„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).     

Banks winners in tournaments are difficult to recognize

Given a tournament T, a Banks winner of T is the top vertex of any maximal (with respect to inclusion) transitive subtournament of T. In this technical note, we show that the problem of deciding whether some fixed vertex v is a Banks winner for T is NP-complete. Received: 22 February 2002/Accepted: 20 June 2002 Supported by the START program Y43-MAT of the Austrian Ministry of Science. I would like to thank two thank the referees for a careful reading of the paper, for helpful remarks, and for many suggestions how to improve the presentation.     

The gambling market in the Federal Republic of Germany and the helpseeking of pathological gamblers

The development of the gambling market in the Federal Republic of Germany since the middle of the seventies and data on pathological gamblers seeking help are described. The continuously increasing supply, together with increases in turnover, was followed-with some temporal delay-by an increase in the number of gamblers who sought advice and treatment. Preliminary measures taken by the health authorities as well as some consequences of pathological gambling are discussed.This article is a translation of a German article published in: Deutsche Hauptstelle gegen die Suchtgefahren (1990): Jahrbuch '91 zur Frage der Suchtgefahren. Hamburg: Neuland-Verlag.     

Self-generated fertility waves in a non-linear continuous overlapping generations model

In this paper, Samuelson's simplified version of the Easterlin theory (Samuelson 1976) is extended to a continuous-time model with three age groups. This approach enables one to apply the qualitative theory of non-linear differential equations to show the existence of Easterlin-type cycles. In contrast to the discrete time model we obtain information about the period length of the cycle.This research was supported by the Austrian Science Foundation under grant P6601.     

Coaching als Instrument zur Aufrechterhaltung der Machtstellung von Männern in Organisationen

The author discusses the question why the counseling format coaching was able to achieve such a dominant position in the market compared with other formats like supervision or organizational counseling. A point of view specific to power-and gender-related issues and the sociological concept of hegemonial masculinity (Connell) form the starting point to explore this question. Due to its origin from the field of competitive sport and based on its objective target as an instrument for human resources development (Schreyögg) the counseling format coaching serves values and role models typically attributed to men (successful, winner, potent) in an ideal way. Therefore it nourishes established models of hegemonial masculinity in organizations thus contributing to consolidate and safeguard the position of power of men, when it is used in an unreflective modality. With this in mind coaching acts in particular through segregation and as a place to reinsure masculine role models.     

GM Foods and the Misperception of Risk Perception

Public opposition to genetically modified (GM) food and crops is widely interpreted as the result of the public's misperception of the risks. With scientific assessment pointing to no unique risks from GM crops and foods, a strategy of accurate risk communication from trusted sources has been advocated. This is based on the assumption that the benefits of GM crops and foods are self-evident. Informed by the interpretation of some qualitative interviews with lay people, we use data from the Eurobarometer survey on biotechnology to explore the hypothesis that it is not so much the perception of risks as the absence of benefits that is the basis of the widespread rejection of GM foods and crops by the European public. Some respondents perceive both risks and benefits, and may be trading off these attributes along the lines of a rational choice model. However, for others, one attribute-benefit-appears to dominate their judgments: the lexicographic heuristic. For these respondents, their perception of risk is of limited importance in the formation of attitudes toward GM food and crops. The implication is that the absence of perceived benefits from GM foods and crops calls into question the relevance of risk communication strategies for bringing about change in public opinion.