Die „ganze Person“ im Coaching — Ambivalenzen und Optionen

As a specific type of counselling, which focuses on the individual and his/her personality within the professional context, coaching has to strike constantly a balance between looking at the ?whole person“ and looking at one facet of this person, i.e. his/her professional role. This leads to ambivalent attitudes towards coaching from the client’s point of view, which should be discussed and turned into beneficial factors during the coaching process. The following article illustrates the construct of the ?whole person“-approach in coaching and argues for an understanding of coaching based on comprehensive methodologies and concepts.     

Teaching history in a postwar social context—the case of the Croatian Danube region

This paper discusses the results of empirical research examining history teachers’ opinions on teaching recent history, and on the revocation of a moratorium on teaching former Yugoslavia’s recent history in Serbian minority schools in the Croatian Danube region. The research was conducted in 2003, involving a sample of 29 primary and secondary history teachers in both the majority and minority programmes in the two counties affected by the moratorium. The post‐war divide is evident from the differences in teachers’ opinions regarding the moratorium’s revocation and the presentation of minority history in history teaching. On a general level however, when the history of the Croats and Serbs was not discussed, most of the teachers advocated a liberal concept of history teaching.     

The making of active boards in Swedish public companies

Boards of directors are a vital part of corporate governance systems. In the on-going discussion about the development of national corporate governance systems, however, little interest has been given to the issue of how and why board behavior changes over time. In this article, we use an institutional approach and study the development of board behavior in Sweden between 1994 and 2004 and if it is affected by board composition and board network characteristics. In order to do so, we introduce the constructs of board activities, i.e. what the boards do, and board involvement, i.e. when in the decision process they get involved. Findings show that range of board activities and board involvement have increased drastically during this period, which indicates a change in the logic of appropriateness of Swedish board behavior. There are robust indications that new types of actors affect activities and involvement positively, as do board interlocks, whereas network centrality affects activities and involvement negatively.     

Effect of the use of a national information brochure about fetal movements on patient delay

Background

Perinatal audits in the Netherlands showed that stillbirth was nearly always preceded by a period of reduced fetal movements. Patient or caregiver delay was identified as a substandard care factor.

SKILL‐BIASED TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE,UNEMPLOYMENT, AND BRAIN DRAIN

We develop a model of directed technology adoption, frictional unemployment, and migration to examine the effects of a change in skill endowments on the wages, employment rates, and emigration rates of skilled and unskilled workers. We find that, depending on the elasticity of substitution between skilled and unskilled workers and the elasticity of the matching function, an increase in the skill ratio can reduce both the relative unemployment rate and the relative emigration rate (brain drain) of skilled workers. We provide numerical simulations to support our findings and show that the effects are empirically relevant and potentially sizable.     

Whitewater: Decentralization of river basin water resource management

This paper focuses on empirically assessing determinants of river basin management decentralization, which is growing in popularity among water resource managers world wide. Measuring decentralization as a shift of decision-making responsibility to water users or governments at the river basin level or below, the analysis sheds light on the decentralization reform process and its success, using primary data from 83 river basins world wide. Contrary to common perception that primarily emergency situations trigger reform, persistent water scarcity is found to be a major stimulus to reform. Similarly, financially well-endowed or -developed basins do not necessarily outperform poor and underdeveloped basins. Conditions improving decentralization performance include: existence of dispute resolution mechanisms; greater financial responsibility of users; and as opposed to traditional thinking, government financial support to basin budget.     

The Subjective Well-Being of Immigrants: Pre- and Post-migration

In recent years, migration studies have increasingly shown that subjective well-being carries considerable weight in immigrant integration. Yet little is known about the subjective well-being of immigrants in their origin country (pre-migration) or its relation to their well-being in the host country. This paper examines the relationship between subjective well-being, both pre- and post-immigration, among North Americans who arrived in Israel during the past two decades. The study combines both quantitative and qualitative research methods. According to our quantitative findings, the labor market performance of North American immigrants in Israel is lower than in their origin countries. Further, we learned from the qualitative analysis that although the immigrants’ positions in the labor market were better in their origin countries, the immigrants perceived their standard of living in Israel to be the same as in their origin country—if not better—due to the low cost of services in Israel. The importance of the immigrant’s satisfaction from the current job in Israel was apparent in the findings of both methods. We also found that the subjective well-being of North American immigrants in Israel is relatively high, and most immigrants did not consider leaving Israel. The subjective well-being of the immigrants in Israel was found to be related to their social networks in their origin country, to their religious immigration motive and to their work satisfaction in Israel. The more supportive the immigrants’ families were of their decision to immigrate, the less the immigrants tended to consider leaving Israel. Immigrants with a religious motivation for immigrating to Israel were less inclined to leave, and the same was true for immigrants who were satisfied with their work in Israel. The qualitative data added important perspective on the immigrants’ social networks, this time in Israel. Interviewees reported having more supportive social networks in Israel, and a greater sense of community, although most of their contacts were within the Anglo community.     

Validation of the Orientation to Life Questionnaire in Norwegian Adolescents,Construct Validity Across Samples

In spite of the potential significance of sense of coherence (SOC) for adolescent health and well-being, the past decades have yielded limited progress in investigating the psychometric properties of the most used inventory measuring SOC, The Orientation of Life Questionnaire (OLQ) in adolescents. The present study aimed at investigating the factorial validity and reliability of the Norwegian version of the 13 item OLQ based on two adolescent samples 13–18 years from Norway. Concerning the dimensionality of the OLQ, two measurement models were tested using confirmatory factor analysis; a one-factor model and a three-factor-model. The results showed that a three-factor solution with correlated residual variances between item 2 and item 3 showed the best fit across the two adolescent samples, although five items revealed low factor loadings. The dimensions were highly correlated and showed adequate composite reliability. The present results indicate that the 13 item OLQ has potential as an instrument assessing SOC in adolescents. However, more psychometric testing of the instrument is required in reference to the modified factor structure and the low reliability found on some of the items in OLQ.     

Thinking critically about cross-cultural implementation—Swedish social workers’ experiences of testing the Kids’ Club method for helping child and mother victims of intimate partner violence

There are calls for evidence-based methods for helping children to deal with experiences of Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) in many countries. Therefore, it has been commonplace to implement such methods from outside of their home country. The aim of this study is to examine Swedish social workers’ experiences of testing the American Kids’ Club method for child and mother victims of IPV. After having tested leading Kids’ Club groups, seventeen social workers at four different locations were interviewed using a semi-structured interview guide. The results indicate that the social workers generally accepted the method. This was related both to some general features of the method and to their perceiving it as somewhat flexible. According to the social workers, the method needs some cultural adaptation to better suit the Swedish social services setting, otherwise it cannot be fully accepted. Finally, they thought that successful implementation depended on an organizational structure that enabled enough children to be referred to the programme as well as either high personal commitment or an organization that prioritized the method. Based on these results, we conclude that importing an American evidence-based group method to help children exposed to IPV to Sweden demands attention to issues of cultural adaption.     

Mobility as a stratifying factor in housing: dwelling-in-place contra dwelling-on-the-move in Sweden

Housing is almost entirely overlooked in mobility studies. Yet mobility is intrinsically linked to housing, not only for the cybernetic elite or global nomads, but also for the middle class. Through a comparative case study of two extreme cases of housing, the Markeliushus from 1935 and Victoria Park from 2009, this study found that mobility has been continuously linked to discourses and practices of housing the modern Swede. Furthermore the findings suggest that two contrasting housing forms have evolved: dwelling-in-place and dwelling-on-the-move. I argue that these two housing forms are part of an evolving stratification of housing based on mobility. The article concludes that mobility has become an entry point for disaffiliation by privileged groups, accessible through housing.