Aktuelle Publikationen

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dc.contributor.author: Lenschow, Andrea

Der demografische Wandel sorgt nicht nur für Schwierigkeiten in unseren Sozialsystemen, er lässt auch die Belegschaften altern. Eine Abkehr von der bisher verbreiteten Politik, ältere Mitarbeiter aus den Unternehmen zu drängen, ist daher unausweichlich. Neue Ansätze müssen die Potenziale der älteren Beschäftigten in den Mittelpunkt rücken. Diese können, wie neue wissenschaftliche Studien erwiesen haben, durchaus mit denen der jungen Mitarbeiter konkurrenzfähig sein, wenn auf altersspezifische Einschränkungen Rücksicht genommen wird. Die Autoren untersuchen die Auswirkungen des Alterns auf die Arbeitsleistung und zeigen anhand von zwei Praxisbeispielen, dass es einer neuen Unternehmenskultur bedarf, die auf die Bedürfnisse der Aging Workforce zugeschnitten ist.

The situation in Afghanistan is increasingly grave. Casualties continue and commanders warn of set backs ahead. German troops are in the least dangerous part of the country, yet the debate back home includes the option of a pullout. The difficult decisions may have a serious impact on NATO and the Atlantic alliance.

Models of ecological inference (EI) have to rely on crucial assumptions about the individual-level data-generating process, which cannot be tested because of the unavailability of these data. However, these assumptions may be violated by the unknown data and this may lead to serious bias of estimates and predictions. The amount of bias, however, cannot be assessed without information that is unavailable in typical applications of EI. We therefore construct a model that at least approximately accounts for the additional, nonsampling error that may result from possible bias incurred by an EI procedure, a model that builds on the Principle of Maximum Entropy. By means of a systematic simulation experiment, we examine the performance of prediction intervals based on this second-stage Maximum Entropy model. The results of this simulation study suggest that these prediction intervals are at least approximately correct if all possible configurations of the unknown data are taken into account. Finally, we apply our method to a real-world example, where we actually know the true values and are able to assess the performance of our method: the prediction of district-level percentages of split-ticket voting in the 1996 General Election of New Zealand. It turns out that in 95.5% of the New Zealand voting districts, the actual percentage of split-ticket votes lies inside the 95% prediction intervals constructed by our method.

This paper explores the factors that have influenced the effectiveness of Taiwanese American grassroots lobbies on Capitol Hill through a case study of the Formosan Association for Public Affairs (FAPA), a notable non-state actor that has been actively advancing Taiwanese interests in the United States since 1982. I undertake a comparative analysis of FAPA's five campaigns: its request to the Taiwan government to lift its blacklist policy, its urging of the U.S. government to allow Taiwanese Americans to state "Taiwan" as their place of birth on their U.S. passports, its promotion of Taiwan's participation in the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations, and its campaign in favor of the Taiwan Security Enhancement Act (TSEA) in 2000. The direct result of this analysis indicates that FAPA's success does not solely lie in its ability to find a champion in Congress, or to win the U.S. president's support. Equally important is the nature of the issues that FAPA campaigns bring up. If an issue resonates or is compatible with the preexisting collective identities and beliefs of the actors it affects, it is more likely to be pushed through in the legislature.

Usability criteria sum up cognitions and perceptions of professional methods and problem solutions such as quality assurance in health care. They are important for the dissemination and implementation of innovations and the effectivity and efficiency of systems. In order to extract such criteria in an explorative structured review, publications from five fields were examined: (a) quality assurance in health care, (b) health promotion and education, (c) psychological methodology, (d) evaluation studies, and (e) comparative policy assessment. One hundred thirty-eight English and German basic and applied research contributions were selected. Usability criteria and comments on their interference were extracted. The review provided a two-dimensional taxonomy of the concept of usability. The first dimension is defined by five functional aspects of quality assurance instruments: (1) easy and efficient handling, (2) scope of practical functions and options for usage, (3) completeness of information, (4) users' compliance and motivation, and (5) scientific quality of results and data. Between these usability areas some characteristic antagonisms are perceived. The second dimension is defined by four levels of increasing precision of professional cognitions: The usability area constitutes level 1. Each consists of several main criteria (level 2). Twenty-one main criteria of usability were found that were each specified by alternative sub-criteria (level 3) and their empirical indicators (level 4). This taxonomy offers an approach to the empirical exploration of users' expectations concerning quality assurance. It may contribute to the transparency of stakeholders' perspectives, to the preparation of consensus procedures in QA and to systematical comparison of quality assurance systems.

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As poor policies are blamed for dismal economic outcomes in many African countries and institutions and governance have assumed greater importance in explaining policy making, this article overviews a set of papers appearing in the current volume on ‘institutions, governance and economic development in Africa’. The following results emerge. First, while politically accountable governments can lead to improved economic outcomes, they are unlikely to adopt economically desirable policies that are unpopular with the populace. Unfortunately, such governments also tend to increase the risk of political disorder in Africa, which may in turn be growth-inhibiting. Thus, recent attempts by African countries to adopt more democratic governments may not lead to the expected improved growth and development outcomes unless successful attempts at minimising political disorder can be achieved. Second, the existence of ethnically based interest groups is likely to result in sub-optimal provision of public goods, which can be critical to the development process. Hence, the challenge of attenuating ethnic polarisation is a salient one. Third, as the Botswana case indicates, the ability to appropriately accommodate minority interests, coupled with the existence of external threats and natural resource endowments that foster the delineation of property rights, augers well for state building required for good governance, notwithstanding the existence of low population density.