The myth of the service economy—An update

In this journal the myth of the advancing service economy was exposed already in 1977 by Jonathan Gershuny, “POST-INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY: The myth of the service economy”, Futures, April 1977. However, that lesson seems to be forgotten, because with the traditional production sector division in the national accounts, based on the nature of the work, the statistics of relative value added and employment continue to support the old myth.In this paper it is shown that from the point of view of final output use, the ratio of the total value of the output of material goods to the total value of the output of immaterial services is 63:37 in Sweden, and has remained the same for 30 years. This is nearly the reverse of what is officially maintained based on the growing proportion of work in the economy which can be characterized as “service work”. It is argued here that the conventional view obscures a main issue for the future of the welfare states. Sweden and several other similar countries have got far behindhand as regards the proportion of resources going into the provision of income-elastic services like health and education, which is just the opposite of the original main idea of the welfare state.     

Career orientations of software developers in a sample of high tech companies

The career orientations of software developers in 11 high technology companies of different sizes were studied. It was found that the proportion wanting a managerial career was higher than might be expected (34%) and increased with organisational size. Approximately 25% wanted advancement in a technical career, and this remained the same in organisations of different sizes. The same proportion wanted to start up their own company, but this decreased substantially with organisational size. The group wanting a project-based career was the smallest, at 15%, and this varied slightly with organisational size. The four groups showed differences in their ideal job characteristics, organisational versus technical orientation and expected tenure. The extent to which they actually expected to satisfy their career preference varied dramatically, with the great majority of managerially-oriented expecting to actually be managers, but the majority wanting to start their own company not expecting to actually do so. The small high technology company has become an important, almost mythical, component of popular and academic folklore. As Beyer says, the “prevailing wisdom from both lay people and researchers who have been around them says that these firms are somehow different” (Beyer, 1985, p. 483). Within such organisations, the software developer or computer hack has similarly developed a particular aura. As one commentator puts it, “the stereotyped image of the community of programmers is … of a collection of single-minded nerds possessing no interest in life outside the digital realm” (Sandberg-Diment, 1986, p.C3). In spite of the interest in both the nature of such companies and such employees, there has been very little empirical data collected (Turbin and Rosse, 1988, p.17) to substantiate the folklore. In particular there has been an almost complete absence of rigorous academic enquiry into what the individuals choosing to work in this type of company are really like, or what their work needs actually are. The present paper is aimed at filling some of this gap, by addressing the issue of what type of career path software developers in high tech companies want.     

European Agriculture after Brexit: Does Anyone Benefit from the Divorce?

The UK exited the EU on 31 January 2020, with a transition period agreed as part of the Withdrawal Agreement. During this transition period the UK and the EU will decide on their future trading relationship. No matter what form this relationship takes, there will be disturbances to agri‐food markets. This study analyses four different scenarios with increasing barriers to trade, ranging from a very close relationship similar to the European Economic Area to a distant relationship in which the UK and EU trade on Most Favoured Nation terms, using the EU focused global agricultural sector model CAPRI. In the UK, food prices will increase in all scenarios, making consumers in the UK the biggest losers. Only in a free trade agreement scenario does the UK show an unambiguous positive net welfare gain in just the agri‐food sector. In the case of the European Economic Area scenario, which assumes continued access to the single market, the net welfare impact would depend on the size of the UK’s continued contribution to the EU. In the EU, declining food prices would benefit consumers but the sum of the loss in farmers’ incomes and the UK’s EU CAP contribution would be much greater than the consumer’s gain. These impacts in agricultural markets under different future trade arrangements will also be influenced by the UK’s agricultural policy changes in direct payments as well as by possible further UK trade liberalisation after the end of the transition period.     

Customer satisfaction with socially responsible investing initiatives: The influence of perceived financial and non-financial quality

During the last decade, socially responsible investment (SRI) initiatives have grown to become a mainstream financial service in many countries. However, to date, only a few studies focus on understanding the final investor of such initiatives. This article focuses on one particularly overlooked aspect of SRI behavior; that of customer post-purchase satisfaction. A theoretical model of satisfaction with SRI-profiled mutual funds is developed and tested. The results indicate that perceived financial performance of the SRI-profiled mutual fund is the most important predictor of customer satisfaction. However, perceived environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance also had a positive impact on satisfaction for the SRI mutual fund. On the basis of these results, it is argued that although ESG quality is important to customers, marketers of SRI initiatives should primarily focus on the conventional quality attributes such as financial performance, as a good ESG record alone is unlikely to generate customer satisfaction.     

The research group, the conference programme and academic training in safety promotion - a report of the activities at Karolinska Institutet, Sweden

The research group was established in 1967 at Lund University and moved to Karolinska Institutet in 1980. Work began with epidemiological studies of all injuries in the local community in support of various experimental local interventions. An important element was the creation of 'surveillance systems' in healthcare. The work resulted in the establishment of a WHO Collaborating Centre and an international safety-building programme called 'Safe Communities'. In parallel, training at both master's and doctoral level and the building of a conference programme were embarked upon. The research group consists of three sections. Specific efforts are being made by some countries to address their own injury problems.     

The Haunting of the South: American Geopolitical Identity and the Burden of Southern History

The evocative figure of a South haunted by its troubled past is a staple of representations of the region, and such representations not only create a problematic identity for the region but simultaneously produce a privileged national identity through the process of internal orientalism. This article connects internal orientalism with the notion of the double Janus to explain the similarities between America's attitude toward Southern history and its assertion that Japan and Germany bear historical burdens of their own. The inward-looking face of the double Janus is informed by the discourse of internal orientalism and gives Americans an opportunity to judge an internal spatial Other (the South), particularly with regard to the region's history (as a result American geopolitical identity is cleansed from the historical burdens that are construed as Southern). This practice as a righteous judge of the Other serves the US hegemon and its outward-looking face of the double Janus in that the rhetorical practices deployed to discuss Japanese and German history have been honed through the assessment of the burdens of Southern history.     

Improved likelihood ratio tests for cointegration rank in the VAR model

We suggest improved tests for cointegration rank in the vector autoregressive (VAR) model and develop asymptotic distribution theory and local power results. The tests are (quasi-)likelihood ratio tests based on a Gaussian likelihood, but as usual the asymptotic results do not require normally distributed innovations. Our tests differ from existing tests in two respects. First, instead of basing our tests on the conditional (with respect to the initial observations) likelihood, we follow the recent unit root literature and base our tests on the full likelihood as in, e.g., Elliott et al. (1996). Second, our tests incorporate a “sign” restriction which generalizes the one-sided unit root test. We show that the asymptotic local power of the proposed tests dominates that of existing cointegration rank tests.     

Einsatzort Rettungsstelle

Mehr als Messerstiche — Klar, George Cloony würde mir in unserem Emergency Room nicht begegnen – doch der praktische Einsatz in der Rettungsstelle hatte seinen Reiz, denn ich wurde mit vielen verschiedenen Menschentypen konfrontiert. Und weil deren Beschwerden so unterschiedlich waren, konnte ich fachlich einiges lernen.