Inquiry

The following interview with Dr. Les Roberts, Director of Health Policy at The International Rescue Committee (IRC), was conducted in May 2002. Previously, Dr. Roberts worked for WHO during the Rwandan Civil War of 1994 and at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, both in the Refugee Health Unit and at the National Center for Environmental Health.     

Who Reads Catholic Newspapers? Exploring Readership in a Changing Industry

Newspapers published by Roman Catholic dioceses represent a large and unexplored part of the religious publishing industry. This study attempts to shed light on the challenges these publications face by examining the readership of a diocesan newspaper in a large Catholic diocese in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. Based on a comprehensive survey of 24,278 Roman Catholic households from 27 parishes throughout the diocese, this study finds a large gap in readership and engagement between older and younger readers, raising important strategic and pastoral questions for the newspaper in the years to come.     

A fistful of euros: Is the German one‐euro job workfare scheme effective for participants?

Hohmeyer K, Wolff J. A fistful of euros: is the German one‐euro job workfare scheme effective for participants? Welfare reforms have constituted a major policy issue in many OECD countries in recent decades. In Germany, a major reform in 2005 emphasised the activation of welfare recipients and introduced a workfare programme –‘One‐Euro Jobs’– on a large scale. In the present study, the impact of one‐euro jobs on the employment prospects of different groups of participants was estimated. The analysis was conducted on a large sample of welfare recipients using propensity score matching. The sample of one‐euro job participants and other welfare recipients was drawn from administrative records comprising all those who started their participation in the programme in early 2005. Our results showed that participation slightly improved the medium‐term employment prospects for women but not for men. Participation reduced the employment rate of participants younger than 25 years but raised it for some of the older participant groups. In conclusion, one‐euro jobs are effective for participants who have been jobless for several years but ineffective for participants who were recently employed.     

What innovation managers really do: a multiple-case investigation into the informal role profiles of innovation managers

Over the last fifteen years companies tended to formalise their innovation management activities and to establish formal jobs like the innovation officer, the network manager or the innovation manager. Knowledge of the informal role profiles of these formal roles is still rare. HR and R&D Managers do not know which informal role profile might suit them best, thus having difficulties to assign the best candidates for jobs in innovation management. Researchers cannot help to resolve the problem. Our research answers the question what innovation managers really do, by analysing their tasks, skills and traits, theoretically based on informal role theories. Furthermore, we will analyse how these characteristics change with company size. To provide answers to our research questions we choose a multiple-case study approach. We found, among others, that innovation managers fulfil the role of the relationship and process promotor or a combination of both with the champion, but we also found, that the innovation manager’s roles profile becomes fuzzier with shrinking company size. Our results have practical implications for top management and also HR and R&D managers, enabling them to better select and steer employees in innovation management. Researchers will be able to build on our results because we offer a comprehensive understanding of the informal role profiles of innovation managers based on informal role theories.     

Konfundierte Ergebnisse durch ein zu stark beschränktes Design?

Recently C. Czymara and A. Schmidt-Catran published in this journal (KZfSS 2016 (2)) a factorial Survey-Experiment to contribute to the current debate on the inflow of refugees in Germany. The authors concluded from their Survey-Experiment that in particular highly qualified immigrants who show little culture distance should get accepted in Germany, while for instance Muslim immigrants would be more strongly rejected. In this comment it is argued that authors’ results probably suffered from a strong confounder bias. The employed experimental design also allows for a lot of alternative interpretations. Therefore, readers of the original article or further users of the data should be more cautious when interpreting the results.     

Gespensterdebatte oder was ist soziologische Aufklärung?

We reply to the critical comments of Richard Münch and the author group Jansen, Heidler and von Goetz on our article “Emergence of an Academic Elite? The Impact of Universities’ Size and Reputation on Research Funding” published in this journal. After reviewing some other sociologists’ statements on Münch’s thesis about the academic elite we reinforce the gain of our empirical analyses of hypotheses of the sociology of science in general, on the Matthew-Effect, and on trends to a possible cartelization and monopolization in the German science system. The main critic of unsuited data (we used applications for single grants submitted to the German Research Foundation) does not adequately consider the postulated scope of the investigated theses and our analyses do not aim at a general evaluation of the “Initative of Excellence”.     

The Moral Economy of Intergenerational Redistribution in an Ageing Society: A Qualitative Analysis of Young Adults' Beliefs in the United States

In the USA, the largest generation, the Baby Boomers, is currently retiring and increasingly drawing from Old Age Social Security. In this context, young generations are said to be disadvantaged: they have to support a growing number of pensioners while expecting much lower pensions themselves. Drawing on 14 original semi‐structured interviews with young US citizens aged 20–36, this study analyzes the moral economy of intergenerational redistribution – defined as normative beliefs and justifications of a just distribution of contributions and benefits between generations. The qualitative content analysis resorts to the four constituent institutional principles of intergenerational redistribution: deservingness (being qualified to receive support), reciprocity (mutual support between generations), equity (relation between in‐ and outputs for one generation) and equality (corresponding conditions for different generations). The first main finding is that the young hold multiple normative beliefs in favour of intergenerational redistribution. The second main finding is that different normative beliefs and justifications can compensate for feelings of injustice attributable to the consequences of an ageing society. The qualitative findings' contributions to the field of study that is dominated by quantitative studies are concluded. Implications for public support for intergenerational redistribution in the ageing society of the USA and other countries are discussed.     

Visibly ageing femininities: women’s visual discourses of being over-40 and over-50 on Instagram

Abstract

This article explores visual discourses about over-40 and over-50 femininities that emerge from women’s own Instagram accounts. It analyses women’s visual and textual rhetoric of what over-40 and over-50 looks like, and whether it could interrupt the ageist, sexist, and body-normative discourses of female ageing and visibility. Intertextual visual discourse analysis of images, captions, and hashtags reveals two dominant themes (fitness and fashion) and two repeating rhetorical elements (motherhood and self-sufficiency) through which women make themselves visible as over-40/50. A few explicitly subversive discourses (i.e., over-40 fatshion account) exist, but a discourse of a healthy, fit, fashionable, independent, self-sufficient, and happy mother over-40/50 is prevalent. It easily lends itself to being interpreted as an insidious reproduction of post-feminist ideology, but I argue that there are moments of critique and subversion within. Thus, a reparative reading that acknowledges moments of disconnect from the discourse that normalizes ageing women’s limited or non-existent visibility is offered.     

Beratungsforschung mit,für oder ohne die Praxis?

This article deals with the extent to which consulting research and consulting practice are pulling in the same direction or whether the gap between them still seems insurmountable. Therefore we examine the literature on consulting research, report what kind of research coaching practitioners would consider beneficial and introduce first findings from an empirical survey in which coaching practitioners were asked about their motivation for—or against—taking part in coaching research.