Aktuelle Publikationen

Purpose


The purpose of this paper is to explore the perception of the work-family interface in an expatriation context. Furthermore, potential antecedents of work-family enrichment and work-family conflict in the work as well as in the family domain are identified and potential gender differences in perceptions sought.



Design/methodology/approach


An exploratory approach was adopted. The authors conducted in-depth interviews with 15 expatriates and repatriates that were analysed using content analysis.



Findings


Work-to-family conflict was perceived as a time-based conflict, whereas family-to-work conflict was perceived as an energy-based conflict. Work-family enrichment (i.e. work-to-family; family-to-work) was perceived as a transfer of skills and mood. Furthermore, at least in an expatriation context, the work-family interface is reflected in more reciprocal influences than are currently presented in existing concepts. In total, four potential antecedents of work-family interaction were identified: social support at work; development opportunities at work; family social support; and family adjustment. Finally, gender differences in the perception of the work-family interface could be revealed.



Research limitations/implications


First, the interviews were analysed solely by one person; consequently, inter-rater-reliability could not be tested. Second, a direct relationship between each potential antecedent and work-family interaction can only be hypothesized.



Practical implications


The findings enable companies to implement support strategies that foster a positive interaction between the work and the family domain which, in turn, will enhance expatriation success.



Originality/value


The study provides one of the first exploratory examinations of the perception of the complete work-family interface in an expatriation context. Furthermore, this is one of the few studies that include female and male international assignees in the sample and therefore can give a balanced perspective of the work-family interface among male and female assignees.

Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen lassen bisher keinen eindeutigen Zusammenhang zwischen „Mixed Leadership“ und Unternehmenserfolg erkennen.

Little is known about political polarization in German public opinion. This article offers an issue-based perspective and explores trends of opinion polarization in Germany. Public opinion polarization is conceptualized and measured as alignment of attitudes. Data from the German General Social Survey (1980 to 2010) comprise attitudes towards manifold issues, which are classified into several dimensions. This study estimates multilevel models that reveal general and issue- as well as dimension-specific levels and trends in attitude alignment for both the whole German population and sub-groups. It finds that public opinion polarization has decreased over the last three decades in Germany. In particular, highly educated and more politically interested people have become less polarized over time. However, polarization seems to have increased in attitudes regarding gender issues. These findings provide interesting contrasts to existing research on the American public.

The majority of conflict event datasets rely on media reports as their sole source of information. Because of the various difficulties associated with media reports, it is useful to compare conflict events based on them with those obtained from other observers. A paper published in 2010 by O’Loughlin and colleagues makes a first attempt to do this by using (1) a media-based event dataset and (2) military records on Afghanistan. While the authors conclude that the level of agreement between the two datasets is high, my results show that this goes away once we aggregate to finer analytical resolutions – those that are typically used in micro-level conflict analyses. Thus, rather than giving us the ‘all-clear’ for the accuracy and quality of media-based conflict data, my results once again point to the importance of robustness tests in quantitative conflict research, but also to the need to study the discrepancies in different reporting mechanisms to find out what they can and what they cannot tell us.

Der demografische Wandel ist eine der großen Herausforderungen, insbesondere für Organisationen der öffentlichen Hand. Schon heute sind sie mit einem stark steigenden Durchschnittsalter ihrer Belegschaften konfrontiert, das eine zuverlässige Dienstleistungserstellung in Zukunft in Frage stellt, da sowohl die körperliche Konstitution, die Motivation als auch die Qualifikation in einer alternden Belegschaft rückläufig sein können. Zur Bewältigung dieser Herausforderung ist eine Professionalisierung des Personalmanagements in den öffentlichen Verwaltungen unerlässlich. Dieser Beitrag stellt deshalb dar, wie ein strategisches Personalmanagement in den Bereichen präventives Gesundheitsmanagement, Personalentwicklung, lebenslanges Lernen und einen lebensphasenorientiertes Karrieremanagement zum erfolgreichen Umgang mit dem demografischen Wandel in der öffentlichen Verwaltung gestaltet werden kann.

Web surveys are generally connected with low response rates. Common suggestions in textbooks on Web survey research highlight the importance of the welcome screen in encouraging respondents to take part. The importance of this screen has been empirically proven in research, showing that most respondents breakoff at the welcome screen. However, there has been little research on the effect of the design of this screen on the level of the breakoff rate. In a study conducted at the University of Konstanz, three experimental treatments were added to a survey of the first-year student population (2,629 students) to assess the impact of different design features of this screen on the breakoff rates. The methodological experiments included varying the background color of the welcome screen, varying the promised task duration on this first screen, and varying the length of the information provided on the welcome screen explaining the privacy rights of the respondents. The analyses show that the longer stated length and the more attention given to explaining privacy rights on the welcome screen, the fewer respondents started and completed the survey. However, the use of a different background color does not result in the expected significant difference.

This article deals with recent developments of atypical employment in Germany, its present extent and current patterns. In its introductory remarks it differentiates between standard employment and atypical forms. It then describes the development and structures, enabling an analysis of the long-term consequences. It goes on to introduce a crucial distinction between atypical and precarious employment on the basis of explicitly defined criteria. The article ends by presenting certain explanations to a large extent missing in existing research.

In the literature, there is broad agreement on the relevance of visitor’s cognitive and emotional reaction to a theatrical performance. However, research on the relative importance of visitor’s response for their overall subjective evaluation of a visit to the theater is rare. Addressing this research gap, this article investigates the relative impact of visitor’s cognitive, emotional, and conative response to a performance for their overall subjective evaluation of a visit to the theater. A study of 2,795 visitors viewing 44 performances in 12 German-speaking theaters reveals visitor’s emotional (i.e., involvement and empathy), cognitive (i.e., complexity), and conative (i.e., thought-provoking impulses, animation for communication) responses to a performance as significant determinants of their overall evaluation of a visit to the theater.

Containing the spreading of crime is a major challenge for society. Yet, since thousands of years, no effective strategy has been found to overcome crime. To the contrary, empirical evidence shows that crime is recurrent, a fact that is not captured well by rational choice theories of crime. According to these, strong enough punishment should prevent crime from happening. To gain a better understanding of the relationship between crime and punishment, we consider that the latter requires prior discovery of illicit behavior and study a spatial version of the inspection game. Simulations reveal the spontaneous emergence of cyclic dominance between “criminals”, “inspectors”, and “ordinary people” as a consequence of spatial interactions. Such cycles dominate the evolutionary process, in particular when the temptation to commit crime or the cost of inspection are low or moderate. Yet, there are also critical parameter values beyond which cycles cease to exist and the population is dominated either by a stable mixture of criminals and inspectors or one of these two strategies alone. Both continuous and discontinuous phase transitions to different final states are possible, indicating that successful strategies to contain crime can be very much counter-intuitive and complex. Our results demonstrate that spatial interactions are crucial for the evolutionary outcome of the inspection game, and they also reveal why criminal behavior is likely to be recurrent rather than evolving towards an equilibrium with monotonous parameter dependencies.

Local communities such as villages are commonly assumed to be vital partners in counterinsurgency and post-conflict reconstruction. However, the success of all policies based on this assumption depends on the level of social cohesion at the community level: communities with internal cleavages and fissures will be less effective in making external efforts a success. In this article, we study how exposure to violence during civil war affects the internal cohesion of a community. On the one hand, we could assume that exposure to a common threat strengthens social ties. On the other hand, shifting power structures in conflict regions could introduce new loyalties and cleavages at the village level, thus eroding a community’s social glue. We use data from a survey conducted in northern Afghanistan and combine it with the data on violent events from military records. Our results provide evidence for the second mechanism: exposure to violence causes villagers to diverge in their support for conflicting parties. We estimate a spatial–temporal gravity model, where spatially and temporally proximate events have the highest impact on this divergence at the village level.

dc.title:

Background


Civil wars are characterized by intense forms of violence, such as torture, maiming and rape. Political scientists suggest that this form of political violence is fostered through the provision of particular intrinsic and extrinsic rewards to combatants. In the field of psychology, the perpetration of this kind of cruelty is observed to be positively linked to appetitive aggression. Over time, combatants start to enjoy the fights and even the perpetration of atrocities. In this study, we examine how receiving rewards (intrinsic versus extrinsic) influence the level of appetitive aggression exhibited by former combatants.


Method


We surveyed 95 former combatants in the eastern provinces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.


Results


Linear regression analyses reveal that intrinsic as well as extrinsic rewards are linked to the former combatants’ Appetitive Aggression score. However, this relationship is partly determined by the way in which combatants are recruited: While abducted combatants seem to react more strongly to extrinsic rewards, the score of those that joined voluntarily is primarily determined by intrinsic rewards.


Conclusions


We conclude that receiving rewards influence the level of appetitive aggression. However, which type of rewards (intrinsic versus extrinsic) is of most importance is determined by the way combatants are recruited.

dc.title:

How do we understand national climate change politics in the United States? Using a methodological innovation in network analysis, this paper analyzes discussions about the issue within the US Congress. Through this analysis, the ideological relationships among speakers providing Congressional testimony on the issue of climate change are mapped. For the first time, issue stances of actors are systematically aggregated in order to measure coalitions and consensus among political actors in American climate politics in a relational way. Our findings show how consensus formed around the economic implications of regulating greenhouse gases and the policy instrument that should do the regulating. The paper is separated into three sections. First, we review the ways scholars have looked at climate change policymaking in the United States, paying particular attention to those who have looked at the issue within the US Congress. Next, we present analysis of statements made during Congressional hearings on climate change over a four-year period. Our analysis demonstrates how a polarized ideological actor space in the 109th Congress transforms into a more consensual actor landscape in the 110th Congress, which is significantly less guided by partisan differences. This paper concludes by discussing how these findings help us understand shifting positions within American climate politics and the implications of these findings.