Beheimatungsprozesse begleiten — ein Werkstattbericht

Supporting processes of belonging in supervision and coachingThe contemporary employee has to cope with frequent changes. Not only does he lose his familiar environment, he also has to find ways to familiarize himself with new places and to develop a fresh sense of belonging. This process can be understood and facilitated by interpreting the German concept of “Heimat“ as something we have to create ourselves. First experiences demonstrate the usefulness of this approach in coaching processes.     

Expected sample moments of concomitants of selected order statistics

In this paper, the task of determining expected values of sample moments, where the sample members have been selected based on noisy information, is considered. This task is a recurring problem in the theory of evolution strategies. Exact expressions for expected values of sums of products of concomitants of selected order statistics are derived. Then, using Edgeworth and Cornish-Fisher approximations, explicit results that depend on coefficients that can be determined numerically are obtained. While the results are exact only for normal populations, it is shown experimentally that including skewness and kurtosis in the calculations can yield greatly improved results for other distributions.     

Foreign workers in Kuwait: implications for the Kuwaiti labor force

An analysis of the foreign population in Kuwait shows that foreign nationals make up 60 percent of the population and 78 percent of the labor force in Kuwait. The implications of these figures for the Kuwaiti labor force are discussed by analyzing the occupational structures of Kuwaitis and non-Kuwaitis. "Structural analysis of the labor force indicates that 62 percent of Kuwaiti males are concentrated in administrative and service occupations while their percentage in sales and production work has declined during 1970-80. This demonstrates the need for reorienting educational/training programs and changing Kuwaiti attitudes towards manual work to ensure the realization of the 'Kuwaitization' process, and balance the nationals with foreign nationals." mortality has stabilized at relatively high levels and there is resistance to family planning. The author concludes that the main cause of the stalling of the demographic transition process is to be found in the role of the state and the dynamics of the social structure and that "demographic trends will depend more on the changes in social structure, land reforms, and response of the formal governing system to the needs of the underprivileged sections of the society, rather than on the health and family planning policies."     

The relative economic progress of male foreign workers in Kuwait

"A human capital framework is utilized to examine the economic progress of nine nationality groups of foreign workers [in Kuwait] using data from the 1983 national Labor Survey. The sources of earnings' variations of particular interest to us included different degrees of education and experience transferability, occupational affiliation and ethnic background. In general, the results derived from the analysis suggest that 1) foreign workers achieve a discernible economic progress as their residence lengthens; 2) the rate of economic progress varies depending on worker's education, home and Kuwait-specific experience, occupational status and ethnic background; and 3) about one third of the earnings inequality is due to unexplained factors including discrimination."     

Emigration dynamics from and within South Asia

This review of current knowledge about emigration dynamics from and within South Asia (Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka) opens with a brief history of the three phases of emigration from the area since the 1830s (plantation labor; postindependence to the UK, US, Canada, and Australia; and labor migration to the oil-exporting countries). The influence of the creation of Pakistan and Bangladesh is also covered as are British colonial and commonwealth policies. It is noted that migration data are incomplete and that India exhibits an ambivalence about collecting such information. The discussion then turns to emigration since 1970 and considers permanent migration from South Asia to the traditional receivers; South Asian asylum seekers in Europe; South Asian refugees, illegal migrants, migrant workers (flows and destinations), the stock of contract migrant workers (and their characteristics); returnee migrant workers; and skill levels. Analysis is provided of macro level determinants of emigrations such as gross national product (level and growth), the general demographic and social situation, labor force growth and structure, poverty and inequality, and internal and international migration. Environmental factors causing displacement in Southern Asia include floods, cyclones, river bank erosion, drought, and desertification. Global warming could displace millions of people in the region, and development projects have contributed to displacement. The remainder of the report covers political and ethnic factors, micro-factors influencing migration decision-making, the policies of sending and receiving countries, the consequences of emigration, and the potential for migration in the future.     

Going to Pieces: Paul Monette and the Fragments of the Tribe

Author of the highly acclaimed Borrowed Time: An AIDS Memoir (1988) and winner of the 1992 National Book Award for his autobiography Becoming a Man: Half a Life Story, Paul Monette died of complications from AIDS in Los Angeles on February 12, 1995. His most recent work, Last Watch of the Night: Essays Too Personal and Otherwise (1994), is his third volume in a trilogy of autobiographical writing on growing up gay, coming-out, and living with AIDS. A graduate of Phillips Academy and Yale University, Monette received a number of awards for his writing and his work as an outspoken voice in the battle against AIDS, including the National Book Award, three Lambda Literary awards, the PEN Center West Freedom to Write Award, and three honorary doctorate degrees, from Wesleyan University, the City University of New York, and the State University of New York at Oswego. A memorial service was held for Monette on Sunday, February 19, 1995, at the Directors Guild of America on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles. Paul Monette was 49.     

Sensitivity of the Optimum to Perturbations of the Profit or Weight of an Item in the Binary Knapsack Problem

In the binary single constraint Knapsack Problem, denoted KP, we are given a knapsack of fixed capacity c and a set of n items. Each item j, j = 1,...,n, has an associated size or weight w_j and a profit p_j. The goal is to determine whether or not item j, j = 1,...,n, should be included in the knapsack. The objective is to maximize the total profit without exceeding the capacity c of the knapsack. In this paper, we study the sensitivity of the optimum of the KP to perturbations of either the profit or the weight of an item. We give approximate and exact interval limits for both cases (profit and weight) and propose several polynomial time algorithms able to reach these interval limits. The performance of the proposed algorithms are evaluated on a large number of problem instances.     

Buchbesprechungen

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Dual Career Couples als eine Variante von Work-Life-Integration

Dual Career Couples as a form of work-life-integrationThe author discusses the situation of dual career couples, when both are university graduates following an own career. Basing on a respective publication she delineates the current, mostly American research and reports on several German research projects, which endeavour to analyse the relation between gender and inequality in dual career couples.     

Von der Supervision zur Mediation und zurück

From supervision to mediation and vice versaMediation in organizations becomes more and more important because of increasing conflicts. The question is, which competencies of the counsellor are necessary, and above all, whether mediation is a particular method. The author explains the method of mediation and illustrates his concept of “patchwork-mediation”. This procedure allows to build a bridge between supervision and mediation.