Public Multichannel Management – an Integrated Framework of Off- and Online Multichannel Government Services

Government institutions have introduced multichannel environments over time following trends and technological innovations. These public multichannel environments often neglect specific channel characteristics and potentials and thus miss the opportunity to make full use of a strategic channel integration and combination with a focus on customer value creation. This study offers a systematic approach to establish an integrated public multichannel system not only taking into account user preferences, habits and their environment, but also the respective channel issuer and the characteristics of channels and public interfaces. Against this background, the study presents a systematic approach to expand services and channels according to their capacities, and provides academics and practitioners with a framework on public multichannel strategies.     

Trans Bodies and the Failure of Mirrors

This project applies and expands Gallagher’s (2005) theories concerning body image and body schema to the concept of gender in general and in particular how understanding gender through this lens can be used to aid transgender people in understanding their own gender. In addition, the paper discusses the effects of gender-incongruent mirroring for transgender and gender nonconforming persons’ ability to know their own feelings and its role in the development of shame. In furthering the understanding of gender and self-knowledge, the concepts of tacit knowledge and phantom limbs reveal how one comes to know gender as a fundamental aspect of the self.     

The Construct of Mindfulness

After mindfulness is defined, a brief history of the research on the topic to date is reviewed. This work essentially falls into three categories: health, business, and education. Considerations of mindlessness as a social issue are then addressed. A brief introduction to the articles in this issue follows. These articles speak to mindfulness as it relates to potential solutions to social problems.     

Mindfulness Research and the Future

We consider some of the ways in which mindfulness theory can provide new solutions to current problems and address potential future problems that may result from changes in demographics and technology. Specific research questions are suggested to see how increasing mindfulness and decreasing mindlessnesscan work to diminish these social problems as they occur specifically in the classroom, the workplace, and the social predicament of getting old. We discuss (a) recasting some of the problems of the elderly into problems of perspective about the elderly, (b) mindful ways of dealing with increased ethnic diversity, (c) differentiating between changing the workplace work and changing the character of the work itself and (d) the advantages and ways of increasingmindfulness in the classroom.     

Decision settings analysis – a tool for analysis and design of human activity systems

The paper describes a methodology to be used for analysis and design of human activity systems. The methodology is based on an analysis of the decision settings whereas most other decision analysis methodologies are analysing the process. The decision concept is analysed and discussed. A distinction between programmed and programmable as well as non-programmed and non-programmable decisions is proposed. A classification of different information types for decision making is presented. A methodology based on a systemic and systematic analysis of the information requirements of an organization is proposed. This methodology also indicates organizational discrepancies and information imbalances. The methodology focuses the settings of the decisions on all levels of organizations. The methodology can be regarded as a dynamic, learning system. The author proposes further research on the individuals decision making abilities.     

DOES WHOM YOU KNOW MATTER? UNRAVELING THE INFLUENCE OF PEERS' NETWORK ATTRIBUTES ON ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE

This paper examines how students' network size, distance, prestige, and connections to influential individuals impact academic performance. Larger and closer networks facilitate information exchange, but may also increase distractions that decrease productivity. We resolve this ambiguity using administrative data from a business school that features random assignment of students to multiple overlapping sets of peers, allowing us to calculate degree, closeness, eigenvector, and Katz‐Bonacich centrality for each node. We find that increasing closeness centrality within the network negatively affects student performance measured by grade point average, suggesting that synergy reduction and information processing costs outweigh benefits from greater information access. (JEL I23, L14, L23)     

A Forecast Model for Unemployment by Education

ABSTRACT We present a dynamic forecast model for the labour market: demand for labour by education and the distribution of labour by education among industries are determined endogenously with overall demand by industry given exogenously. The model is derived from a simple behavioural equation based on a strong relationship between the “strength” in the struggle for jobs of an educational group, and the change in relative supply. This relationship proves to be significant in the data. Furthermore, when used to forecast employment by education on real data, the model predicts reasonably well even for educational groups, where the initial forecast year is a change point for unemployment.     

Counting Child Domestic Servants in Latin America

This paper summarizes trends in the use of child domestic servants in six Latin American countries using IPUMS-International census samples for 1960 to 2000. Child domestics are among the most vulnerable of child workers, and the most invisible. They may be treated kindly and allowed to attend school, or they may be secluded in their employers' home, overworked, verbally abused, beaten, and unable to leave or report their difficulties to kin. Estimates and imputations are based on labor force and relationship-to-head variables. We find that domestic service makes up a substantial fraction of girls' employment in some countries. We also analyze trends in live-in versus live-out status and school enrollment of child domestic servants. While all child workers are disadvantaged in enrollment relative to non-workers, domestics are sometimes better off than non-domestic workers. In some samples, live-ins are more likely to go to school than live-out child domestics. In others, they are substantially worse off.     

Conceptualising and Measuring Social Cohesion in Africa: Towards a Perceptions-Based Index

Social cohesion is a key concept in development studies. Weak social cohesion is often related to slow economic growth and (violent) conflict. So far few attempts have been made to measure this complex concept in a systematic manner. This paper introduces an innovative method to measure national-level social cohesion based on survey data from 19 African countries. We distinguish three dimensions of social cohesion; i.e. the extent of perceived inequalities, the level of societal trust, and the strength of people’s adherence to their national identity. Importantly, our Social Cohesion Index (SCI) is based on individuals’ perceptions vis-à-vis these three different dimensions of social cohesion rather than certain macro-level ‘objective’ indicators such as GDP/capita or Gini-coefficients. We develop two social cohesion indices: a national average SCI and a Social Cohesion Index Variance-Adjusted (SCIVA); the latter one takes into account the level of variation across different ethnic groups within countries. The SCI and SCIVA are computed for and compared across nineteen African countries for the period 2005–2012 on the basis of Afrobarometer survey rounds 3, 4 and 5. We also investigate quantitatively the relationship between countries’ levels of social cohesion and the occurrence of a range of conflict events. As expected, we find that countries with low levels of social cohesion in a particular year according to our SCI are more likely to experience a range of different violent conflict events in the subsequent year.