Was heißt kommunikative Kompetenz im Spannungsfeld von Ost nach West?

What does communicative competence mean concerning the tension between East and West Germans? Although East and West Germany have been formaly reunified and ten years have passed the existence of different cultures cannot be denied. Trompenaars dimensions offer the possibility to make an intercultural comparison of the two cultures. I have chosen firm-cultures, individualism versus collectivism and specific versus diffuse culture. I also compare my experience as a West German lawyer in an East German administration with the results. The awareness and identification of these differences are important for more genuine recognition and acceptance of East and West Germans.     

Evidence for the use of an algorithm in resolving inconsistent and missing Indigenous status in administrative data collections

Measures of the gap in living standards, life expectancy, education, health and employment between Indigenous and non‐Indigenous Australians are primarily derived from administrative data sources. However, Indigenous identification in these data sources is affected by administrative practices, missing data, inconsistency, and error. As these factors have changed over time, assessing whether the gap between Indigenous and non‐Indigenous Australians has changed over time, based on data unadjusted for these sources of error can potentially lead to misguided conclusions. Combining administrative data on the same individuals collected from different sources provides a method by which a more consistent derived Indigenous status can be applied across all records for an individual within a linked data environment. We used the Western Australian Data Linkage system to produce derived Indigenous statuses for individuals using a range of algorithms. We found that these algorithms reduced the amount of missing data and improved within‐individual consistency. Based on these findings, we recommend our Multi‐Stage Median algorithm be used as the standard indicator of Indigenous status for any reporting based on administrative datasets when multiple datasets are available for linkage, and that algorithmic approaches also be considered for improving the quality of other demographic variables from administrative data sources.     

Immigrant students and their teachers – exploring various constellations of acculturation orientations and their impact on school adjustment

ABSTRACT

The present study examined what impact various constellations of acculturation orientations of immigrant students and their teachers have on the students’ school adjustment. For this purpose, the study analysed the acculturation orientations of 1106 5th graders and their class teachers in Switzerland. Using multiple regression analysis, we found that immigrant students were more satisfied at school if their teachers had similar attitudes about cultural assimilation and cultural diversity and could, thus, be said to have congruent acculturation orientations. With respect to students’ academic self-concept, immigrant students with a minority orientation whose teachers value cultural diversity including the heritage culture of their students showed a lower academic self-concept despite matching acculturation orientations. We interpret this result as a dilemma of teachers between the endeavour to develop culturally sensitive attitudes and behaviours and the risk to create stereotype threat and its negative effects through addressing cultural differences. Furthermore, a mismatch between the students’ (bi-)national identification at school and the teacher’s perception of the student as an immigrant or a native-born student could be shown to have adverse effects on the academic self-concept in the group of students with older teachers (50+ years).     

Coaching von Führungskräften aus Expertenorganisationen

In this text, the particularities of the situation of executives in expert organizations are discussed. Then four cases are described, in which (1) the problems that bring leaders from expert organizations into coaching are illustrated, (2) the respective coaching interventions are described and (3) the key concepts that were in the coaching helpful are summarized. Finally, some thoughts what is in executive coaching from expert organizations useful are discussed.     

Zur Gestaltung des Verhältnisses von Erwerbsarbeit und Privatleben in den ‚Creative Industries‘

The “creative industries” are considered to be a model of the future world of work and “pioneers” of new forms of earning and new forms of “work and life”. On the basis of an empirical study of the creative industries sub-sector (architecture, advertising, design, film, IT services and multimedia etc.), the contribution is concerned with the effects of changed demands of employment on the relationship between work and life. The focus is on the temporal de-limitation of employment conditions in the form of flexibilisation of the place and length of working hours as well as on the spatial de-limitation in the form of changing places of work and increasing demands for mobility. We raise the question of whether workers in this field are just coping with the changes in work or whether they are developing their own, active strategies to redefine the boundaries of work and to find a new work-life balance.