“Not in (or Under) My Backyard”: Geographic Proximity and Public Acceptance of Carbon Capture and Storage Facilities

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is an innovative technical approach to mitigate the problem of climate change by capturing carbon dioxide emissions and injecting them underground for permanent geological storage. CCS has been perceived both positively, as an innovative approach to facilitate a more environmentally benign use of fossil fuels while also generating local economic benefits, and negatively, as a technology that prolongs the use of carbon‐intensive energy sources and burdens local communities with prohibitive costs and ecological and human health risks. This article extends existing research on the “not in my backyard” (NIMBY) phenomenon in a direction that explores the public acceptance of CCS. We utilize survey data collected from 1,001 residents of the coal‐intensive U.S. state of Indiana. Over 80% of respondents express support for the general use of CCS technology. However, 20% of these initial supporters exhibit a NIMBY‐like reaction and switch to opposition as a CCS facility is proposed close to their communities. Respondents’ worldviews, their beliefs about the local economic benefits that CCS will generate, and their concerns about its safety have the greatest impact on increasing or decreasing the acceptance of nearby facilities. These results lend valuable insights into the perceived risks associated with CCS technology and the possibilities for its public acceptance at both a national and local scale. They may be extended further to provide initial insights into likely public reactions to other technologies that share a similar underground dimension, such as hydraulic fracturing.     

The kitsch-organization 1

The paper discusses kitsch as the discourse of depriving experience of beauty and surprise. It argues that people often construct kitsch when they organize. Three different Kitsch-Organizations are depicted: the Polish communist youth organization from the 1950-ties, a foreign enterprise operating currently in Poland, and a school of organizational behavior.

Kitsch, not being equivalent to “low” or “popular” culture is a degrading construct. Adopted as a second level metaphor to the studies of organizations, it can be of use for critical social constructivist analysis.     

Kick It Like Özil? Decomposing the Native‐Migrant Education Gap

We investigate second‐generation migrants and native children at several stages in the German education system to analyze the determinants of the persistent native–migrant gap. In particular, if migrant and native children shared the same socioeconomic family background, would we still observe differences in education outcomes? Applying linear and matching decomposition methods to carefully account for differences in background characteristics, we find no disparities in recommendations for and actual enrollment at secondary school types between migrant children and comparable native peers. Also, the native–migrant education gap at the age of 17 years can be entirely explained by differences in socioeconomic family background. We thus conclude that comparable natives face similar difficulties as migrant children in the German education system. There are more general inequalities in secondary schooling that are not migrant specific, but related to socioeconomic family background.     

Gastland China beim Soziologiekongress 2006 in Kassel

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Promoting Stability and Development in Fragile and Failed States

There is a growing recognition of the threat to international security posed by failed and fragile states, often marred by serious internal conflict that also has the potential of destabilising neighbouring states and providing ungoverned territory that can provide safe haven for terrorists. The inability of their governments to provide basic services is considered a significant contributory factor. Considerable donor efforts have been mobilised in recent years to help with the post‐conflict reconstruction of states emerging from failure, and to halt the slide of fragile states towards failure, but with mixed effect. The international community needs to focus much more squarely on strengthening the emerging state and increasing its domestic legitimacy, rather than on promoting democracy.     

Stability and Change of Well Being: An Experimentally Enhanced Latent State-Trait-Error Analysis

This study uses longitudinal panel data and short-term retest data from the same respondents in the German Socio-economic Panel to estimate the contribution of state and trait variance to the reliable variance in judgments of life satisfaction and domain satisfaction. The key finding is that state and trait variance contribute approximately equally to the reliable variance in well being measures. Most of the occasion specific variance is random measurement error, although occasion-specific variation in state variance makes a reliable contribution for some measures. Moreover, the study shows high similarity in life satisfaction and average domain satisfaction for the stable trait component (r = .97), indicating that these two measures are influenced by the same stable dispositions. In contrast, state variance of the two measures is distinct, although still highly correlated (r = .77). Error variances of the two measures are only weakly correlated, indicating that most of the error component is indeed due to random measurement error.     

The role of the controller in strategic capital investment projects: bridging the gap of multiple topoi

Journal of Management and Governance - The literature on capital budgeting and investment proposals is rich with techniques, such as portfolio management and stage-gate project management, which...