Re‐framing the Analysis: A 3‐dimensional Perspective of Prisoners’ Children's Well‐being

This article highlights three dimensions to understanding children's well‐being during and after parental imprisonment which have not been fully explored in current research. A consideration of ‘time’ reveals the importance of children's past experiences and their anticipated futures. A focus on ‘space’ highlights the impact of new or altered environmental dynamics. A study of ‘agency’ illuminates how children cope within structural, material and social confines which intensify vulnerability and dependency. This integrated perspective reveals important differences in individual children's experiences and commonalities in broader systemic and social constraints on prisoners’ children. The paper analyses data from a prospective longitudinal study of 35 prisoners’ children during and after their (step) father's imprisonment to illustrate the arguments.     

Liminality in Management and Organization Studies: Process,Position and Place

This paper explores liminality, a concept receiving increased attention in management and organization studies and gaining prominence because of its capacity to capture the interstitial and temporary elements of organizing and work. The authors present a systematic review of the literature on liminality, covering 61 published papers, and undertake a critical analysis of how the concept of liminality has been used in prior research. This review reveals associations with three main themes: process; position; and place. For each theme, the authors identify the central research questions posed, while comparing individual and collective levels of analysis. During this process, the authors revisit several ideas central to the original, anthropological research on liminality, a perspective from which they suggest a rejuvenation of liminality research in management and organization studies. This paper argues for a greater focus on the liminal experience itself – especially its ritual and temporal dimensions – and for improving the comparative analysis of liminality following the three themes identified in this paper. The authors suggest that revising the agenda for liminality research along these lines could facilitate more informed responses to the challenges of an increasingly temporary and dynamic work life.     

Professional blinders? The novel as an eye-opener in organizational analysis

ABSTRACT

Scholarly textbooks often follow a logic where suitable empirical cases are selected to illustrate the theoretical and analytical points that we as scholars want to make. But what would happen if we would do the opposite: build a textbook on a novel written by a novelist for such purpose and let the theories explain the actions and emotions of fictional characters? In this article, we share and reflect upon our experiences of co-authoring a textbook in organization theory together with a professional novelist. We argue that the novel can function as an eye-opener in organizational analysis, forcing us to look beyond more static and rationalistic perspectives on organizations as well as the stereotypes of such. We build and relate our experiences to the growing literature about using fiction in scholarly work and discuss the potential of such genre-bending work when we bring in flesh and blood into the analyses.     

Anmerkungen zur Publikation „Möglichkeiten und Probleme des Einsatzes postalischer Befragungen“ von Karl-Heinz Reuband in der Kzfss 2001, 2, S. 307–333

Reuband’s article purports to report empirical results that seem to contradict the widely held view of mail surveys. This assertion is made possible only by an unclear statement of hypotheses and a selective perception of the literature. The data analysis is based on techniques from the 1960s and 1970s; modern methods are not even mentioned. Although all the results reported in the article are based on local surveys conducted by a university institute, these are generalized to national surveys in general. The main points of this critique are methodological: careless literature review, lack of concrete hypotheses, inefficient data analysis and generalizations without empirical foundation.     

Determinanten regelkonformen Verhaltens am beispiel des Strassenverkehrs

The main role of traffic police enforcement can be seen as preventing road users from committing offences, which can be related to road crashes and injuries. As the operating principle underlying the impact of police enforcement a deterrence effect has been discussed repeatedly, whereas from a sociological perspective the importance of “Norm Internalisation” has been emphasised. Thus, the present paper aims at comparing the influence of “Norm Internalisation” and the variables constituting the deterrence effect on the compliance with rules in road traffic. Based on a secondary analysis of data from a project on behavioural determinants of police surveillance carried out by the “Institute of Applied Transport and Tourism Research” (IVT) on behalf of the Federal Highway Research Institute (BASt) an operationalisation of the construct “General Norm Orientation” is developed. In several subsequent steps of statistical analysis patterns of correlations with variables from Opp’s “Theory of Law Obedience” are revealed. Results show a sufficiently high internal consistency (α = 0,82) of the scale “General Norm Orientation” and significant correlations with variables from Opp’s theory. The directions of these correlations are as expected and confirmed by multivariate analyses. Results are discussed with respect to their implications for influencing road users’ behaviours.     

Politics and Scientific Expertise: Scientists, Risk Perception, and Nuclear Waste Policy

To study the homogeneity and influences on scientists'perspectives of environmental risks, we have examined similarities and differences in risk perceptions, particularly regarding nuclear wastes, and policy preferences among 1011 scientists and engineers. We found significant differences ( p 0.05)in the patterns of beliefs among scientists from different fields of research. In contrast to physicists, chemists, and engineers, life scientists tend to: (a)perceive the greatest risks from nuclear energy and nuclear waste management; (b)perceive higher levels of overall environmental risk; (c)strongly oppose imposing risks on unconsenting individuals; and (d)prefer stronger requirements for environmental management. On some issues related to priorities among public problems and calls for government action, there are significant variations among life scientists or physical scientists. We also found that–independently of field of research–perceptions of risk and its correlates are significantly associated with the type of institution in which the scientist is employed. Scientists in universities or state and local governments tend to see the risks of nuclear energy and wastes as greater than scientists who work as business consultants, for federal organizations, or for private research laboratories. Significant differences also are found in priority given to environmental risks, the perceived proximity of environmental disaster, willingness to impose risks on an unconsenting population, and the necessity of accepting risks and sacrifices.     

Beate Krais (Hg.): An der Spitze. Von Eliten und herrschenden Klassen

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Nichts genaues weiss man nicht!?

What do voters really know about party platforms and how do they perceive the contents? Are there any relationships between party election platforms and electoral behavior? Despite of much research on parties, there are hardly any answers to these questions. If political parties devise programmes in order to influence political attitudes or electoral behavior, it will be necessary that these programmes are read by people. But it seems to be unclear if and how people do so. This article shows clearly that voters don’t know much about party manifestoes. Still, programmes are more important for voters than many people believe. Programmes are also an important factor for electoral behavior. But there is still a lack of data to get evident results.