203 research outputs found
Using New Technologies for Time Diary Data Collection: Instrument Design and Data Quality Findings from a Mixed-Mode Pilot Survey
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Simultaneous activities in the household and residential electricity demand in Spain
Recent research and policy studies on the low-carbon future highlight the importance of flexible electricity demand. This might be problematic particularly for residential electricity demand, which is related to simultaneous consumersâ practices in the household. This paper analyses issues of simultaneity in residential electricity demand in Spain. It makes use of the 2011 Spanish Time Use Survey data with comparisons from the previous Spanish Time Use Survey and the Harmonised European Time Use Surveys. Findings show that media activities are associated the highest levels of continuity and simultaneity, particularly in the early and late parts of the evening during weekdays
Attaching metabolic expenditures to standard occupational classification systems: perspectives from time-use research
Abstract Background Traditionally, time-use data have been used to inform a broad range of economic and sociological research topics. One of the new areas in time-use research is the study of physical activity (PA) and physical activity energy expenditure (PAEE). Time-use data can be used to study PAEE by assigning MET values to daily activities using the Ainsworth Compendium of Physical Activities. Although most diarists record their daily activities accurately and in detail, they are only required to record their paid working hours, not the job-specific tasks they undertake. This makes it difficult to assign MET values to paid work episodes. Methods In this methodological paper, we explain how we addressed this problem by using the detailed information about respondentsâ occupational status included in time-use survey household and individual questionnaires. We used the 2008 ISCO manual, a lexicon of the International Labour Organization of occupational titles and their related job-specific tasks. We first assigned a MET value to job-specific tasks using the Ainsworth compendium (2011) then calculated MET values for each of the 436 occupations in the ISCO-08 manual by averaging all job-specific MET values for each occupation. Results The ISCO-08 Major Groups of âelementary occupationsâ and âcraft and related trades workersâ are associated with high PAEE variation in terms of their job-specific MET values and together represented 21.6% of the Belgian working population in 2013. We recommend that these occupational categories should be prioritised for further in-depth research into occupational activity (OA). Conclusions We developed a clear and replicable procedure to calculate occupational activity for all ISCO-08 occupations. All of our calculations are attached to this manuscript which other researchers may use, replicate and refine
Outsourcing and structural change: shifting firm and sectoral boundaries
The paper aims at investigating the structural change implications of
outsourcing. In trying to bridge the organizational/industrial and the
sectoral/structural analysis of outsourcing, it discusses the rational and
the methodological pros and cons of a âbatteryâ of outsourcing measurements
for structural change analysis. Their functioning is then illustrated
through a concise application of them to the OECD area over the â80s and
the early â90s. A combined used of them emerges as recommendable in
checking for the role of outsourcing with respect to that of other structural
change determinants
The deindustrialisation/tertiarisation hypothesis reconsidered: a subsystem application to the OECD7
The diffusion of outsourcing, both national and international, and
vertical FDIs among manufacturing firms, along with the higher integra-
tion of business services in manufacturing, has recently led to question
the empirical evidence supporting the Deindustrialisation/Tertiarisation
(DT) hypothesis. Rather than a \real" phenomenon, it has been argued,
DT would be an \apparent" one, mainly due to the reorganization of
production across national and sectoral boundaries.
The empirical studies that have dealt with the topic so far have
not been able to effectively rule out such possibility, because of two
main limitations: the sectoral level of the analysis and/or the national
focus. In order to overcome them, the paper carries out an appreciative
investigation of the actual extent of the DT occurred in the OECD
area over the '80s and the '90s by moving from a sector to a subsystem
perspective, thus retaining both direct and indirect relations, and by
referring to a \pseudo-World" of 7 OECD countries, thus taking into
account the \global" dimension of the phenomenon.
The results strongly support the DT hypothesis: although the weight
of business sector services in the manufacturing subsystem increased,
acting as a counterbalancing tendency to the manufacturing decline,
subsystem shares significantly decreased, thus confirming DT as a more
fundamental trend of modern economies
Social times, reproduction and social inequality at work : contrasts and comparative perspectives between countries
Production of INCASI Project H2020-MSCA-RISE-2015 GA 691004If the focus is placed specifically on the problem of work and family, the daily life of people and their use of time are a main problem. This time is expressed in both freely available time, which is related to activities, and time of the productive and reproductive sphere. This chapter considers work in a broad sense and takes into account the sexual division of labour. Specifically, this chapter will explore transformations in time use and social inequality in unpaid work. For this purpose, a comparative analysis of time-use surveys will be used, analysing the time spent, and the time dedicated to household chores in Chile, Argentina, Uruguay and Spain. From an analytical viewpoint, the analysis will place social reproduction at the centre of the socio-economic system, showing that the economic crisis has affected women and men differently, and that in both Europe and Latin America the family pattern is being replaced by a dominant family model of a male provider and a double presence of women. The large-scale incorporation of women into the labour market has emphasised the role that women assume in the domestic sphere perpetuating gender segregation in employment and in domestic and care work
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New Faces and New Masks of Today's Consumer
In 1995, we proposed that consumption and contemporary consumerism could not be studied or understood separately from the world of work and production. We proposed that contemporary consumerism was built on the back of what we referred to as `the Fordist Deal'. This deal, pioneered by Henry Ford for his employees, was the promise of ever increasing standards of living in exchange for a quiescent labour force accepting alienating work. Since that deal was struck, consumerism came to signify a general pre-occupation with consumption standards and choice as well as a willingness to read meanings in material commodities and to equate happiness and success with material possessions. In this sense, Ford may be seen as the father both of mass production and mass consumption. Since the Fordist high noon of consumerism in the West, mass consumption is widely seen as having fragmented into a proliferation of highly individualized niche products. For its part, a considerable part of mass production has migrated to countries with lower wages and looser environmental and social controls, fueling their own variants of consumerism. In this article, we examine the gradual erosion of the Fordist Deal in the light of developments in the last 10 years or so, seeking to assess the future of consumerism at a global level. We also seek to identify and discuss some emerging conceptualizations of the consumer, some of the new faces and masks assumed by the archetypal character of our types. We analyse some of the tensions and contradictions lurking behind these conceptualizations and try to envisage some of the real choices facing consumers today and some of the processes of social change that hinge on the outcomes of these choices. The article identifies a fundamental paradox between the ubiquity of the consumer in contemporary discourses and the virtual impossibility of generalizing about consumers. We suggest, then, that the consumer may be viewed as one of those `essentially contested concepts' proposed by Gallie that defy domestication. The consumer, we argue, is unmanageable, both as a concept, since no-one can pin it down to one specific conceptualization at the expense of all others, and as an entity, since attempts to control and manage the consumer lead to the consumer mutating from one impersonation to another. It is precisely this paradox that we seek to capture in our article's title. The article concludes with a consideration of three basic challenges that are liable to lead to fundamental reorientation of consumption and production, as well as of our conceptualizations and theorizing about them. These challenges are the outcomes of environmental, demographic and social factors that, we argue, make the current situation unsustainable and will bring about its dissolution
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