Lifelong Learning: A Dyadic Ecological Perspective

This paper examines lifelong learning in differentiating it from formal education, and emphasizes multiple theoretical perspectives in doing so. The theoretically based approaches emphasized here include contextualism and the multi-layered nature of the environment, the dialectics of interactions among students and instructors, the zone of proximal development, and person-environment fit. Examining lifelong learning from these perspectives deepens our understanding of such learners and has implications for future research examining lifelong learning, as well as for the design and implementation of interventions designed to foster positive intergenerational relationships.     

Fitting Demand and Supply: How Identification Brings Appeals and Motives Together

In this article, participants in two demonstrations are compared. The demonstrations took place in two different squares in Amsterdam, on the same day, opposing the same governmental policy. Everything was the same except the organizers and their appeals: labor unions with an appeal in terms of threatened interests, on the one hand, and an anti-neoliberalism alliance with an appeal in terms of violated principles on the other. We hypothesize that social cleavages shape mobilizing structures and mobilization potentials. Thereby, this study takes an important yet rarely tested assumption in social movement literature seriously: namely, that grievances are socially constructed. If indeed grievances are socially constructed, one would expect that organizers rooted in different cleavages issue different appeals that resonate with different motives. What made individuals who were protesting the same governmental policy participate in one square rather than in the other? Organizational embeddedness, identification, and appeals that resonate with people's grievances provide the answer to that question. To test our hypotheses, we conducted surveys at both demonstrations; survey questionnaires were randomly distributed. The findings supported our assumptions regarding the influence of the diverging mobilizing contexts on the dynamics of protest participation and revealed the crucial role of identity processes.     

Corporate Governance is Directors Making Decisions: Reforming the Outward Foundations for Inside Decision Making

Journal of Management and Governance -     

Variations in trusteeship: cases from Boston and Cleveland, 1925–1985

Case studies suggest that important changes in the composition and structure of boards of trustees of non-profit organisations have occurred in recent decades. The nature of these changes, and how they may vary across industry and locale, are not well documented. This pilot study compares changes in structure and board membership of three elite non-profit organisations in two cities at three points in time: 1925, 1955 and 1985. This study focuses on governing boards of the major art museum, largest non-profit hospital and local United Way of Boston and Cleveland. Board members' biographical data are used to assess models of board diversification based on environmental pressures and changes in local elites. We find evidence that trusteeship varies historically, regionally and across industries, and we set the stage for broader-based empirical comparative work on changes in non-profit boards of trustees.     

Backcasting as a Tool to Develop a Sustainable Transport Scenario Assuming Emission Reductions of 80-90%

This article will summarise the results of The Netherlands pilot study commissioned by the Dutch Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment, and carried out by the Dutch National Institute of Public Health and the Environment (RIVM). This pilot study differed from existing sustainable transport scenario studies for four reasons: (i) very sharp emission reductions are assumed, (ii) not only 'forecasting' but also 'backcasting' scenarios are constructed, (iii) instrument packages and implementation time paths are described which - if carried out - would result in the necessary technological and behavioural changes to realize environmentally sustainable transport, and (iv) the social and economic impact of sustainable transport is assessed.     

Futurology and planning

This paper is not intended to be an exhaustive exposition of futurological and predictive studies, but rather an indication of the kinds of approach which institutes devoted to this subject are making, methods used and the ideas which are being developed.     

A description of the extreme aged population based on improved medicare enrollment data

The mortality and size of the extreme aged population can be studied most accurately with Medicare enrollment data from the Social Security Administration's Master Beneficiary Record after certain types of questionable records are eliminated. With the improved data base we find that mortality rates at the very old ages are higher than published rates, we are more confident of the reality of the race crossover, and we can estimate the number of centenarians more accurately. Furthermore, a large matched-records study shows close agreement on age at death between the Master Beneficiary Record and the death certificate.     

On van Ijzeren’s approach to international comparisons and its properties

This paper provides a comprehensive exposition of Van IJzeren’s approach to international comparisons of purchasing power and real GDP. Important features of this approach are: symmetrical treatment of price level and volume comparison; retaining a relationship between levels and indexes; and using identical country weighting structures within the “international” prices and quantities. It is shown that the Van IJzeren method is superior to the well-known Geary-Khamis method. At the same time the paper can be seen as a defense of the EKS method.