14 research outputs found
Knowing What is Good for You. Empirical Analysis of Personal Preferences and the 'Objective Good'
Knowing what is good for you: empirical analysis of personal preferences and the 'objective good'
This paper aims to test empirically if certain frequently used measures of well-being, which are regarded as valuable properties of human life, are actually desired by people. In other words, it investigates whether the âexpert judgmentsâ in social science overlap with social consensus on what the âgood lifeâ is. The starting hypothesis is that there is an overlap between these two in the case of basic needs. For the analysis, individualsâ self-reported life satisfaction is used as a proxy for âutilityâ, based on survey data, which includes about 30 000 individuals from 21 different European countries. The results indicate that the commonly used measures of well-being â labour market situation, health, housing conditions and social relations â significantly influence peopleâs satisfaction, ceteris paribus. Next, the stability of preferences is tested using Hungarian data from the 1990s. The results indicate that there was only very limited change in the relationship between life satisfaction and basic measures of well-being despite the landslide of societal and economic transformation
Methodology for identification of healthstyles for developing effective behavior change interventions
Are customer satisfaction measures equally applicable across research contexts, or do we need a more differentiated approach?
Narrative, organizations and research
Given the rapid expansion of narrative approaches in management and organization theory in recent years, this paper investigates the contribution of this literature to the under-standing of organizations and processes of organizing. The paper tells the story of the development of narrative approaches in organizational theory. Narrative's contribution to substantive areas of organization theory is evaluated. These developments are then reviewed in relation to an ongoing tension between story and science. We conclude by contemplating some of the criticisms, and the future, of narrative research. © Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2005