Führungsstile – Evaluation einer Nebenaufgabe im Development Center

To asses six different leadership styles we employed a questionnaire during the development center in a manufacturing firm. Analysing the questionnaire indicates its reliability, scalability, economy, usefulness and fairness. An explorative factor analysis supports the factorial validity. A content analysis provides evidence that the transformational leadership style is perceived as the most positive and the authoritarian leadership style as the most negative one. Furthermore, we found transformational leadership style positively correlated with an aggregated measure for the competence extraversion.     

Trend effects on perceived avalanche hazard

Hazard-level forecasts constitute an important risk mitigation tool to reduce loss of economic values and human life. Avalanche forecasts represent an example of this. As for many other domains, avalanche risk is communicated using a color-coded, categorical risk scale aimed at informing the public about past, current, and future risk. We report the results from three experiments in which we tested if an irrelevant past trend in forecasted avalanche danger affects perceptions of current and future avalanche risk. Our sample consisted of individuals from three different populations targeted by national avalanche warning services. All three experiments showed that the perception of avalanche risk is influenced by the trend, but that the effect is opposite for perceptions of current and expectations of future avalanche risk. While future avalanche risk is extrapolated in the same direction as the change from the previous day, we found that perceived current risk appears to be based on an average of past and current risk. These effects diminish when we provide participants with a scale indicating the exact level of avalanche danger. For most of our measurement instruments, however, the effects remain significant. These results imply that targeted populations may consider historic information more than was intended by the sender. As such, our results have implications for both avalanche warning services and risk communication in general.     

Nachhaltige Alltagsmobilit?t �� soziale Ungleichheiten und Milieus

Modern societies aremobile societies in a threefold aspect: socialmobility, international migrations and physical mobility (traffic). The article concentrates on the third, within sociological discourses more or less neglected aspect of mobility as physical mobility. From the perspective of sustainability and environment protection the production of greenhouse gases by individual motor car traffic is mostly debated resulting in reflections about alternative drive systems. In these debates social aspects of sustainable mobility are more or less neglected, partly as traditional mobility (system) research does not attach great importance to reflexive leeway. Based on recent studies the authors pick out two social aspects: unequal access to mobility systems as hardly any discussed aspect of social inequalities and the socio-cultural diversification alongside social milieus and lifestyles, which both are expressions and catalysts of (non-)sustainable forms of mobility.     

Severance Payments and Firm–specific Human Capital

What effect does employment protection through severance payments have on the behaviour of employed workers? We analyse this issue within a stochastic two–period framework where workers decide on human capital investments and find two competing effects: severance payments imply higher job security that fosters human capital formation. At the same time, a lay–off is perceived by the workers to be a weaker penalty if severance payments are provided. This incentive lowers their optimal amount of firm–specific investments. Which effect prevails on balance depends on the distribution of investment returns among firm and workers. For strong positive reactions, employment protection is also in the interests of the firm.     

A two-phase sampling scheme and πps designs

A two-phase approach for sampling with unequal inclusions probabilities and fixed sample size is presented. The expansion estimator using target inclusion probabilities is suggested for estimation of population parameters. As an alternative, the estimator for two-phase sampling can be used for estimation. Inclusion probabilities are shown to be asymptotically equivalent to the targeted inclusion probabilities. By means of simulation associated estimators are shown to work well with respect to bias and precision.     

Matched survival data in a co-twin control design

When using the co-twin control design for analysis of event times, one needs a model to address the possible within-pair association. One such model is the shared frailty model in which the random frailty variable creates the desired within-pair association. Standard inference for this model requires independence between the random effect and the covariates. We study how violations of this assumption affect inference for the regression coefficients and conclude that substantial bias may occur. We propose an alternative way of making inference for the regression parameters by using a fixed-effects models for survival in matched pairs. Fitting this model to data generated from the frailty model provides consistent and asymptotically normal estimates of regression coefficients, no matter whether the independence assumption is met.     

Support for democracy in cross-national perspective: The detrimental effect of economic inequality

Using survey data and national statistics on 35 modern democracies, this research explores the relationship between economic and political conditions and support for democracy. As expected from modernization theory, support for democracy tends to be highest in countries with a high level of economic development. More importantly, however, I contribute a new finding that income inequality matters much more. Specifically, citizens from countries with relatively low levels of income inequality tend to be more likely than others to support democracy. I also find that household income is positively related to support for democracy in most countries, though it tends to have its strongest effect if economic development is high and income inequality is low. Finally, even after taking into account the level of economic development in one's country, people from former Communist countries tend to have far less support for democracy than those from more established democracies.     

Eliciting Risk and Time Preferences

We design experiments to jointly elicit risk and time preferences for the adult Danish population. Since subjects are generally risk averse, we find that joint elicitation provides estimates of discount rates that are significantly lower than those found in previous studies and more in line with what would be considered as a priori reasonable rates. The statistical specification relies on a theoretical framework that involves a latent trade‐off between long‐run optimization and short‐run temptation. Estimation of this specification is undertaken using structural, maximum likelihood methods. Our main results based on exponential discounting are robust to alternative specifications such as hyperbolic discounting. These results have direct implications for attempts to elicit time preferences, as well as debates over the appropriate domain of the utility function when characterizing risk aversion and time consistency.     

“Do They Think I Am a Pack Rat?”

This case study presents details of the life of one older man who lived in seclusion and squalor, surrounded by hoarded possessions. This man was one participant of a focused ethnography of eight older adults who received home care. All participants in the original ethnography were identified by their community care coordinators as exhibiting hoarding behaviors. The case study presented here provides rich narrative and photographic detail in order to add strength to what has already been presented in previous research articles about compulsive acquisition. The narratives reveal examples of debilitating dysfunction, distress associated with decision making, broad acquisition of free things, compulsive buying, and ritualistic discarding. Quotes included in the case study stem from the original ethnography.