Technologies in caregiving: professionals’ strategies for engaging with new technology

This article explores the adoption of new technology in organisations that provide senior citizen care. Inspired by Niklas Luhmann’s systems theory, we study how technology reduces complexity by identifying client needs and ensuring predictability in service delivery. However, how technologies are adopted in practice is not determined by technology since it is also structured by care-workers' continuous decision-making. Against this backdrop, we explore how technologies alter the conditions for decision-making in two settings of elderly care, and we describe how care workers seek to adapt technologies to their practical needs as well as conception of care ethics. Developing a systems theory approach, the article eschews a priori assumptions of technological constraint on care-workers’ professional autonomy, offering a more open-ended exploration of diversified strategies for coping with new technology. Our case studies show that employees develop diversified strategies for technology adoption, including both non-usage, heated resistance, excessive embrace, and creative adaption.     

Corporate smart phones: professionals' conscious engagement in escalating work connectivity

This article explores how the adoption of company sponsored smart phones inflicts upon the lives of professionals. Drawing upon qualitative interviews at a law firm in Brazil, the experiences of new smart phone users are reported upon in detail. Increased accessibility, accuracy and speed in exchanges gave the users a sense of autonomy and flexibility. However, the technology also helped to intensify the organisation's hold on employees outside of regular working hours, reaching into new settings, time slots and social contexts. Employees expressed concerns regarding demands from superiors that negatively affected their private spheres, yet many of them paradoxically requested more efficient smart phone connectivity. The article focuses on the justifications, the different narrative strategies, employed by professionals for their conscious engagement in escalating work connectivity. It is suggested that these justifications display users' attempt to ‘dis‐identify’ with the role and practice they perform.     

Are directors’ dealings informative? Evidence from European stock markets

Are directors’ dealings reports informative for outside investors? We analyze short-term announcement effects for 2782 companies from eight European countries between January 2003 and December 2009. We find significant announcement effects in four out of eight countries after directors’ dealings reports have been disclosed. For most countries, the magnitude of the announcement effect depends on transaction size, firm size, book-to-market ratio, and multiple trades by different insiders on the same trading day. The results are stronger for purchases than for sales. For France, Ireland, and Sweden, we find tentative evidence that the corporate position of an insider is connected to the size of the announcement effect.     

The ‘Human’ Touch

Abstract

This article critically discusses the almost mythical conception of voluntary and ‘grass-roots’ organizations as problem solvers in current welfare policy – a myth, which over the last twenty years has become increasingly dominant in social policy programmes in advanced liberal welfare states. In particular, the article examines the assumption that voluntary and local organizations are permeated by a different rationality that enables human beings to act as ‘real humans’ rather than as professionals and clients – a rationality which is, however, permanently at risk of being contaminated by bureaucratic influence. It is demonstrated that among the conditions of possibility for this discourse are explanatory models and concepts in modern organizational theory and in voluntary sector studies. The article argues that the conceptualizations of power, rationality and social change dominant in these studies are unsatisfactory. Instead, it applies a Foucauldian approach to the domain of drug addiction treatment, analysing a social work ‘regime’ that transgresses the traditional boundaries between state and voluntary sector.     

Total factor productivity growth in Central and Eastern Europe before,during and after the global financial crisis

This article presents growth accounting results for 11 EU countries from Central and Eastern Europe for the years 1996–2016. Its contributions include the estimation of new capital stock series and adjustment for the utilisation of capital stock. Before the crisis, growth in total factor productivity (TFP) was the main contributor to output growth in Slovenia, Hungary and Slovakia, while capital deepening was more important in the Czech Republic, Croatia and Poland. During the global financial crisis the contributions of TFP and capital growth differed markedly across the countries, reflecting the very diverse dynamics of the crisis. After the crisis the contribution of TFP growth has been negligible in all of the sample countries coinciding with generally weak output growth. The results are generally robust to changes in estimation methods and parametrisations, but some assumptions regarding the construction of the capital stock series are critical for the results.     

Group Aggregation Techniques for Analytic Hierarchy Process and Analytic Network Process: A Comparative Analysis

The analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and the analytic network process are important multiple criteria decision making methods for supporting complex, discrete strategic management decision problems. In order to exploit a broader information basis as well as to achieve a sufficient degree of objectivity strategic decision settings are mostly embedded into a multi-personal decision context to which different individuals with expert status contribute. Owing to the fact that there is a vast number of different methods and further internal possibilities (derivation of means) to aggregate the individual expert preferences to a group consensus, the first aim of this paper is to present a comprehensive literature review on various aggregation possibilities. The second aim is the conduction of a transparent comparative analysis of selected approaches and methods (geometric/arithmetic aggregation of individual judgments, geometric/arithmetic aggregation of individual priorities, geometric/arithmetic loss function approach and Group AHP model). Therefore, we use four different evaluation scenarios and point out under which assumptions which solution is suitable. Starting from these results, the aggregation techniques adequate to a specific decision context are provided.     

Integration erneuerbarer Energien in die deutsche Stromversorgung im Zeitraum 2015�C2020 mit Ausblick auf 2025

The dena grid study II examines the integration of renewable energies into Germany??s electricity supply up to the year 2020 and gives a qualified outlook up to 2025. The study develops geographically differentiated scenarios for installed wind power capacity, on the basis of which time series of the wind power feed-in into high and extra high voltage nodes and offshore wind farms are generated. Future requirements for the transmission grid and grid extension options are analysed. Opportunities to introduce more flexibility in the power system in terms of supply and demand are examined. The study gives a conceptual perspective of the need for grid extension in inner Germany in order to fully integrate renewable energies, whilst operating power stations at optimum cost and exchanging electricity with other countries in response to market demands within the scope of the specified transmission capacities.     

Training and research in Switzerland

The Institute of Tourism and Transport Economy at the St Gall Graduate School of Economics, Law, Business and Public Administration, University of St Gallen, Switzerland.