Agilität als Chance für einen neuen Anlauf zum demokratischen Unternehmen?

There has been a long-standing discussion since the 1980s about the question whether new production models harbor a potential for extended employee participation and involvement, in most cases with disillusioning results. This paper is concerned with so called “agile methods”, which play an important part in the area of knowledge work in the course of the digital transformation. On the basis of two case studies from software development and industrial R&D, the paper examines the concrete implementation of these methods and the employees’ perspective upon them and their consequences. The result is that agile methods present a potential for extended employee participation and involvement; however, the realization of this potential depends on the concrete way how the agile concept of “empowerment” is implemented.     

Communicating authoritarian elite cohesion

In this paper, we develop a theoretical framework to analyse the communicative imperatives authoritarian regimes face as a consequence of their self-inflicted opacities. The most important facts about the actors and factors that sustain authoritarian rule are unobservable. To demonstrate their power, authoritarian rulers have to render them visible. They have to dramatize their power and present on the front stage what they want people to know about the backstage of authoritarian politics. We conceptualize the communicative strategies of authoritarian rulers with a focus on the primary existential threats they face: the lateral threats that emanate from within the authoritarian elite. We illustrate dictators’ communicative repertoire with empirical material from communist Cuba from 2006 to 2011, during the critical juncture of leadership transition from Fidel Castro to his brother Raúl.     

Identifying deviant sexual interest in a sex offender sample using dual-target rapid serial visual presentation task

To investigate the dual-target rapid serial visual presentation (dtRSVP) task as a measure of deviant sexual interest (i.e. a sexual interest in children), we administered a dtRSVP with gender- and age-specific pictorial stimuli to child sex offenders (n = 69), other sex offenders (n = 43), non-sex offenders (n = 14), and community controls (n = 88). We hypothesized that (1) stimuli belonging to the preferred gender and age group presented as targets (both T1 and the subsequent T2) in the serial sequence would be more accurately detected than non-preferred stimuli and that (2) this increased detection would reduce the detection of targets later in the serial sequence (T2) due to an attentional blink. Our findings supported hypothesis 1 and partly supported hypothesis 2. Although we found group differences, individual indices based on detection rates did not allow for individual-level diagnostic categorization of participants.     

Gemeindereformen in der Schweiz: Gemeinsamkeiten und Auslöser

In den 1990er Jahren ist die Schweizer Gemeindelandschaft in Bewegung geraten. Seither werden zentrale Elemente der kommunalen politischen Systeme den veränderten Voraussetzungen angepasst. New Public Management, verstärkte interkommunale Zusammenarbeit und Gemeindefusionen erscheinen immer häufiger auf der politischen Agenda. Neben einem Überblick zur Verbreitung der verschiedenen Reformbestrebungen sucht dieser Aufsatz nach deren Strategien, Gemeinsamkeiten und Auslösern. Die meisten Reformprojekte können nur indirekt mit der Verschlechterung der wirtschaftlichen Lage in Zusammenhang gebrachg werden. Im Mittelpunkt steht die Neuordnung der Zuständigkeiten für die verschiedenen öffentlichen Aufgaben. Eine zentrale Rolle kommt dabei der politischen Steureung zu. Hier weist die Reformdiskussion allerdings Defizite auf.     

Pre‐Election Positions and Voting Behaviour in Parliament: Consistency among Swiss MPs

This article examines the determinants of positional incongruence between pre‐election statements and post‐election behaviour in the Swiss parliament between 2003 and 2009. The question is examined at the individual MP level, which is appropriate for dispersion‐of‐powers systems like Switzerland. While the overall rate of political congruence reaches about 85%, a multilevel logit analysis detects the underlying factors which push or curb a candidate's propensity to change his or her mind once elected. The results show that positional changes are more likely when (1) MPs are freshmen, (2) individual voting behaviour is invisible to the public, (3) the electoral district magnitude is not small, (4) the vote is not about a party's core issue, (5) the MP belongs to a party which is located in the political centre, and (6) if the pre‐election statement dissents from the majority position of the legislative party group. Of these factors, the last one is paramount.     

How fear of crime affects punitive attitudes

This article investigates different types of fear of crime as predictors for punitive attitudes. Using data from a Germany-wide representative survey (n = 1272) it examines the reliability and validity of survey instruments through confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and uses structural equation modeling (SEM) to explain variations in the level of respondents’ punitive attitudes. The results show that different emotional and cognitive responses to crime have a distinctive effect on the formation of punitive attitudes. These effects vary significantly depending on socio-demographic factors and assumed purposes of punishment. A crucial observation of the study is that men’s fear of crime works in a different way in the formation of punitive attitudes than women’s fear of crime. The perceived locus of control for the crime threat is a possible explanation for this difference.