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.     

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.     

Contract design and insurance fraud: an experimental investigation

This paper experimentally examines the impact of contract design on insurance fraud. We test how fraud behavior varies for insurance contracts with full coverage, a straight deductible or claim-dependent premiums (bonus-malus contracts), in a setup where rational and selfish individuals have an incentive to always claim the maximum possible indemnity. We find a substantial impact of contractual arrangements: Deductible contracts lead to a greater extent to claim build-up than full coverage contracts. In contrast, bonus-malus contracts that entail the same net gains from fraud as deductible contracts do not increase claim build-up. Thus, our results indicate that bonus-malus contracts may be superior to deductible contracts for behavioral reasons.     

David and Goliath: causes and effects of coopetition between start-ups and corporates

Coopetition (collaboration between competitors) among young firms (i.e. start-ups) and larger, more established firms (i.e. corporates) may be beneficial for both partners as each party typically has something to offer that is missing in the other. Start-ups often develop innovative ideas, are flexible and agile, willing to take risks, and aspire to achieve high growth, but they tend to lack the required resources, capabilities, and knowledge due to their newness and smallness. Corporates have resources, routines, and experience that enable them to work efficiently but lack a certain innovation capability. Research has suggested that coopetition represents an opportunity for start-ups facing restrictions in resources, while corporates benefit from start-ups’ innovative ideas. However, it is yet unknown whether start-ups and corporates engage in coopetition with each other and, if so, how and why they do this. This study seeks to fill this void by exploring the motives of coopeting start-ups and corporates, how they manage their coopetitive relationship, and what implications occur including potential benefits and risks. We present a multiple case study based on qualitative data collected through 70 interviews with Austrian-based start-ups and corporates representing 35 coopetitive partnerships. Discussing the findings based on our data, we propose relationships concerning coopetition and its role to enlarge resource- and technology-bases as well as its role in the development of dynamic capabilities.     

Process evaluation of an environmental walking and healthy eating pilot in small rural worksites

Small Steps are Easier Together (SS) was a pilot environmental intervention in small rural worksites in Upstate New York in collaboration with Extension educators. Worksite leaders teamed with co-workers to select and implement environmental changes to increase walking steps over individual baseline and to choose healthy eating options over 10 weeks. Participants were 226 primarily white, women employees in 5 sites. A mixed methods process evaluation, conducted to identify determinants of intervention effectiveness and to explain differences in outcomes across worksites, included surveys, self-reports of walking and eating, interviews, focus groups, and an intervention log. The evaluation assessed reach, characteristics of recruited participants, dose delivered, dose received, and context and compared sites on walking and eating outcomes. Emergent elements of participant-reported dose received included: active leadership, visible environmental changes, critical mass of participants, public display of accomplishments, accountability to co-workers, and group decision making. Participants at sites with high reach and dose were significantly more likely than sites with low reach and dose to achieve intervention goals. Although this small pilot needs replication, these findings describe how these evaluation methods can be applied and analyzed in an environmental intervention and provide information on trends in the data.     

A lattice of participation: reflecting on examples of children's and young people's collective engagement in influencing social welfare policies and practices

The article introduces four case studies from Wales, France and Finland and explores the situated, intergenerational and dynamic nature of collective participation in child welfare settings. Collective participation is conceived of as a process of engagement in which children and young people have some influence over the initiation or direction of a project; and as seeking a product, or outcome. The case studies represent a range of forms of collective engagement and highlight some key resources which supported children's participation (communicative spaces, time, money, knowledge, social position, attitudes, social networks, institutional commitment, equipment, food and transport). Challenges encountered in achieving effective participation in different nations within Europe are also identified, related to generation barriers and the distribution of resources. These elements are used to construct a lattice of participation: a model for conceptualising children and young people's collective engagement in participatory projects. The model provides a tool for visualising how, at different stages of a project, actors (children, young facilitators, adults and institutions) exercise influence by directing the use of different resources, such as finance and time. It invites reflection on why influence is limited in some stages of a participatory project, and how it is supported in other stages.