Qualitätsmanagement in Netzwerken der Integrierten Gesundheitsversorgung

Quality management in networks of the Integrated health care. Theory and practiceSelf evaluation is one of the most important sources for the quality management in ambulatory care of integrated health care systems. The quality testing of the survey instrument itself is of outstanding importance, since only a high quality instrument is able to supply high quality data, which can serve as a reliable base for improvement strategies. The paper shows the aspects of a quality management in organizational networks for integrated health care delivery systems. The technique allows the management and the single practioner on the one hand to identify the critical areas at a glance and on the other hand to focus — where necessary — on the single aspects in order to define detailed improvement actions.     

National Income and Income Inequality,Family Affluence and Life Satisfaction Among 13 year Old Boys and Girls: A Multilevel Study in 35 Countries

Adolescence is a critical period where many patterns of health and health behaviour are formed. The objective of this study was to investigate cross-national variation in the relationship between family affluence and adolescent life satisfaction, and the impact of national income and income inequality on this relationship. Data from the 2006 Health Behaviour in School-aged Children: WHO collaborative Study (N = 58,352 across 35 countries) were analysed using multilevel linear and logistic regression analyses for outcome measures life satisfaction score and binary high/low life satisfaction. National income and income inequality were associated with aggregated life satisfaction score and prevalence of high life satisfaction. Within-country socioeconomic inequalities in life satisfaction existed even after adjustment for family structure. This relationship was curvilinear and varied cross-nationally. Socioeconomic inequalities were greatest in poor countries and in countries with unequal income distribution. GDP (PPP US$) and Gini did not explain between country variance in socioeconomic inequalities in life satisfaction. The existence of, and variation in, within-country socioeconomic inequalities in adolescent life satisfaction highlights the importance of identifying and addressing mediating factors during this life stage.     

Authentic leadership and leaders' mental well-being: An experience sampling study

Research on authentic leadership has yielded important insights about its effects on subordinates. However, its consequences for the leaders themselves remain largely unexamined. This is problematic, as organizations require their leaders to provide guidance and leaders' mental well-being is a prerequisite for this. Drawing on the theories of ego-depletion and authentic leadership, we investigate the role of authentic leadership in predicting leaders' mental well-being. In an experience sampling study, we apply hierarchical linear modeling to analyze 396 observations from 44 executives. Our multilevel moderated mediation analyses reveal that authentic leadership reduces leaders' stress and increases their work engagement and that these effects are mediated by leader mental depletion. Moreover, we show that the indirect effects are contingent on the extent to which leaders interact with their subordinates: authentic leaders deplete less with increasing follower interaction, while inauthentic leaders deplete less with decreasing follower interaction.     

Scaling up to Increase Community-Based Organization Voice

This is a collaborative, community-based study of the merger of two Chicago community-organizing groups seeking to expand their geographic base and political power. Although the merger enabled the new organization to increase and use its power, this case also illustrates the various ways the merger presented opportunities for the new organization to maintain effectiveness at multiple scales while sustaining strong internal democracy and connections to local residents. By consolidating and leveraging new and old political relationships, and by maintaining or increasing the civic benefits of organizing, this merger provides important lessons for organizing in diverse community settings.     

Bonuszahlungen an Geschäftsführungen: Wodurch werden Gerechtigkeitsurteile von Erwerbstätigen beeinflusst?

Managerial compensation in large companies is subject to many critical concerns; this holds particularly for bonus payments. Empirical evidence shows that nearly three quarter of the German population perceive managers’ incomes as unfairly high. Based on an own survey, we examine what drives fairness perceptions of bonus payments for managers: When do employees assess bonus payments for managers within their own company as unfairly high? Under which conditions do they accept high bonus payments? The analyses show that acceptance decreases with the estimated amount of bonus paid. It increases, however, if aspects of procedural and distributive justice are taken into account.     

The characterization of Monte Carlo errors for the quantification of the value of forensic evidence

Recent developments in forensic science have lead to a proliferation of methods for quantifying the probative value of evidence by constructing a Bayes Factor that allows a decision-maker to select between the prosecution and defense models. Unfortunately, the analytical form of a Bayes Factor is often computationally intractable. A typical approach in statistics uses Monte Carlo integration to numerically approximate the marginal likelihoods composing the Bayes Factor. This article focuses on developing a generally applicable method for characterizing the numerical error associated with Monte Carlo integration techniques used in constructing the Bayes Factor. The derivation of an asymptotic Monte Carlo standard error (MCSE) for the Bayes Factor will be presented and its applicability to quantifying the value of evidence will be explored using a simulation-based example involving a benchmark data set. The simulation will also explore the effect of prior choice on the Bayes Factor approximations and corresponding MCSEs.     

Examination and visualisation of the simplifying assumption for vine copulas in three dimensions

Vine copulas are a highly flexible class of dependence models, which are based on the decomposition of the density into bivariate building blocks. For applications one usually makes the simplifying assumption that copulas of conditional distributions are independent of the variables on which they are conditioned. However this assumption has been criticised for being too restrictive. We examine both simplified and non‐simplified vine copulas in three dimensions and investigate conceptual differences. We show and compare contour surfaces of three‐dimensional vine copula models, which prove to be much more informative than the contour lines of the bivariate marginals. Our investigation shows that non‐simplified vine copulas can exhibit arbitrarily irregular shapes, whereas simplified vine copulas appear to be smooth extrapolations of their bivariate margins to three dimensions. In addition to a variety of constructed examples, we also investigate a three‐dimensional subset of the well‐known uranium data set and visually detect the fact that a non‐simplified vine copula is necessary to capture its complex dependence structure.     

Maximum expected entropy transformed Latin hypercube designs

Existing projection designs (e.g. maximum projection designs) attempt to achieve good space-filling properties in all projections. However, when using a Gaussian process (GP), model-based design criteria such as the entropy criterion is more appropriate. We employ the entropy criterion averaged over a set of projections, called expected entropy criterion (EEC), to generate projection designs. We show that maximum EEC designs are invariant to monotonic transformations of the response, i.e. they are optimal for a wide class of stochastic process models. We also demonstrate that transformation of each column of a Latin hypercube design (LHD) based on a monotonic function can substantially improve the EEC. Two types of input transformations are considered: a quantile function of a symmetric Beta distribution chosen to optimize the EEC, and a nonparametric transformation corresponding to the quantile function of a symmetric density chosen to optimize the EEC. Numerical studies show that the proposed transformations of the LHD are efficient and effective for building robust maximum EEC designs. These designs give projections with markedly higher entropies and lower maximum prediction variances (MPV''s) at the cost of small increases in average prediction variances (APV''s) compared to state-of-the-art space-filling designs over wide ranges of covariance parameter values.     

Globale organisation — globale manager — globale Klasse?

The globalization of business corporations led to the thesis that a so-called global management class would emerge, both integrating transnational companies and facilitating a global business culture which is able to turn cultural diversity into a competitive advantage. Two questions stem from this thesis: First, how do talents and high potentials in transnational companies become global managers? Second, is global management to be understood as an integrating culture or as a selective one in the context of transnational corporations? The article explores these questions by contrasting the theory of global management with empirical findings from research concerning the strategies of international management assignment and the forming of expatriates’ “mental memberships“. It is shown that global management rests on a ‘thin’ Ethos of economic rationalities which give way to an exclusive “business monoculture” challenging cultural diversity taking place in everyday-life of transnational organizations.     

Smuggled Sound: Bootleg Recording and the Pursuit of Popular Memory

This paper explores the meanings that bootleg recording holds in peoples’ lives. “Bootlegging” refers to the practice of making unauthorized recordings of live performances. Our paper is an interpretive analysis of interviews with bootleg producers and collectors. In their accounts, they suggest how their activities offer an extraordinary example of what it means to participate in contemporary popular culture. As bootleggers smuggle tape recorders into concerts, or trade tapes in underground networks, they pursue rare artifacts of popular culture. Their stories of bootleg taping, collecting and trading suggest an alternative to depictions of popular culture as merely a process of production and consumption. Instead, these accounts demonstrate how some people document their participation in mass cultural events on their own terms and for their own uses. Here, bootlegging is seen as an attempt by people to capture live performances, to collect them as a source of memory and authenticity, and to mediate the events of their lives through means of technological reproduction.