Reviews

Theory and Decision -     

The concept of social movement

Recent developments in social movement research have evidenced a greater underlying consensus in the field than one might have assumed. Efforts have been made to bridge different perspectives and merge them into a new synthesis. Yet, comparative discussion of the concept of ‘social movement’ has been largely neglected so far. This article reviews and contrasts systematically the definitions of ‘social movement’ formulated by some of the most influential authors in the field. A substantial convergence may be detected between otherwise very different approaches on three points at least. Social movements are defined as networks of informal interactions between a plurality of individuals, groups and/or organizations, engaged in political or cultural conflicts, on the basis of shared collective identities. It is argued that the concept is sharp enough a) to differentiate social movements from related concepts such as interest groups, political parties, protest events and coalitions; b) to identify a specific area of investigation and theorising for social movement research.     

Metaphors and Theory Building in Organization Theory: What Determines the Impact of a Metaphor on Theory?*

A long‐standing stream of organizational research suggests that our ability to theorize and reason about organizations is significantly influenced by metaphorical representations of organizations. This study contributes to this research stream by examining how different metaphors influence theory development and academic thinking about organizations. We asked scholars from UK business schools to rate different metaphors in terms of their impact on theory building. We then examined whether, and to what extent, these metaphors (after they had been selected) had helped in clarifying and advancing their understanding of organizations. The results indicate that the ability of a metaphor to advance and clarify theoretical understandings of organizations is based upon (1) the degree to which that metaphor is seen to capture multiple salient features of organizations and (2) the ease with which the metaphor is understood. We discuss the implications of these results for theorizing and research on organizations.     

Armed and Aging: Dementia and Firearms Do Not Mix !

ABSTRACT

The possibility that persons with dementia possess firearms is cause for concern, but only a limited number of research studies have been conducted on such a topic, usually in the form of case reports. Reducing the occurrence of the firearm-related violence requires effectively identifying dangerous individuals and keeping firearms out of their hands. The health care professionals, i.e. the social workers and the physicians, need to work together and to produce a suitable evaluation of patients with dementia to prevent firearm-related injuries and serious and irreparable damage to persons.     

Public Organizations Between Old Public Administration,New Public Management and Public Governance: the Case of the Tuscany Region

This paper analyzes the presence of different managerial approaches in a public organization, the Tuscany Region of Italy. In particular, it highlights the phenomenon of the plurality of frameworks working in the organization, namely Old Public Administration (OPA), New Public Management (NPM) and Public Governance (PG). The transformation and coexistence of the above-mentioned models is tested with a content analysis based on the perspectives of policy makers and top-level managers expressed in interviews and on the context of administration planning and control systems found in documents. Each managerial logic has a different relevance in the organization.     

Income tax schedule and redistribution in direct democracies – the Swiss case

This study examines redistribution policy through personal income taxes in Swiss cantons over the period 1995–2011. In a first step, redistribution measures are estimated with the help of exhaustive administrative data. Redistribution is decomposed into average tax rate and tax progression. In a second step, we investigate the impact of direct democratic institutions and their usage on tax policy and redistribution. The results suggest that the effect of direct democracy on income tax redistribution is a multilayered process. First, the theoretical availability of direct democracy tools does not seem to have the same impact as the effective use of them. Second, fiscal referendums may – in the short term –reduce redistribution through lower tax rates and lead to less tax progression. Third, an increasing number of ballots on initiatives leads to more tax progression and more redistribution in the long run. It seems that the short-term dampening effects of fiscal referendums on redistribution may be overridden in the long run by the expansive effect of popular initiatives.     

Job Quality and Employment of Older People in Europe

We study the relationship between job quality and retirement using data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe, a longitudinal survey covering individuals aged 50+ in several European countries. Although most previous studies looked at the impact of bad working conditions on retirement intentions, we can use the panel dimension to study actual retirement as well as other pathways out of a job. As indicators for job quality we use three different approaches: overall job satisfaction, over‐ and undereducation for a particular job as well as effort–reward imbalance, which measures the imbalance between a worker's effort and the rewards he or she receives in turn. The analysis gives some evidence that poor job quality decreases retirement age, in particular for women.     

A generalized predictive criterion for model selection

Given a random sample from some unknown model belonging to a finite class of parametric models, assume that the estimate of the density of a future observation is of interest San Martini & Spezzaferri (1984) proposed for this problem a predictive criterion based on the logarithmic utility function. The present authors investigate a generalization of this criterion that uses as a loss function an element of the class of α‐divergences discussed by Ali & Silvey (1966) and Csiszár (1967). They also discuss briefly the case in which the class of models considered is not exhaustive.