The frontline delivery of activation: workers’ preferences and their antecedents

This article intends to contribute to the increasing body of academic literature on the frontline delivery of activation policies. In line with the broader literature on frontline work, this literature focuses attention on frontline delivery practices and preferences and how these can be explained. Activation work is an interesting case in this context, because activation workers’ jobs designs vary considerably and workers have a diversity of educational backgrounds (including but not limited to social work) in the many countries that have implemented activation policies. This article looks at workers’ preferences rather than actual delivery practices. It analyses how job design and educational background are related to workers’ preferences concerning servicing clients, managing activation workers and spending time on various activation-related activities. Although the findings of the research that are presented in the article show that educational background and job design play only a modest role as antecedents of workers’ preferences, future research into this issue remains interesting. For it may help to increase our insights into the optimal match between what activation aims to achieve and how the provision of activation is organized on the one hand, and workers’ skills/qualifications and job design on the other hand.     

Differences between paid and unpaid social services for beneficiaries

In many Western welfare states, social work services that have traditionally been provided by paid employees are being replaced by family support, community support, informal networks, and volunteering. For the field of social work, it is relevant to know what it matters to beneficiaries whether services are provided by volunteers or by paid employees. The central question of this article is therefore as follows: What are the differences between unpaid and paid social services for beneficiaries? The article is based on literature review and focus groups. Our results suggest that beneficiaries do experience some differences regarding the advantages of volunteer services for beneficiaries that can be summarized in three propositions: (1) services provided by volunteers are more relational than are services provided by paid employees, and they are therefore perceived as more equal, flexible and sincere. (2) The effects of volunteer services for beneficiaries are not exclusively positive. (3) Although particular tasks may appear to be interchangeable to some extent, the relative advantages of a given task depend upon whether it is performed by a paid worker or by a volunteer. Additional research is needed in order to provide further validation.     

“I am a fat baby,who moved to a fat child,who moved to a fat teenager,who moved to a fat adult”: Women’s reflections of a lifetime of body and weight concern

The present study explored how women aged 50–65 years reflect and make meaning of a lifetime of body and weight struggles. Seven purposefully selected women with longstanding body image challenges participated in interviews and reflected on their perceptions, thoughts, and emotions around their body and weight since childhood. Findings revealed consistent and consuming concerns about the body; prevalent body-related self-conscious emotions; influential social experiences that impact physical self-perceptions; and enduring impacts of weight bias, stigma, and discrimination. Collectively, these findings provide support for the stability of body disturbances and highlight the need to explore the unique body-related narratives of women in midlife.     

Gambling Patterns and Problems of Gamblers on Licensed and Unlicensed Sites in France

In 2010 France enacted a law to regulate supply and consumption of online gambling. Its primary aim was to protect citizens from gambling-related harm. This study aims to assess differences in gambling patterns and related harm between online gamblers who use licensed versus unlicensed sites. Participants (N = 3860) completed a self-administered online survey on gambling practices. Pairwise logistic regressions examined the association between the legal statuses of gambling sites people patronized and demographic variables and gambling types. Multivariate logistic regression models explored associations between gambling patterns and related problems according to the legal status of sites people have gambled on. Overall, 53.7 % of online gamblers report gambling exclusively on licensed sites. Those who bet on regulated activities on unlicensed sites, versus licensed sites, are more likely to be female, younger, less educated, inactive in the labor market and are more likely to perceive their financial situation to be difficult. Gambling on unlicensed sites is associated with more intense gambling patterns and more gambling-related problems compared to licensed sites. Findings demonstrate that gambling activities carried out on state licensed sites are associated with less overall harm to gamblers. Implications of these findings on future policy are discussed and prospective research directions are outlined.     

Der regulatorische Fokus als Führungsinstrument für eine bedürfnisorientierte und effektive Mitarbeiterkommunikation

Interaction with employees is essential for organizational leaders. If executives do not communicate well, important processes like giving feedback, setting goals or guiding change processes can nevertheless lead to resistance from subordinates when communication is received as more threatening than challenging. Conveying messages in ways that provoke challenge instead of threat appraisals can be achieved via employee-oriented communication, but this may require taking peoples’ differing motivational orientations into account. This is because motivational orientations partially determine what kind of information is motivating to us, which goals and strategies we prefer, and how we deal with changes. In this regard, Regulatory Focus Theory (Higgins 1997) compares the gain- and success-sensitive promoter with the loss- and failure-sensitive preventer. This article applies this theory to the organizational psychological context and outlines practical implications for managers. The goal of the piece is to provide managers a leadership tool that acknowledges the diversity of peoples’ motivational styles and by that revealing a need-oriented and more efficient way in communication with subordinates.     

Organizational issues that impact on non-use of equipment for individual protection: a view of ergonomics

The investigative focus of this paper is the issue of non-use of PPE (personal protective equipment) in a trading company of chilled and frozen food products. To conduct the study we have used an ergonomic work analysis that allowed us to highlight important organizational aspects that contribute to the non-use of such equipment. In conclusion, there are suggestions for minimizing problems.     

A Comparative Study of Segregation Patterns in Belgium,Denmark, the Netherlands and Sweden: Neighbourhood Concentration and Representation of Non-European Migrants

In this paper, we use geo-coded, individual-level register data on four European countries to compute comparative measures of segregation that are independent of existing geographical sub-divisions. The focus is on non-European migrants, for whom aggregates of egocentric neighbourhoods (with different population counts) are used to assess small-scale, medium-scale, and large-scale segregation patterns. At the smallest scale level, corresponding to neighbourhoods with 200 persons, patterns of over- and under-representation are strikingly similar. At larger-scale levels, Belgium stands out as having relatively strong over- and under-representation. More than 55% of the Belgian population lives in large-scale neighbourhoods with moderate under- or over-representation of non-European migrants. In the other countries, the corresponding figures are between 30 and 40%. Possible explanations for the variation across countries are differences in housing policies and refugee placement policies. Sweden has the largest and Denmark the smallest non-European migrant population, in relative terms. Thus, in both migrant-dense and native-born-dense areas, Swedish neighbourhoods have a higher concentration and Denmark a lower concentration of non-European migrants than the other countries. For large-scale, migrant-dense neighbourhoods, however, levels of concentration are similar in Belgium, the Netherlands, and Sweden. Thus, to the extent that such concentrations contribute to spatial inequalities, these countries are facing similar policy challenges.     

Childcare costs and the demand for children—evidence from a nationwide reform

Exploiting the exogenous variation in user fees caused by a Swedish childcare reform, we are able to identify the causal effect of childcare costs on fertility in a context in which childcare enrollment is almost universal, user fees are low, and labor force participation of mothers is very high. Anticipation of a reduction in childcare costs increased the number of first and higher-order births, but only seemed to affect the timing of second births. For families with many children we also find a marginally significant negative income effect on fertility.     

Patterns of Informal Help and Caregiving in Sweden: A Thirteen-Year Perspective

This article analyses informal help and caregiving in Sweden with a focus on the scope and trends of change over time. The discussion is based on the results of three national surveys and of one survey conducted in the county of Stockholm. The results indicated that informal help and caregiving was common throughout the period under study. In the 1990s, the figures were fairly stable, while from the late 1990s to 2005 there seems to have been a dramatic increase in the prevalence of such support. Two interpretative perspectives are used to discuss this pattern. One locates its point of departure in recent welfare state changes and in the substitution argument, according to which cuts in welfare services put more pressure on people to provide informal help and care. The second perspective relates to the present debate on civil society and to its possible role in contemporary society. According to the civil society perspective, an increase in the prevalence of informal help and caregiving might be interpreted as an expression of growing civic involvement 'in its own right', without a straightforward and simple relationship to changes in the welfare state. It is argued in the article that the two frames of interpretation should not be viewed as mutually exclusive, but rather that they represent two partly complementary approaches to the understanding of the complex dynamics of unpaid work in contemporary Swedish society.