„Ausschließlich zahlenorientiert, ausschließlich an Erträgen orientiert“. Vermarktlichung als Organisationsprinzip und Anerkennungsproblem

The paper discusses the marketization of organizations and focuses on its consequences for organization members. It broadens the current debate of the issue by adding the dimension of social recognition. Indeed, the pursuit of recognition mobilises highly qualified knowledge workers’ comprehensive commitment in specific ways. Based on a case study the paper shows how the interviewed managers pursue recognition in ambiguous ways, and that this pursuit leads them into a dual trap of both admiration and appreciation. Only as a result of the pursuit of recognition failing on both sides, a person’s pride in their craft is replaced by a hollow ethos of duty. In this perspective the “marketization of subjectivity” is not merely a mirror image of structural constraints, nor an outcome of semantics that conceptualizes the market sphere as an “anethic institution” (Weber).     

Supervision und Organisationsentwicklung in der Arbeit mit alten Menschen

Zusammenfassung  Der Zuwachs der ?lteren Bev?lkerung wie auch der für sie bereitgestellten Versorgungseinrichtungen stellt die in der Altenpflege T?tigen vor vielf?ltige und schwierige Aufgaben. Vor dem Hintergrund einer verbreiteten, unbewu?ten aversiven Konnotation des Alterns stellt die Autorin das Spektrum von fachspezifischen Schwierigkeiten in der Supervisionsarbeit dar. Es wird aufgezeigt, dass feldspezifische Anforderungen im Umgang mit ?lteren in den Supervisionsprozess mit einzubeziehen sind und in weitere Schritte der Organisationsentwicklung münden k?nnen.

---

The increased numbers of elderly and old people within our society as well as the growing number of institutional facilities for their support confronts those who work with them with manifold and difficult problems. Considering the background of a widespread, mostly unconscious negative connotation of age and ageing the author presents the spectrum of specific difficulties related to the specialised field of supervising work. It is shown that field-specific requirements in the relation with elderly have to be included and recognized in the supervising process and can lead to further organizational developments.

---

---

Dr. phil. Gabriele Junkers ist Psychoanalytikerin und Lehranalytikerin (DPV/IPA), Generalsekret?rin der Europ?ischen Psychoanalytischen F?deration (EPF) Gerontologin. Supervision und Organisationsberatung.     

The prediction of learning in family therapy training programs*

Research on family therapy training has produced very little data regarding the kinds of trainees that do best in family therapy training programs. This study attempts to provide some rough and preliminary data on that issue. One hundred and seventy trainees, drawn from seven different structural!strategic training experiences, were evaluated as to how much they learned by taking the Family Therapy Assessment Exercise pre- and posttraining. Their performance was correlated using a hierarchical regression analysis with a number of trainee variables such as amount of conjugal family experience, amount of experience doing family or individual therapy, or prior knowledge of family therapy. The results indicate that, as predicted, conjugal family experience was positively related, and prior knowledge was negatively related to performance. Prior experience doing individual therapy was also positively related to performance.     

Does the Mortality of Individuals with Severe Disabilities Contribute to the Persistent East–West Mortality Gap Among German Men?

European Journal of Population - After three decades since reunification male life expectancy in East Germany still lags behind that of West Germany. Unlike most of the prior studies focusing on...     

Transparency tested: The influence of message features on public perceptions of organizational transparency

The concept of transparency has been promoted within the public relations and business literature as both ethical and advantageous; however, the effectiveness of transparency is seldom empirically put to the test. In particular, the use of clarity, disclosure, and accuracy in organizational messages needs to be empirically examined. To this end, we conducted an online experiment using a 2 (high vs. low message transparency) x 2 (news story placed before or after an organizational statement) between-subjects design. Participants (n?=?357) perceived organizations as more transparent and credible when exposed to messages exhibiting greater levels of clarity, disclosure, and accuracy as opposed to messages that did not. Placement of an information anchor in the form of an objective news story before the organizational message increased the perceived organizational transparency when messages employed transparent design features and decreased the perceived organizational transparency when messages did not use these features. These results provide significant implications for practitioners attempting to convey organizational transparency at the tactical level through message features.     

Coming Out and Job Satisfaction: A Moderated Mediation Model

Prior research suggests that the disclosure of sexual identity at work is not always significantly associated with job satisfaction. The authors investigated (a) the mediating role of workplace heterosexist climate in linking workplace outness with job satisfaction, and (b) the moderating role of anticipated discrimination in influencing the indirect and direct relationship between workplace outness and job satisfaction. This model was tested among 1,460 lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) employees in Italy. Results indicated that workplace heterosexist climate mediated relationships between workplace outness and job satisfaction. Anticipated discrimination moderated the relationships between LGB employees’ disclosure of their sexual identity and job satisfaction and between workplace heterosexist climate and job satisfaction. This moderated mediation model may assist researchers who aim to understand the complexity of the relationship between workplace outness and job satisfaction. In this regard, practitioners need to recognize the role played by workplace heterosexist climate and anticipated discrimination.     

An Empirical Comparison of Estimating Methods for the Ramberg–Osgood EIV Model

The standard tensile test is one of the most frequent tools performed for the evaluation of mechanical properties of metals. An empirical model proposed by Ramberg and Osgood fits the tensile test data using a nonlinear model for the strain in terms of the stress. It is an Error-In-Variables (EIV) model because of the uncertainty affecting both strain and stress measurement instruments. The SIMEX, a simulation-based method for the estimation of model parameters, is powerful in order to reduce bias due to the measurement error in EIV models. The plan of this article is the following. In Sec. 2, we introduce the Ramberg–Osgood model and another reparametrization according to different assumptions on the independent variable. In Sec. 3, there is a summary of SIMEX method for the case at hand. Section 4 is a comparison between SIMEX and others estimating methods in order to highlight the peculiarities of the different approaches. In the last section, there are some concluding remarks.     

Effectiveness of an educational intervention to increase knowledge and reduce use of risky behaviors associated with cumulative trauma in office workers

OBJECTIVE: This pilot project assessed the effectiveness of an intervention to increase knowledge and reduce risky behaviors related to cumulative trauma disorders (CTD) in office workers. STUDY DESIGN: All 124 employees from the administrative offices of a health maintenance organization were invited to participate. Subjects were followed across time using an identification number. Data were collected via questionnaire in June 1994 (pretest1) (N=84), August 1994 (pretest II) (N= 63) and September 1995 (posttest) (N=40). The yearlong intervention focused on functional activities to prevent CTD. RESULTS: of chi-square analyses for the 40 subjects who completed all surveys indicated this intervention significantly increased overall knowledge of CTD (p =.002). Significant changes in self-reported hand/wrist (p =.016) and neck/shoulder (p =.003) posture were also found. CONCLUSIONS: This study is a first step in identifying effective educational interventions to increase knowledge and reduce risk factors related to CTD in office workers.