Marrying out of the lower classes in nineteenth-century Belgium

In this article we address one of the most prominent questions in historical sociology: did economic modernization in the nineteenth century lead to societal openness? In an attempt to answer the question we examine the chances for lower-class grooms of marrying upwardly in five Belgian cities (Aalst, Leuven, Ghent, Verviers, and Liège). Our findings show that there is no support for a meritocracy hypothesis. The chances of marrying out of the lower classes did not increase, in either absolute or relative terms. Social closure strategies were efficient in that they apparently prevented upward marital mobility for lower-class grooms. As these findings were measured in a highly advanced economic context, this study casts strong doubts on the relationship between economic modernization, meritocracy, and marital mobility, at least for the nineteenth century

Utilizing Algorithms for Decision Mining Discovery

Organizations are executing operational decisions in fast changing environments, which increases the necessity for managing these decisions adequately. Information systems store information about such decisions in decision- and event logs that could be used for analyzing decisions. This study aims to find relevant algorithms that could be used to mine decisions from such decision- and event logs, which is called decision mining. By conducting a literature review, together with interviews conducted with experts with a scientific background as well as participants with a commercial background, relevant classifier algorithms and requirements for mining decisions are identified and mapped to find algorithms that could be used for the discovery of decisions. Five of the twelve algorithms identified have a lot of potential to use for decision mining, with small adaptations, while six out of the twelve do have potential but the required adaptation would demand too many alterations to their core design. One of the twelve was not suitable for the discovery of decisions

A Framework for Traceability of Legal Requirements in the Dutch Governmental Context

In the past decades, research and practice focused a lot of attention towards traceability in the context of software requirements, food supply chains, manufacturing, and aviation industry. As legislation and regulations in software systems become increasingly relevant, traceability of legal requirements is of great importance. In this study, we aimed to create a framework in which the basis for traceability of legal requirements is addressed. To be able to do so we conducted five case studies at five Dutch governmental institutions, which was followed by a three-round focus group. The resulting framework comprises 22 (layered) traceability elements in relation to three domains that offers a reference model to determine how traceability can be applied in software system design, in the context of the Dutch government

Business Rules Management and Decision Mining - Filling in the Gaps

Proper decision-making is one of the most important capabilities of an organization. Adequately managing these decisions is therefore of high importance. Business Rules Management (BRM) is an approach that helps in managing decisions and underlying business logic. However, questions still arise if the decisions are properly improved based on decision data. Decision Mining (DM) could complement BRM capabilities in order to improve towards effective and efficient decision-making. In this study, we propose the integration of BRM and DM through a simulation using a government and a healthcare case. During this simulation, three entry points are presented that describe how decision-related data should be utilized between BRM capabilities and DM phases to be able to integrate them. The presented results provide a basis from which more technical research on the three DM phases can be further explored

Translating Business Process Models to Class Diagrams

Choreography of business processes can track messages between different services. At the time of writing, there are no guidelines t o d raw a U ML C lass D iagram f rom t he Business Process Choreography. This paper reports an experiment using a set of guidelines. Objective: Evaluate the subjects’ performance and perceptions when applying the BPc2Class-guidelines and BPc2Class-discovery process. Method: To measure the performance and user perception of both ways of mapping the processes, a comparative experiment was conducted with 38 subjects. The subjects, being master students, solved a process case in the first session and a guidelines case in the second session. A survey was filled in by the subjects to measure the user perception variables. Results: The results indicated that the guidelines showed significantly better results in five out of the six measured variables. Conclusion: Based on the findings and limitations of this research the use of guidelines looks promising, but future research is necessary to further generalize the conclusion

Future Challenges in Decision Mining at Governmental Institutions

Decisions are made in fast-changing situations. To cope with this, decision mining could be utilized to support the decision-making process. Decision mining is an emerging field which could support an organizations decision-making process. For proper utilization of decision mining, possible challenges should be identified to take into account when mining decisions. As such, two focus groups were conducted where we identified 11 main challenges that seven Dutch governmental institutions deemed important and which should be taken into consideration when mining decisions. The identified challenges are depicted further together with existing literature and the coded observations. The identified challenges could be utilized as future research directions and are discussed as such

Family size and intergenerational social mobility during the fertility transition

It has been argued in sociology, economics, and evolutionary anthropology that family size limitation enhances the intergenerational upward mobility chances in modernized societies. If parents have a large flock, family resources get diluted and intergenerational mobility is bound to head downwards. Yet, the empirical record supporting this resource dilution hypothesis is limited. This article investigates the empirical association between family size limitation and intergenerational mobility in an urban, late nineteenth century population in Western Europe. It uses life course data from the Belgian city of Antwerp between 1846 and 1920. Findings are consistent with the resource dilution hypothesis: after controlling for confounding factors, people with many children were more likely to end up in the lower classes. Yet, family size limitation was effective as a defensive rather than an offensive strategy: it prevented the next generation from going down rather than helping them to climb up the social ladder. Also, family size appears to have been particularly relevant for the middle classes. Implications for demographic transition theory are discussed.Belgium, demographic transition, fertility, nineteenth century, parental investment, quantity-quality trade-off, resource dilution, social mobility

The sensing paradox in service innovation: Too much user-producer interaction?

Trabajo presentado a la DRUID15 Conference on: "The Relevance of Innovation" celebrada en Roma (Italia) del 15 al 17 de junio de 2015.This study seeks to explain the paradox that firms most engaged in fulfilling actual user needs might be the ones who benefit less from a capability for systematically evaluating market demands. Service-oriented innovation research stresses that the relational nature of service delivery, especially when customized, provides opportunities for firms to engage in intensive user-producer interaction already during their regular business activities. We examine under which conditions having a strong sensing user needs capability can be a weakness rather than a strength for such firms. By using NK-logic, we modelled the conjunction of customer and firm behaviour with respect to sending and sensing user feedback. Our simulations resulted in a hypothesis regarding the relation between various interactive search strategies on the one hand, and innovativeness on the other hand. Subsequently, we used survey data from 292 respondents to verify these findings empirically. Our regression results suggest that, for firms who provide client-specific services, there is limited value in investing in an ability to monitor and evaluate user feedback closely. Having a sensing capability and receiving user requests has a negative interaction effect for firms providing customized solutions, while this effect is positive when firms do not tailor their services. The results confirm that focusing too much on articulated market demands might prevent customizing firms from introducing commercially successful service solutions. With these findings, we support innovation managers dealing with the strategic dilemma whether or not to devote resources to sensing capabilities.Peer reviewe