Assessing Changes Over Time in Inequality of Opportunity: The Case of Spain

The aim of this paper is to contribute both theoretically and empirically to the analysis of Inequality of Opportunity over time, providing some significant findings referred to the Spanish case. The analysis is carried out using microdata collected by the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC), which incorporate a wide variety of personal harmonised variables, allowing comparability with other countries. The availability of this database for the period 2004 and 2010 is particularly relevant for assessing changes over time in the main inequality indices and the contribution of circumstances to inequality of opportunity. We find that the effect of circumstances on income distribution has significantly intensified between the two years. To test the significance of the differences between years we perform bootstrap estimations.     

Bitter strawberries: the construction of differences in a multicultural school: a case study

This paper presents the results of a case study looking at the views of teachers and other educational professionals pertaining to the academic progress and general integration of immigrant schoolchildren in multicultural schools in the province of Huelva (Andalusia, Spain). It is organised into three sections: first, the geographical and social context of the study is described, focusing in particular on the impact on schools of migratory trends within the province associated with strawberry cultivation. This is followed by a presentation of the results of a field study into the educational panorama of immigrant pupils from various countries, drawing on verbal reports by teachers and school administrators. Finally, some conclusions are suggested for possible categories of analysis with a view to opening new lines of research in the future.     

Technological distinctive competencies and organizational learning: Effects on organizational innovation to improve firm performance

This paper analyzes how top management support of technology influences the generation of technological skills, technological distinctive competencies and organizational learning. The research also examines the effects of technological distinctive competencies and organizational learning on organizational innovation and reflects how all of these variables impact organizational performance. The results of our empirical analysis, based on a sample of 201 Spanish technological firms, suggest that: (1) top management support positively influences the generation of technological skills, technological distinctive competencies and organizational learning; (2) technological distinctive competencies and organizational learning positively affect organizational performance, directly and indirectly through organizational innovation.     

Context‐Specific,Scenario‐Based Risk Scales

Reacting to an emergency requires quick decisions under stressful and dynamic conditions. To react effectively, responders need to know the right actions to take given the risks posed by the emergency. While existing research on risk scales focuses primarily on decision making in static environments with known risks, these scales may be inappropriate for conditions where the decision maker's time and mental resources are limited and may be infeasible if the actual risk probabilities are unknown. In this article, we propose a method to develop context‐specific, scenario‐based risk scales designed for emergency response training. Emergency scenarios are used as scale points, reducing our dependence on known probabilities; these are drawn from the targeted emergency context, reducing the mental resources required to interpret the scale. The scale is developed by asking trainers/trainees to rank order a range of risk scenarios and then aggregating these orderings using a Kemeny ranking. We propose measures to assess this aggregated scale's internal consistency, reliability, and validity, and we discuss how to use the scale effectively. We demonstrate our process by developing a risk scale for subsurface coal mine emergencies and test the reliability of the scale by repeating the process, with some methodological variations, several months later.     

Stable sets and cores for multi-criteria simple games and for their extensions

In this article we deal with multi-criteria simple games which constitute an extension of the basic framework of voting systems and related social-choice situations. We generalize two closely related solution concepts for these games, the stable sets and the core. A relationship between stable sets and minimal winning coalitions is established. Two generalizations of the core for multi-criteria simple games are characterized in terms of veto players. In addition, extended multi-criteria simple games obtained from different aggregation operations, such as union, intersection, marginalization, and composition, are introduced. It is shown that a voting system can be established when these operations are applied to complex voting systems.     

Public Versus Private Job Satisfaction. Is there a Trade-off between Wages and Stability?

Public Organization Review - This paper examines the differences in job satisfaction in the public and private sector using the Spanish Survey of Life Quality at Work throughout the period...     

A mixture model for the detection of Neosporosis without a gold standard

Neosporosis is a bovine disease caused by the parasite Neospora caninum. It is not yet sufficiently studied, and it is supposed to cause an important number of abortions. Its clinical symptoms do not yet allow the reliable identification of infected animals. Its study and treatment would improve if a test based on antibody counts were available. Knowing the distribution functions of observed counts of uninfected and infected cows would allow the determination of a cutoff value. These distributions cannot be estimated directly. This paper deals with the indirect estimation of these distributions based on a data set consisting of the antibody counts for some 200 pairs of cows and their calves. The desired distributions are estimated through a mixture model based on simple assumptions that describe the relationship between each cow and its calf. The model then allows the estimation of the cutoff value and of the error probabilities.     

A Multidimensional Approach to Measuring Quality of Employment (QoE) Deprivation in Six Central American Countries

This paper proposes a methodology for measuring Quality of Employment (QoE) deprivation from a multidimensional perspective in six Central American countries (Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Panama) using a dataset specifically designed to measure employment conditions. Building on previous work on multidimensional poverty and employment indicators, the paper uses the Alkire/Foster (AF) method to construct a synthetic indicator of the QoE at an individual level. It selects four dimensions that must be considered as essential to QoE deprivation: income, job stability, job security and employment conditions. These dimensions then subdivide into several indicators, a threshold for each indicator and dimension is established before defining an overall cut-off line that allows for the calculation of composite levels of deprivation. The results generated by this indicator show that Central American countries can be divided into three distinct and robust performance groups in terms of their QoE deprivation. Overall, approximately 60% of the deprivation levels are attributable to non-income variables, such as occupational status and job tenure. The methodology used can allow policymakers to identify and focus on the most vulnerable workers in a labour market and highlights the fact that having a formal written contract is no guarantee of good job quality, particularly in the case of women.

     

Indigenous perspectives for strengthening social responses to global environmental changes: A response to the social work grand challenge on environmental change

ABSTRACT

The “Grand Challenges for Social Work,” is a call to action for innovative responses to society’s most pressing social problems. In this article, we respond to the “Grand Challenge” of Creating Social Responses to a Changing Environment from our perspective as Indigenous scholars. Over the last several decades, diminishing natural resources, pollution, over-consumption, and the exploitation of the natural environment have led to climate change events that disproportionately affect Indigenous peoples. We present how environmental changes impact Indigenous peoples and suggest culturally relevant responses for working with Indigenous communities. We propose a decolonizing cyclical, iterative process grounded in Indigenous Ways of Knowing.     

Minority parents’ coping efforts to improve their children’s academic achievement: the Tanodas in Hungary

ABSTRACT

Our paper is based on a study carried out among students of Hungarian tanodas – second chance educational institutions in Hungary – and their parents. The findings of the interview research did not support deficit models and suggest that schooling is a vital issue for both Roma/Gypsy families and their children. All families have limited resources and opportunities to achieve desired goals, and despite their strong intent and determination, they often seem to lack a clear vision of the steps to be taken. Our results show that children have to cope with negligence, stigmatization, exclusion, discrimination, etc. Turning to tanodas for help has become a sort of coping strategy in and of itself. We could identify, as common parental strategies, the ‘squeezing out’ of the maximum available scarce opportunities, building on social networks, and monitoring their children’s studies. Students’ coping mechanisms regarding identity-threats were more varied and ranged from confrontation via proxy control and social support, to disengaging from school and taking on a negative identity or, the opposite, taking up positive roles.