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.     

Borda's method applied — the right to make a proposal

Borda's vote method was used by the French Academy from 1796 to 1803 when Napoleon got it abolished. In the laws and regulations of the Academy there are stipulations regarding the election of new members. The practice is demonstrated by some examples from the protocols. In fact, Borda presented two vote methods which he showed would give the same conclusion. The method which has not been in the limelight proves to be the same one as is used for selecting the best player in chess tournaments.     

DOES ORGANIZATION MATTER? A STUDY OF PHYSICIANS' IDEAL ORGANIZATION

It is a known phenomenon that it is difficult to make organizational changes within professional organizations. One recurring observation and experience from health care studies is that it is difficult to discuss the last organizational change with professionals because the most recent change is always perceived as the worst. In order to avoid this routine response, the authors of this article asked 56 senior physicians from the Swedish health care sector what their ideal organization looks like. The authors note that there is a strong institutionalized idea among the physicians of how health care should be organized. The image is not particularly complicated: the organization should be based on the meeting between doctor and patient. One conclusion in the article is that professionals dislike change, but nevertheless, they still want it. Actual change is not the problem – only changes that are not in compliance with the professionals' opinions of organization and management.     

A comparison of parametric and non-parametric efficiency measures: The case of Norwegian ferries

The trunk road system in Norway has to be supplemented by a number of ferries due to the long coastline with numerous islands and fjords. Most of the ferries are run by private companies, but at a loss. The deficit are covered by the Ministry of Transport. The subsidies have risen rapidly in the last years and have focussed attention on whether the ferries are really run as efficiently as possible. To change the incentives to economize, a lump-sum payment is considered. To implement such a system, an initial assessment of reasonable input requirements is needed. The aim of this article is to provide such a yardstick by establishing a best practice frontier. Both a non-parametric and a parametric approach to a deterministic frontier are tried and differences of results discussed. Peculiarities due to choice of methods are revealed. The efficiency distributions are quite similar for the two methods except for scale efficiency, where the parametric method indicates substantial unrealized scale economies, while the non-parametric approach shows the largest and some small ferries to be scale efficient. The results indicate a substantial rationalization potential of about 30 percent in total.I am indebted to three referees for forcing me to improve significantly the quality of the study. Any remaining shortcomings are, of course, my responsibility.     

Access Pricing,Quality Degradation,and Foreclosure in the Internet

Access to both a local and a global network is needed in order to get complete connection to the Internet. The purpose of this article is to examine the interplay between those two networks and how it affects the domestic public policy towards a domestic provider of local access. We find that a cost-oriented regulation is detrimental to domestic welfare, because it shifts profit to the foreign provider of global access. The optimal policy is that the regulator commits itself to set an access price above costs, possibly the same price as in an unregulated market economy. A regulation of the global access price has a non-monotonic effect on domestic welfare, and there is a potential conflict between international and domestic regulation policy.     

Wood Fuel or Carbon Sink? Aspects of Forestry in the Climate Question

This paper discusses and contrasts two mainroles of forestry in light of the debate on theglobal climate. As the main problem is relatedto the increases of the CO₂-concentrationin the atmosphere, forests may be viewed aspart of the alleviation of the problem throughtheir function as (i) a source of biomass forenergy production, which may replace fossilfuels and thus indirectly reduceCO₂-emissions, and as (ii) carbon storage,since a growing forest extracts atmosphericCO₂ and fixes it as carbon in biomass. Inthe Scandinavian forestry, logging residues areincreasingly being used for energy production.In this paper the value of forests as a sourceof bioenergy is added to the traditional timbervalue. Formulated as a joint production modelwithin the Faustmann framework, the effect ofthis addition on the optimal rotation length isdiscussed. Based on data for spruce, thedominant species in the Scandinavian forestry,it is demonstrated that the rotation length isshortened compared to the standard Faustmannmodel. Shorter rotation length implies lesscarbon storage. Therefore, in this modelwithout explicit regard to the social carbonstorage value of the forest, the gains in termsof the climate problem from utilisation offorest biomass for energy production are beingdiminished by the value of reduced carbonstorage. The carbon value of the forest is thenadded to complete the model, with the effect ofincreasing the rotation length, a result thatis well known in the literature. Finally, theempirical effects of the interaction of thesetwo climate-related value elements of theforest are discussed.     

On optimal control of income generating activities, and the value of flexible production design

The paper provides a closed form solution for the value of a firm which costlessly can change its mode of operation between two activities. The technology is such that production is zero from the inactive production line. In addition we assume that the production potential on any production line is idle when not operated, else the production follows a geometric Brownian motion. Although this framework is rather general, it is motivated by the problem to produce a natural resource located in two separate wells/ores, using a single (flexible) production unit. For what seems to be reasonable parameter values, the flexible unit is seen to achieve a surprisingly large value relative to the value achievable by a comprehensive unit, producing both alternatives simultaneously. In addition it is interesting to note that switching might occur even if the active production line gives the highest immediate income.     

Elasticity estimates of farmed salmon demand in Spain and Italy

In this paper, estimates of the elasticities that characterize the structure of demand for farmed salmon in Spain and Italy are reported. The demand models are specified using a Box-Cox transformation of the variables and a Hausman test is used to determine price endogeneity in the demand equations. The results show short-run unitary own-price elasticity of demand for farmed salmon in both markets, but long run estimates show significant elastic price response. Short run substitution of salmon for other fish species is not observed and, for both Spain and Italy, farmed salmon is characterized as a luxury good. Interestingly, we show that our a priori expectations about own-price elasticities being lower in smaller market areas is confirmed. Finally, the results obtained are compared to other recent results reported in the salmon demand literature.     

Slack-adjusted efficiency measures and ranking of efficient units

In non-parametric methods many units are calculated as efficient. The article suggests a method for ranking efficient units, not by their efficiency, but by importance as benchmarks for the inefficient units, in contrast to earlier suggestions in the literature which rank units high if they are specialized. However, the total potentials for improvement frequently remain unrevealed by calculating radial efficiency measures of the Farrell type only. The article therefore first develops efficiency measures that explicitly extend the radial measures to include slacks. The new measures are applied to a typical multidimensional small-sample data set for Norwegian employment offices.