Social workers’ opportunities to work with safer sex

The purpose of this study is to increase knowledge about social workers’ opportunities to work with safer sex among at-risk adolescents and young adults. To investigate this issue, a survey has been sent to outreach work and non-institutional offices whose work focuses on alcohol and drugs to some extent. The survey was sent to 89 workplaces distributed throughout 33 municipalities in the region of Skåne in southern Sweden. Altogether 229 responses were collected, a response rate of 60.1%. The study shows that social workers have limited opportunities to work with safer sex issues and that the organizational resources to support this work are weak. Michael Lipsky’s theory of street-level bureaucrats was applied to the data, with the analysis indicating that knowledge and organizational resources are key to enabling work with safer sex. It is also important that the personnel are interested in the subject and that they feel comfortable working with safer sex. The factors found to have the strongest direct effect on the personnel’s work with safer sex are: having the possibility to set aside time to work with safer sex, experiencing that safer sex is discussed at the workplace and being personally interested in the subject.     

Public Knowledge and Attitudes to HIV: Research From Three Decades in Sweden

The overarching objective of this article is to describe the Swedish public's knowledge about HIV and attitudes toward people living with HIV during the period 1987–2011. Within the framework of this objective, the article also directs a special focus at the association between knowledge about HIV transmission and attitudes toward people who are HIV positive. The study is based on the results of a questionnaire sent to a stratified random sample on eight occasions between 1987 and 2011. The study population comprises the Swedish general public aged 16–44 and is stratified on the basis of the respondents' age, with each of five age groups (16–17, 18–19, 20–24, 25–34, and 35–44) comprising 20% of the study respondents. A total of 21,027 individuals have completed the questionnaire in the eight surveys. The survey instrument is relatively short and comprises 27 questions on knowledge, attitudes and sexual behaviour relating to HIV. The eight surveys show that the public's knowledge about HIV and its different transmission routes is high and has increased over time. Above all there has been an increase in the level of knowledge about how HIV is not transmitted between people. However, the public's knowledge about the infectiousness of individuals receiving treatment for HIV infection is low. Public attitudes toward people with HIV have also undergone a clear shift over time, toward increased tolerance and a decline in the level of fear, especially in social situations. Despite this, a residual suspicion and stigmatisation can be seen in the public's attitudes to people who are HIV positive. This is most obvious from the questions that link HIV to sexuality and here the changes are very modest over time. Public knowledge about HIV and its transmission routes has increased between 1987 and 2011. Attitudes toward people who are HIV positive have generally become more tolerant and positive, not least in relation to different social situations. The fear of becoming infected has declined. At the same time there remains a stigma, which continues to direct suspicion at people who are living with HIV and to ascribe them negative characteristics and behaviors that are based on prejudice. The results show, however, that the public's attitudes toward same-sex relationships are clearly more accepting today than they were previously, and that the symbolic association between HIV and this group is tending to become weaker.     

The Impact of Child Behaviour Problems on Maternal Employment: A Longitudinal Cohort Study

This prospective population-based study examined associations between children’s behaviour problems and maternal employment. Information on children’s behaviour problems at 3 years from 22,115 mothers employed before pregnancy and participating in the Norwegian Mother and Child Cohort Study were linked to national register data on employment and relevant social background factors, mothers’ self-reported susceptibility to anxiety/depression and mother-reports of day-care attendance and fathers’ income. Mothers reporting their child to have severe (>2 SD) internalizing or severe combined behaviour problems (5 %) had excess risk of leaving paid employment irrespective of other important characteristics generally associated with maternal employment (RR 1.24–1.31). The attributable risk percent ranged from 30.3 % (internalizing problems) to 32.4 % (combined problems). Externalizing behaviour problems were not uniquely associated with mothers leaving employment.     

Two Questions about European Unemployment

A general equilibrium search model makes layoff costs affect the aggregate unemployment rate in ways that depend on equilibrium proportions of frictional and structural unemployment that in turn depend on the generosity of government unemployment benefits and skill losses among newly displaced workers. The model explains how, before the 1970s, lower flows into unemployment gave Europe lower unemployment rates than the United States and also how, after 1980, higher durations have kept unemployment rates in Europe persistently higher than in the United States. These outcomes arise from the way Europe's higher firing costs and more generous unemployment compensation make its unemployment rate respond to bigger skill losses among newly displaced workers. Those bigger skill losses also explain why U.S. workers have experienced more earnings volatility since 1980 and why, especially among older workers, hazard rates of gaining employment in Europe now fall sharply with increases in the duration of unemployment.     

Time Consistency of Fiscal and Monetary Policy: A Solution

This paper demonstrates how time consistency of the Ramsey policy—the optimal fiscal and monetary policy under commitment—can be achieved. Each government should leave its successor with a unique maturity structure for nominal and indexed debt, such that the marginal benefit of a surprise inflation exactly balances the marginal cost. Unlike in earlier papers on the topic, the result holds for quite general Ramsey policies, including time‐varying polices with positive inflation and positive nominal interest rates. We compare our results with those in Persson, Persson, and Svensson (1987), Calvo and Obstfeld (1990), and Alvarez, Kehoe, and Neumeyer (2004).     

Identifying Social Trust in Cross-Country Analysis: Do We Really Measure the Same?

Many see trust as an important social resource for the welfare of individuals as well as nations. It is therefore important to be able to identify trust and explain its sources. Cross-country survey analysis has been an important tool in this respect, and often one single variable is used to identify social trust understood as trust in strangers, namely: “Generally speaking, would you say that most people can be trusted or that you can’t be too careful in dealing with people?” The question, however, is whether this variable captures the meaning of social trust equally well in all countries. This is investigated by comparing different measurements of trust across five clusters of countries in all parts of the world. The analysis shows that there are considerable problems associated with the use of the variable of “most can be trusted” as an indicator of trust in strangers, both in terms of strangers understood as “people you meet for the first time” and in terms of strangers understood as people of a different nationality and religion. These results question the validity of previous investigations of social trust based on international survey material. The analysis furthermore reveals that a new survey question about trust in people one is meeting for the first time is better suited as indicator of social trust in comparative analysis.     

Facts,Opinions, and Scientific Memes: Reflections of and Recommendations for the March for Science in Germany

Germany ranked second in number of March for Science participants. The current essay is based on a focus group discussion with six participants of a march in a German university town and elucidates their motives for attending, their perceptions of how politically active scientists should be, the goals they think the march should aim to achieve, and their recommendations for future marches. Motives in Germany differed slightly from those mentioned in the United States. Discussants placed importance on the difference between facts and opinions, which is translated into recommendations for issue‐specific future marches.     

Gestaltung der Führungskultur bei der Daimler Group Services Berlin GmbH durch Design Thinking

Based on creating an employee-oriented leadership culture, this report on practices illustrates how the Design Thinking (DT) approach can be used in the context of organization development. Supported by an accompanying process support, four self-directed teams, consisting of employees of Daimler Group Services Berlin GmbH (DGSB), developed concepts to enhance employee satisfaction. In the case report, we describe the challenges faced by the DGSB and the objectives set by management in terms of process execution. Based on these specifications, a ten-week DT concept was developed that included three on-site workshops. The report presents the content, goals, and results of the process, followed by suggestions how our DT concept might be further improved. Finally, based on our observations, we discuss why critical team interactions in a DT process can prevent a team from coming up with good ideas. Based on these considerations, we derive research questions whose investigation can help to further increase the success of organization development.     

The antecedents of psychic distance

This study investigates the antecedents of psychic distance. Building on original data in 25 of the world's largest economies, we investigate potential drivers of perceived psychic distances to foreign countries. The results show these perceptions to be influenced by a range of cultural, geographic, political and economic factors. Among these, absolute geographic distance accounts for the largest share of the explained variance, suggesting that physical distance should be given a more prominent role when it comes to empirically investigating international business decisions for which psychic distance perceptions may be important. The findings also suggest that, used in isolation, ‘cultural distance’ – as measured by the so called Kogut and Singh index – is a poor predictor of such perceptions.     

Participatory Governance in Social Enterprise

This paper emphasizes the importance of participative governance in the study of social enterprise. Furthermore, it argues that social enterprise must be analyzed through a multi-dimensional perspective. The EMES approach is based on three dimensions emphasizing the social, economic, and political dimension, while many Anglo-American definitions tend to use a one-dimensional spectrum framework. The latter often see social enterprise as a simple phenomenon that can be arranged along a continuum, ranging from economic to social, where more of one means less of the other. However, this fails to acknowledge the multi-disciplinary nature of social enterprise. Scholars inspired by the EMES approach should devote greater attention to exploring the interactive and interrelated nature of the three dimensions of social enterprise, especially the governance dimension.