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This study aims to elucidate the quantitative and qualitative differences in employment development between German districts. Building on ideas from competitive development and resource-based theory, the paper particularly seeks to explain enduring East-West differences between rural regions by two different forms of competitive advantage: cost leadership and quality differentiation.

This study follows a two-step empirical approach: First, an extended shift-share regression is conducted to analyze employment development in Western and Eastern German districts between 2007 and 2016. Second, the competitive share effect and other individual terms of the shift-share model are further examined in additional regressions using regional economic characteristics as exogenous variables.

The findings suggest that the above-average employment growth of the rural districts in the West is owed to the successful exploitation of experience in manufacturing that has been gathered by firms in the past 100 years or so. While their strategy is largely based on advanced and specialized resources and an innovation-driven differentiation strategy, the relatively weak employment development of Eastern rural districts might be explained by a lack of comparable long-term experiences and the related need to focus on the exploitation of basic and general resources and, accordingly, on the efficiency-based strategy of cost leadership.

This study offers an in-depth empirical analysis of how the competitive share effect, i.e. region-specific resources beyond industry structure, contributes to regional employment development. The analysis reveals that quantitative differences in rural employment development are closely related to qualitatively different levels of input factors and different regimes of competitiveness.

The purpose of this study is to elucidate the determinants of economic resilience at various levels of analysis. While the economic benefits of regional clustering are well-documented, the impact of external shocks on regional clusters has only recently gained attention. This study explores the antecedents of economic resilience, defined as sustained employment growth, prior to and during the global financial crisis within the German biotechnology industry.

This study combines multilevel linear regression analysis with egocentric network analysis. This allows us to distinguish micro- and context-level effects in the analysis of economic resilience.

The findings of this study indicate that while specialization at the network and context-level is conducive to firm growth prior to the crisis, these configurations seem to be particularly susceptible to external shocks. Conversely, diversity (diversified regional agglomerations and diverse networks) seems to be associated with economic resilience during the crisis. Moreover, we find that economic resilience is connected to adaptive capability at the micro-level, that is, the ability to expand and diversify a firms’ portfolio of network ties in the face of an external shock. Finally, we show that these adaptive processes are facilitated by geographical proximity among collaborating organizations.

This study contributes to the existing literature by showing that the antecedents of economic resilience are located at multiple levels of analysis. An important implication of this study is that the examination of the resilience of regional clusters may thus be significantly enhanced by disentangling effects at the firm, network and regional (i.e. context) level.

Computer corpus linguistics (CCL) is a scientific innovation that has facilitated the creation and analysis of large corpora in a systematic way by means of computer technology since the 1950s. This article provides an account of the CCL pioneers in general but particularly of those in Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Switzerland. It is found that Germany and Sweden, due to more advantageous financing and weaker communities of generativists, had a faster adoption of CCL than the other two countries. A particular late adopter among the four was Switzerland, which did not take up CCL until foreign professors had been recruited.

Outlines the problem of emancipation (not only of married women) as a problem of economic order, and the historical setting of family and government. Discusses economics of the family, economic order and public finance. Concludes, with special reference to The Netherlands, that incremental improvement in individual freedom is only brought about within the so‐called capitalist system.

Surveys the use of mathematics in what are now commonly called the social sciences up to the time of the earliest use of the term “social science” in the late 1700s. Explains the rationale for the organization and structure of the paper and proceeds to reason for the broad definition of mathematics as it relates to the social sciences. The introduction also describes the periodization used. The next section contains a brief description of the state of what were to become the social sciences in the late 1700s. This is followed by a brief description of the state of mathematics at that time. Then follow sections demonstrating that mathematics was used by important developers of social thought from the earliest times right up to the dawn of the modern social sciences. Concludes with a discussion of some of the lessons to be learned from history. The most important lesson that history teaches us about the role of mathematics in the modern social sciences at the dawn of their existence is that the social sciences require the use of mathematics and could not exist without them.

The purpose of this paper is to understand how national institutional environments contribute to differences in life satisfaction between entrepreneurs and employees.

Leveraging person–environment fit and institutional theories and using a sample of more than 70,000 entrepreneurs and employees from 43 countries, the study investigates how the impact of entrepreneurial activity on life satisfaction differs in various environmental contexts. An entrepreneur’s life satisfaction arguably should increase when a high degree of compatibility or fit exists between his or her choice to be an entrepreneur and the informal and formal institutional environment.

The study finds that differences in life satisfaction between entrepreneurs and employees are larger in countries with high power distance, low uncertainty avoidance, extant entrepreneurship policies, low commercial profit taxes and low worker rights.

This study sheds new light on how entrepreneurial activity affects life satisfaction, contingent on the informal and formal institutions in a country that support entrepreneurship by its residents.

This British Academy/Leverhulme-funded research (Grant number: SG170394) investigated the experiences and impact of sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) and torture on South Sudanese refugees’ health and rights and the responses of health and justice services in Northern Uganda.

It involved thematic analysis of the narratives of 20 men and 41 women refugees’ survivors of SGBV and torture; this included their experiences in South Sudan, their journeys to Uganda and experiences in refugee settlements. In total, 37 key stakeholders including health and justice providers, police, non-government and government organisations were also interviewed regarding their experiences of providing services to refugees.

All refugees had survived human rights abuses carried out in South Sudan, on route to Uganda and within Uganda. Incidents of violence, SGBV, torture and other human rights abuses declined significantly for men in Uganda, but women reported SGBV incidents. The research demonstrates linkages between the physical, psychological, social/cultural and justice/human rights impact on women and men refugees, which amplified the impact of their experiences. There was limited screening, physical and psychological health and support services; including livelihoods and education. Refugees remained concerned about violence and SGBV in the refugee settlements. While they all knew of the reporting system for such incidents, they questioned the effectiveness of the process. For this reason, women opted for family reconciliation rather than reporting domestic violence or SGBV to the authorities. Men found it hard to report incidences due to high levels of stigma and shame.

Refugees largely fled South Sudan to escape human rights abuses including, persecution, SGBV and torture. Their experiences resulted in physical, psychological, social-cultural and justice effects that received limited responses by health and justice services. An integrated approach to meeting refugees’ needs is required.

The authors make recommendations for integrated gender sensitive service provision for refugees including more systematic screening, assessment and treatment of SGBV and torture physical and emotional injuries combined with implementation of livelihoods and social enterprises.

The research demonstrates that stigma and shame, particularly for male refugee survivors of SGBV and torture, impacts on ability to report these incidents and seek treatment. Increasing gender sensitivity of services to these issues, alongside provision of medical treatment for injuries, alongside improved informal justice processes, may assist to counteract shame and increase disclosure.

There is currently a lack of empirical investigation of this subject area, therefore this research makes a contribution to the subject of understanding refugees’ experiences of SGBV and torture, as well as their perceptions of service provision and response. This subject is strategically important due to the pressing need to develop integrated, gendered and culturally sensitive services that listen to the voices and draw on the expertise of refugees themselves while using their skills to inform improvements in service responses and policy.

The purpose of this paper is to examine if customer care (CC) can be directly linked to patient safety through a human factors (HF) framework.

Data from an online questionnaire, completed by a convenience healthcare worker sample (n=373), was interrogated using thematic analysis within Vincent et al.’s (1998) HF theoretical framework. This proposes seven areas affecting patient safety: institutional context, organisation and management, work environment, team factors, individual, task and patient.

Analysis identified responses addressing all framework areas. Responses (597) principally focused on work environment 40.7 per cent (n=243), organisation and management 28.8 per cent (n=172). Nevertheless, reference to other framework areas were clearly visible within the data: teams 10.2 per cent (n=61), individual 6.7 per cent (n=40), patients 6.0 per cent (n=36), tasks 4.2 per cent (n=24) and institution 3.5 per cent (n=21). Findings demonstrate congruence between CC perceptions and patient safety within a HF framework.

The questionnaire requested participants to identify barriers to rather than CC enablers. Although this was at a single site complex organisation, it was similar to those throughout the NHS and other international health systems.

CC can be viewed as consonant with patient safety rather than the potentially dangerous consumerisation stance, which could ultimately compromise patient safety.

This work provides an original perspective on the link between CC and patient safety and has the potential to re-focus healthcare perceptions.

There is evidence that quality improvement projects developed with the participation of patients and family members are more likely to result in a sustainable change. To identify the intervening factors is an important step in promoting and supporting patient and family members’ engagement.

A survey was carried out with 90 hospitals. A total of 35 intervening factors were evaluated by the healthcare professionals from the quality area using a Likert scale. Factor analysis was applied to identify the relationship among the factors and cluster analysis and the standardized scores for each new latent variable were obtained to observe the association between them and hospitals profile. Cluster analysis allowed to group the hospitals with similar responses and to analyze whether there was any association with the profile of the institutions.

A total of ten intervening factors are identified: two in the financial dimension, five in the structural and three in the personal and cultural. The standardized scores of latent variables suggest that the financial factors could be affected by the hospital capacity. The structural factors could be impacted by the accreditation status, location (region) and administrative control (ownership). And the personal and cultural factors could be by the location and dominant organizational culture. All of factors are influenced by the performed quality management activities. The cluster analysis allowed the identification of three groups in the financial dimension, and four in the other two dimensions. Except for the accreditation status in the personal and cultural dimension, no evidence of association between the groups and the variables raised to characterize the profile of the hospitals was found.

The study contributed to identify the relationship among the intervening factors turning possible to simplify and reduce them more comprehensively than those originally identified in the literature and at the same time maintaining the representativeness of the original variables.