Striking a different balance: work-family conflict for female and male managers in a Scandinavian context

This article is (c) Emerald Group Publishing and permission has been granted for this version to appear here. Emerald does not grant permission for this article to be further copied/distributed or hosted elsewhere without the express permission from Emerald Group Publishing Limited.Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore how male and female managers may regulate their workload differently in response to conflicting job‐home pressures. The main hypothesis is that female managers seek to reduce anticipated discord by investing less time in their work role. The paper investigates this postulated link between managers' gender and work‐family conflict via their workload, based on a conceptual model and within a Scandinavian context. The central argument is evaluated against a competing explanation of structural constraints, implying that female managers in stead of choosing reduced workloads are required to work less. Design/methodology/approach – The paper is based on a large survey of Norwegian managers. The applied sample size is 2,195, with 1,740 men and 455 women. In addition to indicators of time‐based work‐family conflict the questionnaire contains detailed information on managers' individual background and positional characteristics. To trace direct and indirect influences of gender over different analytical stages, a step‐wise regression analysis is carried out. Findings – Initial investigations document that female managers have a lighter workload, more frequently perceive glass ceiling constraints and less often experience work‐family conflict. Step‐wise regression analysis demonstrates that the effect of gender on job‐home tensions is mediated mainly by managers' workload, and is less related to the glass ceiling. This pattern is consistent with central hypothesis, still the alternative explanation cannot be totally ruled out. Research limitations/implications – This paper is limited to the Scandinavian setting at a single point in time. Practical implications – It is important that employers recognize the need for more optimal time arrangements for women in higher‐level positions. In addition, female managers could benefit from support networks across work organizations. Originality/value – This paper is among the first to examine the mediational processes by which gender influences work‐family interdependencies for managers, tracing indirect pathways as well as direct effects for alternative model specifications. A representative sample with a broad set of individual and positional characteristics in combination with a relevant regression approach provides credible and robust results

Carbohydrate and lipid composition of vegetables, and bioavalability assessed in a rat model: Impact different cultivation systems

Environmental as well as cultivation factors may greatly influence the chemical composition of plants. The main factors affecting chemical composition of foodstuff is level and type of fertilizer (conventional and organic cultivation systems), location or soiltype and year of harvest. Organic foods are defined as products which are produced under controlled cultivation conditions characterized by the absence of synthetic fertilizers and very restricted use of pesticides. Dietary carbohydrates constitute a major fraction of most feedstuffs and can be divided according to glycosidic linkage into sugars (mono- and disaccharides), oligosaccharides, starch and non-starch polysaccharides (NSP). The bulk of disaccharides and starch will be broken down by the action of pancreatic and mucosal enzymes in the small intestine, while there are no enzymes capable of cleaving some types of oligosaccharides and NSP. A fraction of starch (resistant starch) may also pass the small intestine undegraded either because the starch is physically inaccessible, the starch has a structure that resist amylolysis or the starch is retrograded after heat treatment. Lignin is not a carbohydrate but is tightly associated to cell wall polysaccharides. The term dietary fibre (DF) is used for cell wall and storage NSP and lignin. Adequate intake of dietary fibre are generally accepted as linked to health benefit into a protective role in large bowel cancer, diabetes, coronary heart disease and the issue of faecal bulking. Linoleic (C18:2 n-6) and α-linolenic (C18:3 n-3) are essential fatty acids, which cannot be synthesized in the mammalian organism, and therefore must be supplied in the diet of animals and man. These fatty acids are precursors for the important longer chain higher polyunsaturated fatty acids of the n-6 and n-3 families. Although fats are essential part of the diet, but if consumed in excess, they may exert negative effects on human weight change. Potatoes, carrots, peas, green kale, apple, and rapeseed were grown by three different cultivation strategies, i.e. organic (ORG), conventional (CON), or semi-organic (ORG+) farming system. Each ingredient was treated as for application for human consumption: potatoes, mature, soaked peas and kale were boiled and raw carrots and apples were shredded, and the food was then freeze-dried and packed into airtight bags. Rapeseed oil was produced from the air-dried rapeseeds of the three cultivation treatments, and the residual was discarded. The carbohydrate fraction of the ingredients except rapeseed oil was analysed into: starch, sugars, oligosaccharides and all its constituents and lignin. Likewise the dietary lipids of all ingredients were extracted and the long-chain fatty acids determined by GLC. The ingredients were mixed with a standard synthetic mixture and were formulated to meet the NRC requirements for rats and used in a balance experiments for measuring the bioavalability of the ingredients. Carbohydrate and lignin were predominant dietary constituents with value from 584 g/kg DM in kale to 910 g/kg DM in potatoes. Triacylglycerol was the major lipid class in pea with 82 % of total fatty acids in contrast to apple with only 35 % of fatty acids of the ether extract

Håp for klasseanalysen?

AbstractOne generation ago, class analysis was at the core of the discipline. Today, the concept is more seldom in use, and only in a small proportion of empirical analyses is class regarded as a critical explanatory variable. In a world of a growing gap between rich and poor and increasing reproduction of inequality, it is problematic that sociologists apparently lack relevant tools for grasping important mechanisms and processes. In this article three alternative responses to the present situation are discussed: Class as before (nearly), class as rent seeking, and classes as occupations. The presentation is illustrated by recent works of Stefan Svallfors, Aage B. Sørensen and David Grusky/Kim Weeden. The discussion is followed by a first, preliminary empirical evaluation, where conventional (nominal and graded) approaches are compared to an occupation-class version on a detailed level. Findings, based on data from the European Social Survey (ESS) suggest that the Grusky/Wedeen results are robust. Further empirical analyses are clearly needed, especially with alternative conceptualisations of detailed classes linked to the site of production or occupations. In the final part, possible collective efforts to improve the basis for class analysis within the Norwegian setting are discussed.Key words: Class analysis, Occupation based classes, Site of production based classes, Conventional class analysis, Alternative class analysi

Journeys – an introduction

According to Giambattista Vico, inventive and creative thinking involves the ability to actively combine conditions in new ways and the ability to constantly observe the diverse circumstances through new perspectives. With this idealistic axiom in mind the call for Journeys was aiming at a multifarious approach across the academic disciplines trying to accommodate space in-between the specialized and at times restricted disciplines. Based on this broad condition the call for this issue of Academic Quarter invited contributions about journeys in very general terms – “across the humanistic disciplines“, “from Homer to the present.“ The ambition was to focus “on the journey as a focal point and the human element in its centre“ – not in a narrow sense of the word, but including “related categories and sub-categories such as literary forms/genres comprising everything from scientific or religious traveling to famous movie site tourism or colonially motivated mobility or subjects that involve cultural aspects, images of identity/identification and imaginary encounters that are mediated through journeys.“ Journeys direct attention to the exchange of cultural relationships, but also to those not characterized through regular conventions. “In this sense identity or identification could be seen as something that is intimately connected to mobility, whether it is journeys of reality or imaginary.“ Reflecting on the etymological starting point, the journey is, according to Douglas Harper Etymological Dictionary, “traveling from one place to another“. That naturally gives the distance or room between “one place to another“ endless possibilities. The call has thus not been formulated with the intention of defining the concept of journeys, but rather to shed light on the multidimensional meanings and understandings of the operative room in-between places. The methodical emphasis or the choice of theories will also connect the room to new interesting combinations. The attempt to investigate and isolate different characteristics in the traveler´s ontology is determined not only by the characteristics of the traveler per se, but equally on the premises for why and how the distance between “one place to another“ is accomplished. The journey as a medium for getting from one point to another is in clear contrast to what the Italian photographer and traveler Matteo Vegetti has characterized as the “The Art of Getting Lost“. Vegetti writes “Getting lost allowed me to live extraordinary situations and meet incredible people I would have never experienced, had I followed a map or a guidebook.“ (Vegetti, 2011) Sigmund Freud would apply a different interpretation claiming that the strongest motivation for traveling lies in the fulfilment of these early wishes to escape the family and especially the father.“ (cited in Fussell, 1980) In Vegetti´s assumption there is a clear distancing from mass traveling i.e. what is generally termed mass tourism. Mass tourism is in short a combination of mass-accessibility and mass-attendance making it an absolute requisite that the necessary transportation is available and that it can accommodate the masses. Another point could be made that the journey is more about the experience between “one place to another“ whereas “Tourism takes place when people – hosts and guests – perform tourist places (...)“. (Bærenholdt, 2007) In other words the tourist and the travel pattern connected to this category, is more engaged in the place and thus passive compared to the active traveler. This antithesis between traveler and tourist has reminiscences back to an old 17th and 18th century conflict where the journey amongst others was related to action, danger, courage and heroism. In this period the traveler was the empirical link between society and the unknown. Thus, scientists (and traders) were instructed to keep detailed reports of their whereabouts in order to facilitate other potential travelers´ navigation. In this engagement the traveler was meant to fill in the blank points in the geographical knowledge that was “strange to us“. (Sherman, 2002) The blank points also included updates on “figures and shapes of men and women in their apparel as also their manner... in every place as you shall find them differing [from us]“. (Sherman, 2002) The heroism and fame that was associated with traveling triggered a massive production of travel books. Within this production, it is necessary to distinguish between different literary forms though a common motivation across the different types of genres seems based on the relationship between curiosity and observation. Out of this elementary condition a general travel activity arises, whose function serves two main purposes: On the one hand, the account is a source of new and informative insights about the unfamiliar, mediated through the contact between different societies, in order to obtain empirical information about other societies as the basis for knowledge and orientation. On the other hand, the discovery could lead to a transformation of the traveler´s self-understanding and his place in nature. Man´s place in nature – biology and religion as the two key factors – thus justified and motivated a great deal of journeys and the subsequent production of travel accounts. (Stagl, 1995) Hence travel literature is used as a broad term for accounts, whether you can determine them as a historical or fictional. Within this margin of fiction and non-fiction a diverging travel-art took form – the imaginary journey – a genre that gave the writer´s plot a limitless range of performance. This genre is in many ways peculiar, as it “often produces a highly developed “sixth sense“ of the human aspect“ that could generate great contemporary effect. One of the most successful imaginary travel writers and a model example of this phenomenon, is the German Karl May (1842-1912), who began his career as a writer while he was serving jail-time for minor theft. May´s conceptual universe and geographical frame included both America and Asia without him having actually been there. (May was in America, but it was after the publication of the American accounts.) May wrote under the synonyms as Capitan Ramon Diaz de la Escosura, Prinz Muhamel Lautréamont and Ernst von Linden, just to name a few. May´s books have sold more than 200 million copies and translated into over 30 languages ?? including Hebrew and Esperanto. Additionally, his books on the Indian Winnetou were made into film being the indirect cause of the spaghetti-western genre. (Frayling, 1998) This issue reflects the broad definition of journeys in the call, in our opinion in a positive way. Although the contributions to this issue of Academic Quarter share a common theme, the articles altogether demonstrate the varieties of approaches to the theme: Journeys can be discussed and explored in many ways and in a number of academic disciplines – from tourism to experimental theatre, from literature to digital role-playing games. We have tried to create some system – or order – by organizing the articles in sections – tourist travels and travel literature, journeys in history, journeys in literature, film and theatre, digital journeys and spiritual journeys. Some articles could have been categorized in more than one of these sections: Arthur Conan Doyle´s deep interest in spiritualism is one of the themes in Jørgen Riber Christensen´s literary article “Arthur Conan Doyle´s Quest Journey to The Land of Mist“. Thomas Halloran´s article on travel literature is at the same time a contribution to a specific literary genre and to the discussion of post-colonial Africa. Two articles deal with tourists´ travels from different perspectives: the first discusses the relation between tourism and identity, in particular the variations in tourist travels as elements of identity construction (Bodil S. Blichfeldt & Karina M. Smed); the second takes the reader back to the age of Victorian England and early popular tourism and argues that the guide book and museums of the Victorian age did not only introduce the objects of tourists´ travels but also presented institutionalized interpretations of them (Rune Andersen). A related, still different approach can be found in the travel literature which is analyzed by Thomas F. Halloran in his discussion of the American perception of lack of modernity in the postcolonial Africa; and by John S. Vassar who introduces the world of James Herriot – in an attempt of “a rereading“ of his popular stories as works of travel literature. Travel literature is a genre in its own right. The theme – identity – remains in focus when we move from tourism to spiritual travels; or to be precise: The “Identification-of-self“ – is the theme in Patrick J. Holladay and Lauren M. Ponder´s article about yoga-spirit-travels. History as a study is, per se, a journey in time, and journeys in history/historical journeys cover a broad range of topics and approaches; in the present volume the historical approach is represented by four articles, the first based upon accounts of colonial journeys to the New World (North America) in the 17th century addressing issues such as sovereignty, government and authority (Johan Heinsen); the second about journeys of conquest in colonial Nigeria in the late 19th and early 20th centuries (Nwankwo T. Nwaezeigwe). Two articles deal with journeys in the Middle East. Eivind Heldaas Seland writes about overland travelling between the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf in the 18th and early 19th century. Leonardo Gregoratti takes us back to the 1st century AD and the Chinese expansion westwards in an attempt to establish contacts and economic relationships with the Roman Empire. Gregoratti tells the story of a mission led by a Chinese dignitary Gan Ying around 97 AD that had to stop at the borders of the Parthian kingdom; returning to China, he wrote a report about his meeting with the Parthians, which Gregoratti presents in the article. Altogether the four articles on historical journeys point to a variety of motivations for traveling – as mentioned above: People have traveled in order to explore new worlds, others have traveled to escape from dangers of various sorts, human, ecological etc.; some have traveled for political purposes, others for economic gains and profits, for ideological or religious reasons. A few of these are presented in this issue. The majority of contributions to this issue of Academic Quarter investigate the many facets of journeys in literature and the arts, film, and theatre. This section includes articles about famous writers such as Arthur Conan Doyle (Jørgen Riber Christensen), Ernest Callenbach (Kim Toft Hansen), Henri Michaux and Nicolas Bouvier (Lënia Marques), Jack Kerouac (Bent Sørensen), D. H. Lawrence (Minjeong Kim), Herman Melville (Rasmus Grøn) and Douglas Coupland (Mikkel Jensen). There are contributions on modern directors and film-makers, experimental theatre and movies – articles that that investigate the worlds of “ecotopia“ (Kim Toft Hansen), the dangerous travels of the illegal immigration from Mexico to USA (Pablo Cristoffanini), theatrical performances from the point of view of the spectators (Elsa Belhomme), and the issue of mobility in artist´s cinema in a context of globalization and of cultural transnationalism (Miro Soares). The authrs investigate a great variety of issues related to journeys or discussed by metaphors of the journey. Jørgen Riber Christensen´s article describes how the territorial journey of the quest was used narratologically by Conan Doyle in his Challenger novels to explore the contradictory realm of applying a scientific approach to the subject of spiritualism. Kim Toft Hansen illustrates traveling as a means of becoming aware of man´s problematic handling of nature. In his analysis of the American filmmaker Cary Fukunagy´s Sin Nombre Pablo Rolando Cristoffanini argues for a contextual interpretation of the film as a contribution to a discussion of serious conflicts in Mexico in a utopian and ideological manner. Lënia Marques demonstrates the role of imagination in the writing of Michaux and Bouvier, two travelers in the 20th century, who wrote about their experiences between the real and the imaginary; memory played the main role, but imagination had a role too. Minjeong Kim examines D.H. Lawrence´s novel The Lost Girl (1920) as a Bildungsroman, in which a journey to southern Italy is described as emancipation from patriarchal dominance and at the same time a cultural encounter between English (European) civilization and “unrestrained primitivism“. Bent Sørensen argues that the journeys in Jack Kerouac´s 1957 novel On the Road are used as a metaphor for socially triggered psychological travails. Journeys both express an urge for constant motion and at the same time require stability and order. Mikkel Jensen in his analysis of a Douglas Coupland short story depicts the journey as representing two parallel narratives of human development (father and son) and a drive from urban center to the Canadian countryside. Rasmus Grøn analyses the journey – in Moby Dick – as both a cultural project and an individual, subjective project. The many meanings of the journey as a metaphor directing our attention towards mobility, uncertainties and the unknown territory between the starting point and the end cannot be missed when surveying the literary contributions to this issue. The perspective is changed in the two articles on experimental film and theatre by Miro Soares and Elsa Belhomme. Analyzing two plays Belhomme shows how the spectators must undertake “an intro-directed journey and renegotiate their own sense of being in the theatre.“ It is “a process similar to that of the traveler“, she claims. Miro Soares is elaborating an initial notion of voluntary uprooting as a creative process; uprooting is “responsible for breaking the time and space instances of the daily existence“. The perspective is changed, but the themes and associated concepts related to traveling are the same. </p> Closing this section is an essay, not on journeys in literature, rather the opposite, traveling literature so to speak: the mobile library. (Pirkko Raudaskoski & Thessa Jensen) The argument is that mobility creates conditions for new forms of sociability, and that the rationale, according to the two authors, is that the library constitutes a basis for democracy; access to knowledge and information is a condition for democracy. It is the purpose of the article to discuss the mobile library on a theoretical as well as an empirical level. Journeys in the digital world is discussed by Nick Webber in his article on travel as a theme in online roleplaying games. Travel constitutes a significant activity in many online roleplaying games, “whether players are pursuing quests, trading, adventuring or simply exploring“, as Nick Webber writes in the introduction to his article. Nick Webber´s approach is from the perspective of the games as well as the gamers. It is quite a different sort of digital journey that is explored by Thessa Jensen and Peter Vistisen in their article about the BBC´s “Sherlock“ – a modernization of “Sherlock Holmes“ for the TV media. BBC transferred the well-known story of Sherlock Holmes from the 19th to the 21st´century, and the article follows the transfer of “Sherlock“ from television to the social media – from BBC´s homepages to Twitter, Tumblr, Omegle.com and more; it is a digital journey which also transformed the meanings and functions of the original series. Altogether, the articles leave the impression that across academic disciplines, the reader of fiction or historical literature, the spectator in theatres or cinemas, the traveler in search of the unfamiliar or the tourist who wants an instruction to the unfamiliar, all share that of crossing the territories of time and space and trying to make sense of the unfamiliar. The articles investigate that area (the unfamiliar) in various ways and at the same time make it clear that other ways might have been possible and perhaps fruitful. In preparing this issue of Academic Quarter it was our hope that new insights might be gained by discussing journeys in a broad context, including “the mutual relationship between real and imaginary as co-producers in the constitution of the self and the other“ – as we wrote in the call, No doubt, the articles in this issue demonstrate that it is one of the key element of “journeys“ – as a pattern of human mobility – to challenge the familiar and conventional codes of conduct and perception. The question: What makes a journey? Cannot be answered unequivocal, but in our view the contributions to this issue of Academic Quarter have nevertheless successfully captured Vico´s multifarious angle and combined mobility and the art of travel in new way

On the way. Men's and women's managerial careers in Norway

This article analyzes how men’s and women’s careers are influenced by path dependence, different career determinants, and generation gaps. The analysis is based on panel data from AFF’s leadership surveys, and follows a representative sample of Norwegian managers in the middle phase of their careers between 1999 and 2011. The data shows that male managers start their careers in higher managerial positions and invest longer hours in their jobs than their female colleagues. Women who are careerists do succeed, however, in reducing some of men’s advantage later on. Higher education and jobs in private Sector firms are significant determinants of women’s chances for reaching a top management position. For male managers it is seemingly more important to start their careers at high levels, and to invest in future promotion opportunities by working long hours. Young female managers at the outset of their careers in 2011 started in higher positions than those at the same age twelve years earlier. The article demonstrates how panel analysis and cohort analysis may bring new insights into men’s and women’s career trajectories, and concludes by suggesting how such approaches may be further developed in future research.I denne artikkelen undersøkes hvordan mannlige og kvinnelige lederes karrierer preges av stiavhengighet, ulike karrieredrivere og generasjonsforskjeller. Analysen er dels basert på paneldata fra AFFs lederundersøkelser, og følger et representativt utvalg av norske ledere i midtfasen av deres karrierer mellom 1999 og 2011. Funnene viser at menn starter på et høyere stillingsnivå og investerer mer tid i lederjobben, men at kvinner som blir stående i lederkarrieren, siden kan lykkes med å ta igjen noe av menns forsprang. Høy utdanning og jobb i privat sektor er viktige karrieredrivere for kvinner, mens det for menn tilsynelatende handler om å komme godt ut i starten og være villig til å jobbe lange dager. Kvinnelige ledere som befant seg tidlig i karrieren i 2011, hadde et mer gunstig utgangspunkt for videre karriere enn de som startet ut tolv år tidligere. Artikkelen viser hvordan panel- og kohortanalyse kan utvide forståelsen av menns og kvinners karriereløp, og peker avslutningsvis på hvordan slike tilnærminger kan utvikles videre.publishedVersio

JAZZ SOM TRANSNATIONAL POPULÆRKULTUR FRA EN LOKAL BIOTOPS PERSPEKTIV

ABSTRACTJazz as Transnational Popular Culture:The Perspective of a Local Biotope In the article, we explore the “diaspora of jazz”. The empirical foundation is our study of the development of jazz in the provincial town of Aalborg. The article takes its theoretical inspiration from Bruce Johnson’s critique of traditional historiography of jazz, portraying it solely as a history of the musical development of jazz. The argument is that jazz should not only be seen as a musical practice butalso as a social and a cultural practice. Jazz was played in Aalborg from the early 1920s but didn’t receive its popular breakthrough until the mid-1950s. The general argument is that jazz in the 1950s represented a distinct musical practice – autodidact musicians learning the new music by listening to records, “do-it-yourself” in the words of Eric Hobsbawm, but that the social practice (jazz dancing) and the cultural practice (the self-organized club milieu) were just as important aspects of the break-through of jazz as popular music and culture. The traditional jazz (dixieland) remains to this day the favorite musical culture of the generation of the 1950s, when new generations in the 1960s and later turned to rock’n’roll, beat, folk or fusion music styles. Finally, we look at the channels of musical dissemination, being more “irregular” and intertwined than what is generally depicted in jazz literature

Towards an understanding of learning within the Norwegian fire and rescue services – focusing on tunnel fire safety

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to study how learning within the fire and rescue services may be conceptualized, with special attention paid to tunnel fire safety. Previous studies have developed a model to understand learning in emergency response work. The concept of learning is extended from observed changes in relevant settings to also encompass confirmation of existing knowledge and comprehension of existing practices. We are interested in investigating the properties of the learning model and identifying the mechanisms that influence fire and rescue personnel’s experiences of change, confirmation and/or comprehension. Design/methodology/approach This study relies on quantitative data obtained from a questionnaire answered by 939 Norwegian fire and rescue personnel. Multivariate methods have been used to identify the measurement model and the structural relations of the factors. Findings The results confirm the theoretical model and indicate that the outcome of learning is influenced by elements of content, context, commitment, decision-making and response and reflection, and that the influence of content and commitment on the outcome of learning is partially indirect and mediated through reflection. Originality/value To date, no systematic analysis has been conducted to investigate the factorial structure, as well as the interactions and relationship between the model’s components. This study makes an important contribution to a detailed understanding of learning within the fire and rescue services.acceptedVersio