Search results

Drawing on a unique combination of longitudinal administrative data and a postal survey, the purpose of this paper is to identify the socio-economic factors and individual characteristics that affect senior citizens’ decision to continue working on the Swedish labour market after the standard retirement age.

By using standard econometric techniques (multinomial logit model) on a large representative sample of 20,000 senior citizens residing in Sweden, the auhtors analyse the extent to which socio-economic factors and individual characteristics including personality traits affect the decision of senior citizens to delay retirement and to continue working after the standard retirement age.

The results of our estimations show clearly that good health, high educational attainment/high-skilled jobs, good psychosocial work environment, employment status (to be self-employed), personality traits (extraversion, openness to experience and conscientiousness) as well as industrial sectors (agriculture, healthcare and transport) are strong predictors of the continuation of work after the standard retirement age (65 years old).

High job quality and good working conditions, along with continuous improvements in public health, are seemingly essential elements for motivating senior workers to delay retirement as are preventive policy measures favouring the development of decent and sustainable working conditions across the life course.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the paper is the first attempt in Sweden to analyse jointly a large range of factors influencing the decision to remain in the labour force after the standard/normal pension age, including psychosocial working conditions and personality traits.

It is important to understand why some workers prolong their working life even though they are entitled to statutory pension benefits. This paper aims to investigate whether senior workers are motivated by external factors such as pay and social expectations (extrinsic motivation) or are primarily motivated by internal factors such as job satisfaction (intrinsic motivation). This is a central question for policymakers and social partners when it comes to the design of public pension systems and work organisation.

This study uses a combined longitudinal administrative data and an own-designed postal survey to ask individuals aged 65–76 years to describe their work motivation. Based on the answers, this study constructs an index of autonomous motivation (AM) where a value of zero implies only extrinsic motivation and a value of one implies only intrinsic motivation. The values between zero and one thus imply various grades of AM, where higher values signal motivation that is more autonomous and hence a higher degree of intrinsic work motivation.

The results of the statistical analysis show that the extent of intrinsic motivation is higher among senior workers who retired aged 65 years or older compared to those who retired at 65 years or younger. In addition, this study found that the degree of intrinsic work motivation among senior workers decreases when they face economic and financial constraints. It also found that intrinsic motivation is more prevalent among high-skilled workers.

This study shows that individuals who continue to work after 65 are mostly motivated by the satisfaction they derive from their job. Job satisfaction is strongly related to skill level, job quality, job content and job autonomy. Results indicate that job quality and commitment to work are essential elements for motivating seniors to postpone retirement.

This study contributes to this literature by applying a multidisciplinary approach from organisational psychology and labour economics that considers the potential importance of intrinsic motivation to work after standard retirement age. The authors think that this approach enhances the understanding of the mechanisms behind the lengthening of working life. Finally, this study suggests a simple, but efficient way of empirically measuring the extent of intrinsic motivation among workers.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the main evolutions and the current situation of the 50‐74 year olds on the labour market in eight European countries (Denmark France, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, Sweden, Poland and the UK).

Based on a cross‐country comparative approach, this overview draws on detailed analysis of the situation of older workers and public policies in each of the selected countries but also on a wide range of available studies and statistics on employment and welfare outcomes.

The eight selected countries display similarities: a u‐shaped pattern of employment rates of older workers (55‐64 years old) over the last 40 years, with an increase since the mid 1990s, the later exit of higher educated workers and the higher prevalence of non‐standard employment contracts among older workers. On the other hand, considerable disparities can be observed regarding the gender gap in employment rate, current employment rates, self‐employment and part‐time employment among older workers.

Specific questions will be more acute with the effective postponement of retirement: increasing inequalities between groups of older workers, increasing uncertainty about the age of retirement, the way to keep lower educated workers in their jobs, sustainable working conditions, increasing risks of age discrimination, and impact of care of older relatives.

This paper offers a synthetic overview with a special attention paid to the main features of the countries’ exit patterns at the end of the working life, the prevailing public policies and the specificity of the different national employment and societal models.

A collection of essays by a social economist seeking to balance economics as a science of means with the values deemed necessary to man′s finding the good life and society enduring as a civilized instrumentality. Looks for authority to great men of the past and to today′s moral philosopher: man is an ethical animal. The 13 essays are: 1. Evolutionary Economics: The End of It All? which challenges the view that Darwinism destroyed belief in a universe of purpose and design; 2. Schmoller′s Political Economy: Its Psychic, Moral and Legal Foundations, which centres on the belief that time‐honoured ethical values prevail in an economy formed by ties of common sentiment, ideas, customs and laws; 3. Adam Smith by Gustav von Schmoller – Schmoller rejects Smith′s natural law and sees him as simply spreading the message of Calvinism; 4. Pierre‐Joseph Proudhon, Socialist – Karl Marx, Communist: A Comparison; 5. Marxism and the Instauration of Man, which raises the question for Marx: is the flowering of the new man in Communist society the ultimate end to the dialectical movement of history?; 6. Ethical Progress and Economic Growth in Western Civilization; 7. Ethical Principles in American Society: An Appraisal; 8. The Ugent Need for a Consensus on Moral Values, which focuses on the real dangers inherent in there being no consensus on moral values; 9. Human Resources and the Good Society – man is not to be treated as an economic resource; man′s moral and material wellbeing is the goal; 10. The Social Economist on the Modern Dilemma: Ethical Dwarfs and Nuclear Giants, which argues that it is imperative to distinguish good from evil and to act accordingly: existentialism, situation ethics and evolutionary ethics savour of nihilism; 11. Ethical Principles: The Economist′s Quandary, which is the difficulty of balancing the claims of disinterested science and of the urge to better the human condition; 12. The Role of Government in the Advancement of Cultural Values, which discusses censorship and the funding of art against the background of the US Helms Amendment; 13. Man at the Crossroads draws earlier themes together; the author makes the case for rejecting determinism and the “operant conditioning” of the Skinner school in favour of the moral progress of autonomous man through adherence to traditional ethical values.

Surveillance studies scholars have embraced Foucault's panopticon as a central metaphor in their analysis of online monitoring technologies, despite several architectural incompatibilities between eighteenth and nineteenth century prisons and twenty-first century computer networks. I highlight a number of Internet features that highlight the limits of the electronic panopticon. I examine two trends that have been considerably underestimated by surveillance scholars: (1) the democratization of surveillance, where the distributed structure of the Internet and the availability of observation technologies has blurred the distinction between those who watch and those who are being watched, allowing individuals or marginalized groups to deploy sophisticated surveillance technologies against the state or large corporations; and (2) the resistance strategies that Internet users are adopting to curb the surveillance of their online activities, through blocking moves such as the use of cryptography, or masking moves that are designed to feed meaningless data to monitoring tools. I conclude that these two trends are neglected by a majority of surveillance scholars because of biases that make them dismiss the initiative displayed by ordinary users, assess positive and negative outcomes differently, and confuse what is possible and what is probable.

Humanity is facing an unprecedented challenge of climate crises. Rapid changes to the physical environment and living conditions will be accompanied by challenges to mental health and well-being. Consequently, education for sustainable development should also include coping strategies for stress and anxiety. Adding intra-personal skills to the curriculum, such as self-reflection and mindfulness training, could aid in this education. This case study aims to explore the barriers to and drivers for fostering inner transitions through intra-personal skills training and mindfulness.

This case study from Lund University, Sweden, constitutes a critical case for investigating inner transitions in education. Data collection was designed around semi-structured qualitative interviews, to investigate the barriers to and drivers for intra-personal skills and mindfulness in education for sustainable development at all institutional levels of the university.

The results indicate that education for sustainable development already includes elements of introspection, albeit informally. However, there is a lack in a fundamental understanding of intra-personal skills and how they relate to other key competences for sustainable development. To make intra-personal skills training a formal component of the education, it must receive the full support from all levels of the university.

The study outlines general recommendations for universities to challenge existing policies while also finding ways to work around them. In the meantime, universities should make intra-personal skills training an informal learning activity. Recognizing that the students’ prior knowledge in this area is a potential asset, universities should collaborate with their students to support student-led intra-personal skills training.

While recent theoretical discussions around discourse–material relationality have facilitated important conceptual and analytical advancements within the broader field of CMS, less progress has been made methodologically with regard to innovating empirical methods and data modes. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to contribute to strengthening the methodological focus in the literature when grappling with the relationality of discourse–materiality and co-constitution. This includes a method-retooling framework inspired by new materialism.

In this article, the authors engage at the methodological level by developing a method-retooling framework that combines insights from organizational discourse studies and new materialist thinking. This framework enables a retooling of existing methods to become sensitive to multimodality and offers two concrete examples that were developed during fieldwork for a multi-sited and multi-method case study in 2018.

Based on the framework for retooling methods for multimodality, two illustrations are offered. These include retooling interviews by employing multimodal vignettes and retooling observations by using multimodal mappings. They are unfolded and discussed regarding their appropriation of discourse–material relationality.

This paper includes original research and method developments – adding a critical focus on the methodological aspects and potential advancements that are necessary in the wake of the ongoing debates around discourse–materiality across CMS and specifically within studies of organizational discourse and CCO. By suggesting a framework, the authors stimulate methodological explorations and contribute to furthering method developments that are equal to the rich conceptual progress made within the field.

Narrative criminology has continued to expand as an important theoretical and methodological contribution to the study of crime and justice. However, the vast majority of narrative work focuses on the narrative development of those identified as criminal offenders, and little research has explored the narratives of those employed within the criminal justice system. This chapter examines the importance of police storytelling and the unique narratives vital to the cultural life and institution of policing. Police stories are an important part of the ‘meaning-making structure’ in policing and often convey particular power well beyond the limitations of formal organizational or agency policy. Police stories frequently influence understandings of the nature of social problems; community change and decay; and even understandings of race, class, and gender. Police narratives and stories also offer some unique methodological challenges for narrative scholars. Analysis of police stories must focus on the underlying plot details while still analysing the themes or metaphors provided by the narrative. This may require specific attention to the role the story plays in police culture, training, and development of organizational cohesion. Furthermore, narrative researchers must explore the shared narratives distinctive to the profession, while still examining unique meanings that stories convey to different departments and even specialized units. Finally, access to police organizations and individual officers can represent unique challenge for narrative researchers. By examining police narratives, we gain unique insight into the production and maintenance of police authority and culture accomplished through the storytelling process.

The police response to the protests in Ferguson, Missouri refocused attention on law enforcement agencies’ participation in the military surplus equipment program, or 1,033 Program. Given the extensive media coverage, particularly regarding the acquisition of military vehicles and weapons, it is important to empirically investigate the 1,033 Program. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Survey data were collected from 1,205 law enforcement regarding 1,033 Program participation and the types of equipment acquired. This study also explores whether significant differences exist by region, agency type, and size.

The results demonstrated that while a majority of state and local law enforcement agencies participated in the 1,033 Program, a significant number of agencies did not. Acquisition of military surplus weapons, vehicles, and other types of equipment was not the norm. Significant differences were discerned for overall participation and equipment acquisition based on region, agency type, and size.

This study does not address other concerns such as how surplus military equipment is used or policies agencies may have to govern that use, which provide avenues for further research to discern best practices.

Law enforcement agencies do not appear to acquire military vehicles and weapons to the extent that has been dramatized by the media.

This study contributes empirical data to inform the discussion of law enforcement agencies’ acquisition of military surplus equipment in the USA.

Communications regarding this column should be addressed to Mrs. Cheney, Peabody Library School, Nashville, Term. 37203. Mrs. Cheney does not sell the books listed here. They are available through normal trade sources. Mrs. Cheney, being a member of the editorial board of Pierian Press, will not review Pierian Press reference books in this column. Descriptions of Pierian Press reference books will be included elsewhere in this publication.