On the job and co-worker commitment of Dutch agency workers and permanent employees

This article explores the relationship between employment status (agency workers vs. permanent employees) and affective and normative job and co-worker commitment. Our study was conducted on employees from four metal companies in the Netherlands. As HRM practices seem to influence employee commitment, we performed 89 interviews across all four companies and included blue-collar workers, their managers (direct supervisors, HR managers and production managers), as well as works council members. To test our hypotheses on commitment differences, we conducted quantitative research within the companies (permanent employees N = 167; agency workers N = 54), all blue-collar workers. Results show that permanent employees and agency workers express similar degrees of commitment to their job and to their co-workers, apart from affective commitment to co-workers, which is lower for agency workers than for permanent workers. We argue that national legislation, as well as managers' attempts to offer HR practices equal to those of permanent staff, play a prominent role in stimulating agency workers' commitment.     

A supermartingale relation for multivariate risk measures

The equivalence between multiportfolio time consistency of a dynamic multivariate risk measure and a supermartingale property is proven. Furthermore, the dual variables under which this set-valued supermartingale is a martingale are characterized as the worst-case dual variables in the dual representation of the risk measure. Examples of multivariate risk measures satisfying the supermartingale property are given. Crucial for obtaining the results are dual representations of scalarizations of set-valued dynamic risk measures, which are of independent interest in the fast growing literature on multivariate risks.     

Cross compliance and the protection of grassland - Illustrative analyses of land use transitions between permanent grassland and arable land in German regions

Permanent grassland combines various ecological functions in terms of nature, soil, water and climate protection. Conversion of grassland to arable land is accompanied by a diminution of these functions. Various developments have led to increased pressure on the EU grassland area. With cross compliance, the EU sets minimum standards for the protection of the ratio of permanent grassland. However, this requirement alone does not ensure the preservation of grassland on sensitive sites, such as water or nature conservation areas or land on organic soils or on steep hills.This paper deals with land use changes between grassland and arable land. For this purpose we analyse data of the EU's Integrated Administration and Control System (IACS) from four German federal states. The described methodology allows to identify gross changes of land use and to distinguish between conversion of permanent grassland and “loss” due to “deactivation” at a highly disaggregated level. Merging IACS-data with further spatially explicit data provides a picture of land use transitions in ecologically sensitive areas and enables conclusions to be drawn about the effectiveness of protection measures.     

The Legacy of Mexico's Agrarian Counter‐Reforms: Reinforcing Social Hierarchies in Calakmul,Campeche

In this paper, we examine how Mexico's 1992 counter‐reforms reinforced social hierarchies between two ‘classes’ of residents within three ejidos in an agricultural frontier in Campeche. We carried out qualitative research with 94 ejidatarios, 92 pobladores and 13 government officials. Our research shows that the reforms cemented the second‐class status of pobladores, as their access to land, natural resources such as firewood and governmental subsidies is now even more contested. Ejidal residents have responded to these tensions by invoking various conceptions of citizenship to press for different forms of justice. Ejidatarios seek to enforce their legal prerogatives by advocating a tiered citizenship, inflected with aspects of ‘market citizenship’, in which pobladores have less access to resources and voice. Pobladores seek inclusion in the ejido via a cultural model of citizenship built around a ‘civil sociality’. Despite this generalization, both groups also selectively move between and combine these citizenship frameworks to advance their claims.     

Wie beeinflusst der demografische Wandel die privaten Verkehrsausgaben?

The level as well as the structure of private consumption is influenced by the age structure of the population. This is shown for Germany by an age-specific analysis of consumption patterns on the basis of household data of the German consumer income and budget survey. According to the gained data and with respect to the changing shares of age cohorts induced by demographic effects, the demand for consumption goods and services in the field of transport will lose significance. This is especially true for private transport expenditures such as the purchase of cars as well as the demand for goods and services related to the use of cars. In contrast, the expenditures for (public) transport services are projected to be unchanged over the lifecycle of a private household.     

The rate of convergence of the core for a purely competitive sequence of economies

The purpose of the paper is to show that for ‘most’ purely competitive sequences of economies on a compact set of agents' characteristics the core converges to the set of equilibria at least as fast as the inverse of the number of agents. It is assumed that agents have smooth, convex preferences with non-zero Gaussian curvature. This rate of convergence is obtained for a purely competitive sequence with regular limit distribution.     

The Impact of Pleasure‐Evoking Colors on the Effectiveness of Threat (Fear) Appeals

Research has established that colors can influence a person's attitude toward an ad. In this article the knowledge about the effects of colors on the perception of ads is linked to a specific type of ads, namely threat appeals. The objective of this study is to examine whether the color used in the background of such a threat appeal can influence its effectiveness. More specifically, the aim is to investigate whether the usage of less or more pleasure‐evoking colors affects threat and efficacy appraisals, evoked fear, and the behavioral intention. Moreover, it is tested whether the impact of the background color on the effectiveness of threat appeals is moderated by the threat level presented in the threat appeal. The findings confirm that the background color does indeed have an impact on its effectiveness. The more pleasing blue color was found to have a more positive impact on the respondents’ feelings of severity and susceptibility than the less appealing yellow. An analysis of the processing patterns subsequently showed that perceived severity has a positive effect on the behavioral intention. This intention is also influenced by the evoked feelings of fear, which are also induced by the respondents’ perceived severity. An interaction effect with threat level indicates that the more appealing background color only increased vulnerability in case of a low threat. Color thus seems to be used more as a peripheral cue to process less involving (low‐threat) messages. In case of a more involving high‐threat message, the processing seems to occur more centrally and less through the color cue. These findings illustrate the importance of color in the design of threat appeals.     

Controlling in ?sterreichischen Familienunternehmen – dargestellt am Bundesland Ober?sterreich

Trotz der hohen volkswirtschaftlichen Bedeutung zeichnet sich das Controlling durch eine im Vergleich geringe Besch?ftigung mit dem Thema Familienunternehmen aus. Ausgehend von der Hypothese, dass Familienunternehmen in h?herem Ausma? sozio?konomische Ziele verfolgen und in geringerem Umfang Controlling-Instrumente einsetzen als Nicht-Familienunternehmen, werden die Ergebnisse einer empirischen Untersuchung für die Region Ober?sterreich pr?sentiert. Als Ergebnis dieser Studie zeigt sich, dass die Ziele der befragten Familienunternehmen – abgesehen von der H?he der geforderten Eigenkapitalrenditen – kaum von jenen der Nicht-Familienunternehmen differieren. Andererseits ist bei Familienunternehmen ein hoher Professionalisierungsgrad im Bereich des Einsatzes von Controlling-Instrumenten erkennbar.     

Womit befassen sich kommunikationswissenschaftliche Abschlussarbeiten?

Transfer is an e-journal of the German academic association of journalism and communication (DGPuK), publishing abstracts of excellent theses in communication in German speaking countries. Since 1999, more than 1.000 abstracts have been collected. This article presents a content analysis of all abstracts published between 1999 and 2008 (n?=?1.056). The objective is to contribute to the ongoing debate about the identity of German speaking communication research and thus adding results to existing studies on journal publications and surveys among researchers. The content analysis examines the issues, the media analyzed, the use of theoretical and empirical approaches and the dominance of public communication as issue – as compared to interpersonal communication – of the studies, based on the abstracts published. Results show that the issues analyzed and the methods applied have not changed much over the years. A somehow alarming result is the fact that only very few abstracts explicitly refer to a theory. This raises the question of the deceasing relevance of theories in today’s communication research.