300 Sozialwissenschaften
Refine
Has Fulltext
- no (437) (remove)
Year of publication
Document Type
- Article (273)
- Part of a Book (51)
- Doctoral Thesis (40)
- Monograph/Edited Volume (35)
- Other (15)
- Review (9)
- Working Paper (5)
- Report (4)
- Journal/Publication series (3)
- Conference Proceeding (1)
Keywords
- COVID-19 (7)
- Digitalisierung (7)
- Germany (6)
- gender (6)
- Migration (4)
- climate change (4)
- decision-making (4)
- digitalization (4)
- Austria (3)
- Bourdieu (3)
Institute
- Sozialwissenschaften (153)
- Fachgruppe Soziologie (101)
- Fachgruppe Politik- & Verwaltungswissenschaft (75)
- Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaftliche Fakultät (19)
- Fachgruppe Volkswirtschaftslehre (17)
- Fachgruppe Betriebswirtschaftslehre (16)
- Wirtschaftswissenschaften (14)
- Department Psychologie (10)
- Historisches Institut (8)
- Department Erziehungswissenschaft (7)
- Institut für Künste und Medien (6)
- Department Sport- und Gesundheitswissenschaften (5)
- Extern (4)
- Institut für Umweltwissenschaften und Geographie (4)
- Strukturbereich Kognitionswissenschaften (4)
- Department für Inklusionspädagogik (3)
- Gleichstellungsbeauftragte (3)
- WeltTrends e.V. Potsdam (3)
- Öffentliches Recht (3)
- Department Linguistik (2)
- Hasso-Plattner-Institut für Digital Engineering gGmbH (2)
- Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik (2)
- Institut für Geowissenschaften (2)
- Institut für Slavistik (2)
- Philosophische Fakultät (2)
- Universitätsbibliothek (2)
- Bürgerliches Recht (1)
- Department Musik und Kunst (1)
- Fakultät für Gesundheitswissenschaften (1)
- Geschlechtersoziologie (1)
- Institut für Biochemie und Biologie (1)
- Institut für Jüdische Studien und Religionswissenschaft (1)
- Institut für Physik und Astronomie (1)
- Lehreinheit für Wirtschafts-Arbeit-Technik (1)
- Zentrum für Lehrerbildung und Bildungsforschung (ZeLB) (1)
- Zentrum für Qualitätsentwicklung in Lehre und Studium (ZfQ) (1)
Schneller, weiter, besser?
(2023)
Der Beitrag nimmt die Kritik an der verzögerten Umsetzung des Onlinezugangsgesetzes (OZG) zum Anlass, um die Digitalisierung der Verwaltung organisationssoziologisch zu diskutieren. Die verfolgte These ist, dass die Verzögerungen der Umsetzung von Digitalisierungsprojekten ihren Ursprung im Umgang der Verwaltung mit einem Spannungsfeld haben: Während politisch versucht wird, sich mithilfe einer Digitalisierung der Verfahren als bessere, schnellere und effizientere Verwaltung zu legitimieren, erzeugt eben diese Digitalisierung Probleme für die Legitimationsmechanismen der Verwaltung. Grundlegend für diese These ist die Figur der Legitimation durch Verfahren von Niklas Luhmann. Der Beitrag greift dementsprechend aktuelle Literatur zum Themengebiet auf, kategorisiert die gefundenen Erkenntnisse in zwei Problemfelder – Operationalisierungs- und Darstellungsprobleme – und begründet das Entstehen dieser Problemfelder mithilfe der Theorie sozialer Systeme. Diese begreift Verfahren als Handlungssysteme, die einen zentralen Stellenwert für die Legitimation der Verwaltungsorganisationen haben. Zuletzt wird diskutiert ob und wie die Erkenntnisse aus der theoretischen Diskussion für die Praxis fruchtbar gemacht werden können.
In the context of persistent images of self-perpetuated technologies, we discuss the interplay of digital technologies and organisational dynamics against the backdrop of systems theory. Building on the case of an international corporation that, during an agile reorganisation, introduced an AI-based personnel management platform, we show how technical systems produce a form of algorithmic contingency that subsequently leads to the emergence of formal and informal interaction systems. Using the concept of datafication, we explain how these interactions are barriers to the self-perpetuation of data-based decision-making, making it possible to take into consideration further decision factors and complementing the output of the platform. The research was carried out within the scope of the research project ‘Organisational Implications of Digitalisation: The Development of (Post-)Bureaucratic Organisational Structures in the Context of Digital Transformation’ funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG).
Organization not found
(2023)
Der Beitrag in der Zeitschrift GIO beschäftigt sich mit der Frage nach den Schwierigkeiten von Digitalisierungsreformen in öffentlichen Verwaltungen. Der Blick wird dafür auf Verwaltungen als Organisationen gerichtet, deren formale Strukturen die Digitalisierungsreform erschweren, da steile Hierarchien und Dienstwegeregelungen mit netzwerkartigen Projektstrukturen konfligieren, agile Arbeitsweisen der Orientierung an rechtlich legitimierten Verfahren zuwiderlaufen und das Personal nicht mit den nötigen Kompetenzen ausgestattet wird. Der organisationssensible Fokus erlaubt es, nicht nur die Probleme der Strukturen zu betrachten, sondern auch deren Funktionen für den Systembestand von Verwaltungen zu berücksichtigen. So wird gezeigt, dass etwa Dienstwegeregelungen demokratische Prozesse gewährleisten und Verantwortungsdiffusion verhindern, ihre Rechtsorientierung den Verwaltungen Legitimation und Autonomie verschafft und das Personal durch seine Regeleinhaltung funktionierende Verfahren und Objektivität gewährleistet. Diese Spannungsfelder berücksichtigend, wird daher der Vorschlag gemacht, in Reformen nicht nur ihre Optimierungsfunktion zu sehen, sondern sie als Werkzeug für ein besseres Verständnis der vorherrschenden Strukturen zu nutzen. Der Beitrag gibt abschließend Fragen an die Hand, wie man sich diesem Verständnis nähern kann.
Background: Following the rapid increase of asylum seekers arriving in the European Union in 2015/16, policymakers have invested heavily in improving their foresight and forecasting capabilities. A common method to elicit expert predictions are Delphi surveys. This approach has attracted concern in the literature, given the high uncertainty in experts’ predictions. However, there exists limited guidance on specific design choices for future-related Delphi surveys.
Objective: We test whether or not small adjustments to the Delphi survey can increase certainty (i.e., reduce variation) in expert predictions on immigration to the EU in 2030.
Methods: Based on a two-round Delphi survey with 178 migration experts, we compare variation and subjective confidence in expert predictions and assess whether additional context information (type of migration flow, sociopolitical context) promotes convergence among experts (i.e., less variation) and confidence in their own estimates.
Results: We find that additional context information does not reduce variation and does not increase confidence in expert predictions on migration.
Conclusions: The results reaffirm recent concerns regarding the limited scope for reducing uncertainty by manipulating the survey setup. Persistent uncertainty may be a result of the complexity of migration processes and limited agreement among migration experts regarding key drivers.
Contribution: We caution policymakers and academics on the use of Delphi surveys for eliciting expert predictions on immigration, even when conducted based on a large pool of experts and using specific scenarios. The potential of alternative approaches such as prediction markets should be further explored.
New work – old problem?
(2023)
Die Nutzung digitaler Kollaborationstools wird als Vorausset-
zung für eine postbürokratische New Work-Welt erachtet. Organisationale Digita-
lisierungsprojekte zur Einführung solcher Kollaborationssoftware sind selbst post-
bürokratisch strukturiert, d. h. sie arbeiten in crossfunktionalen und selbstorgani-
sierten Teams. Während der Kooperation mit anderen Organisationseinheiten treten
Konflikte auf, die sich dadurch verschärfen, dass sie nicht von der Hierarchie ge-
löst werden können, sondern im Sinne von New Work demokratisch ausgehandelt
werden müssen. In der Folge bedarf es alternativer formaler Strukturen, die diese
Herausforderung bewältigen.
A circulatory loop
(2023)
In the digitalization debate, gender biases in digital technologies play a significant role because of their potential for social exclusion and inequality. It is therefore remarkable that organizations as drivers of digitalization and as places for social integration have been widely overlooked so far. Simultaneously, gender biases and digitalization have structurally immanent connections to organizations. Therefore, a look at the reciprocal relationship between organizations, digitalization, and gender is needed. The article provides answers to the question of whether and how organizations (re)produce, reinforce, or diminish gender‐specific inequalities during their digital transformations. On the one hand, gender inequalities emerge when organizations use post‐bureaucratic concepts through digitalization. On the other hand, gender inequalities are reproduced when organizations either program or implement digital technologies and fail to establish control structures that prevent gender biases. This article shows that digitalization can act as a catalyst for inequality‐producing mechanisms, but also has the potential to mitigate inequalities. We argue that organizations must be considered when discussing the potential of exclusion through digitalization.
Sven Siefken und Hilmar Rommetvedt (Hrsg.). 2021. Parliamentary committees in the policy process
(2023)
We conduct a laboratory experiment to study how locus of control operates through people’s preferences and beliefs to influence their decisions. Using the principal–agent setting of the delegation game, we test four key channels that conceptually link locus of control to decision-making: (i) preference for agency, (ii) optimism and (iii) confidence regarding the return to effort, and (iv) illusion of control. Knowing the return and cost of stated effort, principals either retain or delegate the right to make an investment decision that generates payoffs for themselves and their agents. Extending the game to the context in which the return to stated effort is unknown allows us to explicitly study the relationship between locus of control and beliefs about the return to effort. We find that internal locus of control is linked to the preference for agency, an effect that is driven by women. We find no evidence that locus of control influences optimism and confidence about the return to stated effort, or that it operates through an illusion of control.
Atwood (2022) analyzes the effects of the 1963 U.S. measles vaccination on longrun labor market outcomes, using a generalized difference-in-differences approach. We reproduce the results of this paper and perform a battery of robustness checks. Overall, we confirm that the measles vaccination had positive labor market effects. While the negative effect on the likelihood of living in poverty and the positive effect on the probability of being employed are very robust across the different specifications, the headline estimate-the effect on earnings-is more sensitive to the exclusion of certain regions and survey years.
Immense uncertainty and the need for drastic interventions cause politicians to rely heavily on scientific advice for underpinning or legitimating their COVID-19 decision-making. This paper explores the role of scientific advice in this policy field in Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and the UK. It shows that scientific advice is based on the disciplinary, mainly medical, backgrounds of advisors but is also influenced by social and economic values, which are core to what politicians find important. During the pandemic a growing gap between scientific advice and political decisions is observed.
The growing use of digital tools in policy implementation has altered the work of street-level bureaucrats who are granted substantial discretionary power in decision-making. Digital tools can constrain discretionary power, like the curtailment thesis proposed, or serve as action resources, like the enablement thesis suggested. This article assesses empirical evidence of the impact of digital tools on street-level work and decision-making in service-oriented and regulation-oriented organisations based on a systematic literature review and thematic qualitative content analysis of 36 empirical studies published until 2021. The findings demonstrate different effects with regard to the role of digital tools and the core tasks of the public administration, depending on political and managerial goals and consequent system design. Leading or decisive digital tools mostly curtail discretion, especially in service-oriented organisations. In contrast, an enhanced information base or recommendations for actions enable decision-making, in particular in regulation-oriented organisations. By showing how street-level bureaucrats actively try to resist the curtailing effects caused by rigid design to address individual circumstances, for instance by establishing ways of coping like rule bending or rule breaking, using personal resources or prioritising among clients, this study demonstrates the importance of the continuation thesis and the persistently crucial role of human judgement in policy implementation.
Schools are key contexts for the development of adolescents' critical consciousness. We explored how three dimensions of the classroom cultural diversity climate (critical consciousness, color-evasion, and multiculturalism) related to adolescents' critical reflection (i.e., perceived societal Islamophobia) and intended critical action (i.e., political activism). Our sample included adolescents experiencing high (second generation, Muslim, N = 237) versus low (non-immigrant descent, non-Muslim, N = 478) stigmatization in Germany. Multilevel analyses revealed that for both groups a critical consciousness climate, but not a color-evasive or a multicultural climate, was positively associated with perceived societal Islamophobia and intended critical action. Thus, to promote adolescents' critical consciousness, schools should go beyond emphasizing a common humanity and celebrating cultural diversity and include explicit discussions of social inequity.
Analyzing social wrongs
(2023)
Potentially disabled?
(2022)
Ten years ago, I was diagnosed with a rare illness called Myasthenia Gravis. Myasthenia Gravis is a long-term neuromuscular autoimmune disease where antibodies block or destroy specific receptors at the junction between nerve and muscle; hence, nerve impulses fail to trigger muscle contractions. The disease leads to varying degrees of muscle weakness. Currently, I have only minor symptoms, I am not seriously impaired, and I do not suffer from any social disadvantage because of my illness. Yet, my life and my body since my diagnosis feel different than before. In this paper I aim to make this feeling intelligible and propose that it is a state of what I call ‘latent impairment’. Latent impairment is a state of being ‘in between’, different from being actually impaired and also different from being abled-bodied. The theory takes its cues both from social constructionist theories of disability as well as theories of (chronic) illness and their focus on the importance of subjectivity. Furthermore, I suggest that a phenomenological understanding of latent impairment can show possible ways of becoming an ally to the DRM.
Eskalation in Tweets
(2023)
Does working in a gender-atypical occupation reduce individuals’ likelihood of finding a different-sex romantic partner, and do such occupational partnership penalties contribute to occupational gender segregation? To answer this question, we theorized partnership penalties for working in gender-atypical occupations by drawing on insights from evolutionary psychology, social constructivism, and rational choice theory and exploited the stability of occupational pathways in Germany. In Study 1, we analyzed observational data from a national probability sample (N= 1,634,944) to assess whether individuals in gender-atypical occupations were less likely to be partnered than individuals who worked in gender typical occupations. To assess whether the observed partnership gaps found in Study 1 were causally related to the gender typicality of men’s and women’s occupations, we conducted a field experiment on a dating app (N = 6,778). Because the findings from Study 2 suggested that young women and men indeed experienced penalties for working in a gender-atypical occupation (at least when they were not highly attractive), we employed a choice-experimental design in Study 3 (N = 1,250) to assess whether women and men were aware of occupational partnership penalties and showed that anticipating occupational partnership penalties may keep young and highly educated women from working in gender-atypical occupations. Our main conclusion therefore is that that observed penalties and their anticipation seem to be driven by unconscious rather than conscious processes.
Sanctions are critical to the Security Council's efforts to fight terrorism. What is striking is that the Council's sanctions regimes are subject to detailed sets of rules and decision criteria. The scholarship on human rights in counterterrorism assumes that rights advocacy and court litigation have prompted this development. The article complements this literature by highlighting an unexplored internal driver of legal-regulatory decision-making and explores how mixed-motive interest constellations among Security Council members have affected the extent of committee regulations and the content of decisions taken by sanctions committees. Based on internal documents and diplomatic cables, a comparative analysis of the Iraq sanctions regime and the counterterrorism sanctions regime demonstrates that mixed-motive interest constellations among Security Council members provide incentives to elaborate rules to guide decision-making resulting in legal-regulatory sanctions governance, even if the human rights of targeted individuals are not at stake. For comparative leverage and to assess the limits of the proposed mechanism, the analysis is briefly extended to other sanctions regimes targeting individuals (Democratic Republic of the Congo and Sudan). The findings have implications for this essential tool of the Security Council to react to threats to peace as diverse as counterterrorism, nonproliferation, and internal armed conflict.
Do all roads lead to Rome?
(2020)
Content website providers have two main goals: They seek to attract consumers and to keep them on their websites as long as possible. To reach potential consumers, they can utilize several online channels, such as paid search results or advertisements on social media, all of which usually require a substantial marketing budget. However, with rising user numbers of online communication tools, website providers increasingly integrate social sharing buttons on their websites to encourage existing consumers to facilitate referrals to their social networks. While little is known about this social form of guiding consumers to a content website, the study proposes that the way in which consumers reach a website is related to their stickiness to the website and their propensity to refer content to others. By using a unique clickstream data set of a video-on-demand website, the study compares consumers referred by their social network to those consumers arriving at the website via organic search or social media advertisements in terms of stickiness to the website (e.g., visit length, number of page views, video starts) and referral likelihood. The results show that consumers referred through social referrals spend more time on the website, view more pages, and start more videos than consumers who respond to social media advertisements, but less than those coming through organic search. Concerning referral propensity, the results indicate that consumers attracted to a website through social referrals are more likely to refer content to others than those who came through organic search or social media advertisements. The study offers direct insights to managers and recommends an increase in their efforts to promote social referrals on their websites.
Vienna
(2021)
This book explores and debates the urban transformations that have taken place in Vienna over the past 30 years and their consequences in policy fields such as labour and housing, political and social participation and the environment. Historically, European cities have been characterised by a strong association between social cohesion, quality of life, economic ambition and a robust State. Vienna is an excellent example for that. In more recent years, however, cities were pressured to change policy principles and mechanisms in the context of demographic shifts, post-industrial transformations and welfare recalibration which have led to worsened social conditions in many cities. Each chapter in this volume discusses Vienna's responses to these pressures in key policy arenas, looking at outcomes from the context-specific local arrangements. Against a theoretical framework debating the European city as a model of inclusion and social justice, authors explore the local capacity to innovate urban policies and to address new social risks, while paying attention to potential trade-offs.
The book questions and assesses the city's resilience using time series and an institutional analysis of four key dimensions that characterise the European city model within the context of post-industrial transition: redistribution, recognition, representation and sustainability. It offers a multiscalar perspective of urban governance through labour, housing, participatory and environmental policies, bringing together different levels and public policy types.