Analysis of breeding bird communities along an urban-rural gradient in Berlin,Germany, by Hasse Diagram Technique

Breeding bird communities in Berlin were investigated at five study sites, which represent an structural urban-rural gradient, from densely built-up areas with sealed ground to green areas such as large parks. In this paper, we tested the Hasse Diagram Technique (HDT), an approach belonging to partial order theory, for its appropriateness to extract information about changes in species composition from our data set. As expected, the overall number of bird species was positively correlated with the urban-rural gradient, increasing from 12 found in the city center to 28 in an urban park. By HDT analysis, four different sub-groups of birds could be identified, contributing differentially to the increase in species number: (1) ubiquists, i.e., species found at each study site, (2) a sub-group, the species’ number of which was positively correlated with the urban-rural gradient, increasing with increasingly green areas, (3) a sub-group, the species’ number of which was negatively correlated with the urban-rural gradient, decreasing with a declining density of buildings, and (4) species, the distribution of which did not show any correlation with the urban-rural gradient. The results show that HDT is a suitable tool for formalized analysis of the pattern of species’ communities along an environmental gradient.     

Spaces of Participation in Pre‐School: Arenas for Establishing Power Orders?

This article reports an ethnographic study of pre‐school children's social knowledge domains. Results show how the children's shared knowledge concerning social status and social differentiation in the group was strengthened and confirmed during a traditional teacher‐led ring game, where they were supposed to choose a friend. We suggest that from the perspective of the children, the game situation may be understood as, at the same time, a space of participation and an arena for establishing the power order. From the perspective of the teacher, pedagogical intentions may be challenged as they encounter and are mediated and interpreted by children's peer‐cultures.     

Einsatz von Simulationspatienten im Kommunikations- und Interaktionstraining für Medizinerinnen und Mediziner (Medi-KIT): Bedarfsanalyse — Training — Perspektiven

Communication skills are of central importance within daily medical life providing effective treatment. In the modern high-tech field of medicine, trustful conversations play a prominent role. In order to help students of the Heidelberg Medical Faculty to be ready for their highly responsible role as communication partner, training is carried out in the framework of HeiCuMed (short for Heidelberger Curriculum Medicinale) using specially trained simulation patients. The communication and interaction training program (referred to as Medi-KIT) enables to practice conducting conversations with challenging communication partners and grave conversational content in difficult situations. Feedback from the standardized patients, as well as from peers and tutors represents a central didactic element.In order to secure knowledge transfer into daily clinic life and as well to build a relation to cognitive knowledge transfer, all medical students are assigned, alongside Medi-KIT lessons, to a ward, and training units are coordinated in terms of content to correspond with symptom-oriented lectures and parallel POL-groups (problem-oriented learning groups). In addition, communication learning objectives are examined at the end of the semester in the form of a clinical practical exam (OSCE: Objective Structured Clinical Examination) and at patient’s bedside (Mini-CEX: Mini Clinical Examination). The goal in imparting communication skills within medical education is that the longitudinal communication curriculum be maintained and continued in subsequent medical specialization studies.     

Comment “On the role of data,statistics and decisions in a pandemic” by Jahn et al.

AStA Advances in Statistical Analysis - We comment the paper by Jahn et al. (On the role of data, statistics and decisions in a pandemic, 2022).     

Politics and Power within Multinational Corporations: Mainstream Studies,Emerging Critical Approaches and Suggestions for Future Research

Given the increased public interest in the use and misuse of power in multinationals in the aftermath of the financial crisis, it is notable that power relations in multinational corporations (MNCs) have not gained enhanced attention in the academic community. What is missing so far in the study of MNCs is a systematic examination of how power and politics within MNCs have been addressed in mainstream international business (IB) and sociological research studying the MNC. This paper starts by critically reviewing these two mainstream approaches in the study of MNCs as organizations and seeking to understand the shortcomings of former research. Next, it reviews new emergent critical perspectives, which the authors call socio‐political studies of MNCs, where power and politics are addressed not just more prominently, but also differently, from a more bottom‐up and actor‐centred perspective. After reviewing this emergent stream of research, the authors propose that future studies should take a more micro‐political perspective and focus in more detail on the micro‐foundations of power relations. In the concluding section, the authors show how future studies of MNCs can learn from both critical interactionist and discursive theories when analysing organizational politics and power relations. A framework is proposed for the study of micro‐level political game‐playing in MNCs, based on a three‐dimensional framework for organizational power (episodic, rules of the game and domination), and some key research questions for future studies are suggested.     

Smart Devices in Organisationen – Von Regelungen für die Allgegenwärtigkeit von computergestützter Kommunikation

Mobile communication devices like smart phones are keystones for improving efficiency, compacting and subjectifying work. They dissolve boundaries in multiple ways and influence organization of work alike exhaustion and recreation. Legal regulations are not implemented in organizations or do not fit. Organizations find it difficult even to find rules, because there are many contradictions. Nevertheless, it is for organizations in both competition concerns as issues of workplace health promotion advisable to conduct clarification processes to availability times. Consulting can support negotiation processes.     

School-level policies and the efficiency and equity trade-off in education

This paper identifies the relationship between pupils’ Family Background, their mathematics scores, and school-level policies, using the 2012 Programme of International Student Assessment for Italy and multilevel modelling. School-level policies have played a leading role in recent school reforms in many countries, but there is no straightforward empirical evidence for how they affect pupils’ outcomes and the equality of educational outcomes. Our findings show that that only some school policies intensify the Family Background Effect – (educational equity) and affect student outcomes (educational efficiency) simultaneously. We find that competitive schools are able to screen students by selecting higher socio-economic status parents, which mainly harms equity without having much effect on efficiency. There are some policies which allow some trade-off between aforementioned objectives, mainly policies related to management schools.     

Effects of Leadership Style,Creativity Technique and Personal Initiative on Employee Creativity

Transformational leadership is assumed to enhance employees' creativity. However, results of meta‐analytic research on the relations between transformational leadership and creativity have fallen short of expectations. The authors argue that, besides leadership style, the creativity technique that a leader employs is an important means of stimulating employees' creativity. In addition, it is assumed that leadership styles and creativity techniques may have different effects, depending on the measure of creativity output (quantitative vs qualitative). Therefore, in an experimental setting, the effects of different creativity techniques (provocation technique vs brainwriting) and leadership styles (transformational vs transactional) on both quantitative and qualitative creativity were examined. Results showed that transformational leadership and provocation technique led to higher levels of qualitative creativity than transactional leadership and brainwriting, respectively. Conversely, transactional leadership and brainwriting were more effective for quantitative creativity. The additional benefit of the provocation technique in qualitative creativity was found to be higher in the transactional leadership condition than in the transformational leadership condition. Moreover, personal initiative made a significant and independent contribution to both qualitative and quantitative creativity. Implications for practice and future research are discussed.     

Strukturelle Kränkungen als Thema im Coaching

In this article hurts in the workplace are discussed, which are not aggressions of one person against another person. Rather they are effects of structural conditions in organizations or effects of legal processes in societies. The author presents three case studies with examples of such hurts and she postulates, that the Coach has to reflect political conditions in his work.