Intergenerationelles Lernen als Herausforderung für NGOs

In this article the learning between different generations in Non Governmental Organizations (NGOs) is discussed. Therefore the development and history of NGOs as a special kind of organisations is presented before the relationship between different generations is analysed within two steps. Firstly the voluntary engagement of different age groups is taken into account and secondly the learning opportunities between different generations in NGOs are theoretically reflected. Finally the challenges of intergenerational relationships within NGOs and the possibilities of institutionalised intergenerational learning are described.     

Zwischen Normativität und Komplexität

The spheres of Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO) related to development policy have changed significantly in past years. Therefore NGOs are confronted more and more with areas of tension and contradictions that they influence and challenge with their work. In this context, NGOs that are active in education for sustainable development face a special challenge. All of the contradictions and areas of tension appear condensed in this field and need to be examined and processed adequately from the point of education. The resulting areas of conflict and tension mark the central border area and problems of educational work related to development policy that far outreach the practice of NGOs.     

Rethinking the Significance of Attitudes in Preventing Men's Violence Against Women

The concept of attitudes has been an important component of campaigns to address men's violence against women. Attitudes have been examined in relation to men's perpetration of violence, women's experience of violence and community and institutional responses. In this article we argue that there has not been sufficient interrogation of the limitations of attitudes in understanding and addressing men's violence. We propose a social constructionist approach to attitudes and emphasise the need to locate attitudes within the context of familial, organisational, community and social norms which support violence against women. Furthermore, we argue that to prevent violence against women, we must develop interventions beyond cultural and attitudinal change to encompass changes in structural relations and social practices.     

Labor Mobility,Job Preferences,and Income Distribution

A model is presented to illustrate the role of labor mobility in income distribution. Worker preference for different occupations and wage comparisons are combined to determine the allocation of labor between sectors and to trace the behavior of the Gini coefficient as mobility increases. The Gini coefficient fails to fall monotonically with increasing labor mobility, making its interpretation ambiguous. It is also shown that the Gini coefficient has a lower nonzero limit, a fact compatible with empirical findings.     

Turning bad into good: How resilience resources protect organizations from demanding work environments

An organization’s survival and its performance are often connected to employees’ well-being, which in intensive work conditions can be compromised by employee exhaustion. To date, the last economic crisis has forced several companies to downsize and leave the remaining employees facing higher job demands and vulnerability toward job exhaustion. The present study investigates whether resilience together with other personal resources can function as a psychological shield through a mediation and/or moderation process that mitigate the emergence of burnout. Based on a sample of employees from three different Italian companies (N?=?208), our results confirmed that “resilience resources” (i.e., resilience, self-efficacy, self-regulation) mediated the relationship between job demands, exhaustion, and task performance (i.e., energetic process). These results suggest that organizational environments characterized by challenging demands are likely to foster the development of resilience resources to cope with the emergence of potentially harming processes.     

Financial literacy and anxiety about life in old age: evidence from the USA

This study examines whether financial literacy can help to reduce anxiety about life in old age. We hypothesized that financially literate people are more able to earn income and accumulate assets, leading them to have a less anxious life in old age. On the other hand, less financially literate people rely more on social security to secure themselves in the old age as they are not able to accumulate sufficient assets. By using US survey data, we provide evidence that assets significantly reduce anxiety about life in old age only for people who are more financially literate. For less financially literate people, social security plays an important role in reducing anxiety about life in old age. Besides these, having a child and doing regular exercise also reduced anxiety for all respondents but marital status reduced anxiety in respondents over 40 years of age. The results of our study are robust to measurement of financial literacy and endogeneity problems.     

The impact of R&D sources on new product development: Sources of funds and the diversity versus control of knowledge debate

We build on the knowledge-based view to study the relative impact of alternative R&D sources on innovation performance. We contrast two arguments that have created a debate in the literature: One is that diversity of knowledge is better for innovation, because the integration of a larger variety of knowledge helps create new products that can fulfill unmet customer needs; another is that control of knowledge is better, because the incentives and contextual system of the firm facilitate employees' experimentation, which supports the creation of new products. We provide one solution to this debate by arguing that the relative importance of diversity and control of knowledge on innovation depends on the sources of finance. Hence, we find that, in general, control of knowledge has a higher impact than diversity of knowledge on the sale of new products. We also find that alternative sources of finance moderate the relationships: internal funds strengthen the impact of R&D sources with more diversity of knowledge on the sale of new products, while external funds strengthen the impact of R&D sources with more control of knowledge on the sale of new products.     

How Nuclear-Weapon States Parties to the Non-proliferation Treaty Understand Nuclear Disarmament

Disarmament measures included in the Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) are, for most of the nuclear-weapon states, an objective to be reached in a very long-term. Based on this position, the current nuclear-weapon states parties to the NPT believe that they do not have to show, at this stage, the necessary political will to begin the nuclear disarmament process at the multilateral level and under international supervision, as requested so many times by the international community on the basis of article VI of the NPT. For this reason, all of them are in the process of modernising their nuclear weapons arsenals, ignoring their commitments and obligations as NPT states parties.     

Live together: does culture matter?

Review of Economics of the Household - This paper studies the role of culture in determining the decision to live together (as a married or unmarried couple). To examine this issue, we utilize data...