Arbeitslos oder erwerbsunfähig?

An international comparison of unemployment rates suggests a poor performance of the German labour market. Based on comparative analyses for Germany, the Netherlands, France, Denmark, the UK and the United States the paper tries to show that a more sophisticated picture can be drawn by taking additional forms of non-employment (e.g. disability, retirement or out of labour force) into account. For this purpose data from the “European Social Survey” (ESS) and the survey “Citizenship, Involvement and Democracy” collected in 2004 and 2005 is analysed. While “unemployment” plays a dominant role in Germany, people with comparable demographic characteristics and similar health status are increasingly classified as “permanently disabled” in the other countries. The results stress that an international comparison of labour market performance and especially a comparison of the effectiveness of labour market and social policy reforms should not only rely on employment and unemployment rates. Taking alternative forms of non-employment into account can increase our knowledge and understanding of functional differences of labour markets in Europe and the United States.     

Arbeitslosigkeit und ehrenamtliche Tätigkeit im Zeitverlauf

Starting point of the article is the discussion about possibilities to defuse the crisis on the German labor market by supporting volunteer work. Therefore, the effects of unemployment on the probability to volunteer are of special interest. For this purpose, logistic regressions are estimated for the years 1992 and 1996, using longitudinal data from the West German sub-sample of the German Socioeconomic-Panel (GSOEP). There is no evidence for an increasing propensity of take up or maintain volunteer work among the unemployed. In contrast, it is shown that the chance to volunteer especially in creases with a higher educational degree or if the person lives in ?secure’ family circumstances. On the ?volunteer market’ similar qualifications are in demand, which also support a successful participation in the regular labour market. Therefore, the hope an assumed in dividually higher willingness to volunteer among the unemployed may contribute to cope with the general labour market crisis turns out to be misleading. Especially low-educated persons, being a problem group on the labour market, do not look at volunteering as an adequate activity for themselves.     

Führungspositionen im Ehrenamt – ein weiterer Bereich der Benachteiligung von Frauen?Management Positions in Volunteering – Another Field of Discrimination of Women?

Based on data of the 2009 German Volunteer Survey (“Freiwilligensurvey”) the paper analyses whether there is evidence for a discrimination of women in filling management positions in the volunteer sector. It turns out that women have a significant lower propensity to take up an unpaid volunteer management position. This correlation is also robust when we control for self-selection bias as well as certain important socio-demographic, socio-economic and volunteer-specific determinants. Further on we can show that this kind of gender-specific discrimination can be found particularly in leisure-time clubs and religious organisations. These results indicate that structural and organisational parameters play an important role to explain gender specific differences in filling volunteer management positions.     

Die individuellen Erträge ehrenamtlicher Arbeit

In the recent debate on the future of voluntary work and honorary appointments the question of the individual benefits of volunteering is of special interest. In a dynamic perspective it is obvious that an unpaid voluntary activity has to be regarded as work because of the individual’s expectation to yield a personal gain. Combining a sociological and a micro-economical perspective, volunteering is shown to be part of the production process within the private household. Volunteers gain returns by reducing transaction costs and by deriving benefits from economies of scale and economies of scope.     

Perceptions of Job Security in Europe’s Ageing Workforce

Using data from the 2004 Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe, this paper investigates older workers’ perceptions of job security in eleven countries. We describe cross-national patterns and estimate multilevel models to analyse individual and societal determinants of self-perceived job security in the older labour force. While there are considerable cross-country variations around a median value of 23% of workers aged 50 or older ranking their job security as poor, none of our suggested macro-level explanatory variables—employment rate, employment protection legislation, mean level of general social trust, and proportion disapproving of working beyond age 70—bears statistically significant associations with individuals’ job security. We find some indication, however, that the various societal factors considered here might contribute jointly to explaining the observed cross-national variation. Future research should aim at identifying statistically more powerful indicators of the supposed multilevel relationship between social context and older workers’ perceptions of job security. Moreover, supplementary findings indicate that further attention should be paid to the gender dimension of job insecurity.     

Achtsamkeit in den Grundschulen einer ganzen Stadt fördern – ein NRW-Landesmodellprojekt

Mindfulness-based interventions have been shown internationally to strengthen health promoting ressources in adults and children. Based on these findings, the Northrhine Westphalia state-funded reference project “Health, Integration and Concentration—Mindfulness in Primary Schools” designs and evaluates mindfulness-based 20-hour-interventinons within the primary school system of the town Solingen. First all 21 school principals were addressed and then the teams of teachers in each school. Based on these experiences interventions with the children were then developed together with and implimented by the teachers.In this paper the interventions are scetched out and first qualitative results on different systemic levels within the schools. Of particular interest are possible links between individual developments in attitude, self regulation and behavior, styles of communication and interaction among colleagues and with the children as well as developments in school organisation and culture towards mindful schools. Finally the paper summarizes dos and don’ts for similar projects.     

Korrekter Verrat

The spirit and purpose of coaching is amongst others to create a space for new ideas, for the unthought and to support coachees in their efforts to be effective with transformational impulses. Therefore coaches and coachees need to uncage themselves from given conventions and rules. Sometimes this even means to risk a betrayal, a consciously committed breach of trust. This article presents some exemplary coaching scenes, treats the question of the legitimacy of violation of rules in organizations. And finally it addresses the concept of a virtuous betrayal in coaching.