later the aesthetic taste of beauty, which contributed to a new social valorization of taste, while also complicating contemporary practices of learning (to) taste. Using a wide variety of early modern printed sources, including conduct books, religious and moral treatises, books of emblems, and treatises on the senses and on taste in particular, as well as aesthetic works, this paper sheds light on the multiple ways in which taste – of the body as much as of the mind – was used, learned, and displayed, hence revealing a transformation of the experience and understanding of taste throughout the early modern period, as well as its impact on educational practices.     

Institutional isomorphism and nonprofit managerialism: For better or worse?

Nonprofit organizations (NPOs) have increasingly adopted business‐like practices as a response to institutional pressures. Some researchers argue that this development leads to mission drift, whereas others find a positive effect on organizational performance. However, the institutional pressures responsible for shaping the nonprofit sector have remained hard to distinguish from each other. This study explores the consequences of mimetic, normative, and coercive pressures, and looks at how they affect managerialism, organizational performance, and mission drift. We link these concepts through a structural equation model based on survey data and find that one aspect of managerialism, strategic behavior, is a key construct in influencing the response to isomorphic pressures and can positively affect organizational performance while holding off‐mission drift. Normative isomorphism even has a direct positive effect on organizational performance. Mission drift can take place when organizations are under coercive pressure without having strategies or internal processes in place. These findings imply that organizations should invest in their strategy and the professional development of their staff to increase organizational performance and avoid mission drift.     

How and when does speech-acting generate social innovations

Speaking is a normal, a special and ubiquitous human activity. Speaking or writing as a subjective and willful activity directed at others takes place within a dense set of behavioral norms. Speaking also activates selectively resources, concepts, logics and rules in language. We investigate the power of the language institution, speech-acting, constructed narratives and deliberations in creating social innovations. We look at new organizations, especially the constitution of new groups with operative collective intentions as social innovations. We ask how speech-acting theory can add or deepen insight into the constitution, the creation, the sustainability and the breakdown of organizations. Speech-acting theory has a focus on rationality as reasoning. Both Amartya Sen and John Searle have delved into reasoning – as creative subjectivity in multi-institutional settings. We try to exploit critically some of their philosophical findings into the field of empirical organization and social innovation studies.     

Monitoring Socio-demographic Risk: A Cohort Analysis of Families Using Census Micro-Data

We apply cohort techniques to monitor four indicators of socio-demographic risk crucial to family wellbeing; namely, income, employment, education, and housing. The data were derived from New Zealand??s five-yearly Census for the period 1981?C2006. This allowed us to track birth cohorts of mothers (and their families) over six successive New Zealand censuses focusing on the main childrearing ages of 20?C59. This produced ten cohorts??termed ??open familial cohorts????ranging from mothers born in the period 1932?C1937 through to 1977?C1981. We present age, period and cohort analyses. Families in which the mother is in her early 20s were the most vulnerable, with the lowest incomes, the greatest risk of worklessnes, and the lowest levels of home ownership. Of particular interest is that those in the most recent cohorts??born since 1967??were worse off compared to earlier cohorts. The period from the mid-1980s to the mid-to-late 1990s was one of greatest ??socio-demographic risk??, with the lowest work, income and education prospects over the 25?years. The picture on generational profiles was mixed. Contrary to popular mythology the ??baby-boomer?? cohorts did not enjoy an unqualified advantage over others; indeed the most recent cohorts were doing well, with relatively high incomes, education and work levels. The analysis is successful in identifying age and period effects over a period of major social change, and in documenting cohort experiences for each indicator, thus demonstrating the potential of constructing cohorts from routinely-collected census micro-data for monitoring and policy purposes.