Hierarchies, relational contracts and new forms of outsourcing.

We observe that economic restructuring is significantly changing organizational governance. On the one hand, we witness an increase in mergers & acquisitions, which substitutes markets for hierarchies and, on the other hand, we see an increase in outsourcing and subcontracting activities, appearing to replace hierarchies by markets. However, there is evidence that an increasing part of outsourcing activities mix hierarchies with market forms of governance. The key argument of this paper is that firms have established governance structures based on markets, hierarchies and self-enforcing relational contracts so that they are able to keep a substantial amount of control despite of sourcing out labour. Furthermore, we argue that such hierarchical forms of outsourcing produce dependency. Using empirical evidence of the Austrian insurance industry, it is demonstrated that dependency is created, firstly, by the contractual restriction of alternative uses of resources, secondly, by support measures that bind the upstream party closely to the downstream party, thirdly, by relationship-specific investments made by the upstream party, and fourthly, by authority elements.

Women's Labour Force Attachment in Europe: An Analytical Framework and Empirical Evidence for the Household

This paper has two major aims. First, it argues that for employment issues, economics and sociology do not carry out substitutional but complementary research. Interdisciplinary research on labour markets is strongly needed to fully understand the mechanism of labour markets. Second, it theoretically discusses the influence of the household on women's labour market behaviour and shows some evidence from the European Community Household Panel (ECHP). The increased labour market participation of women in Europe has led to an intensive interdisciplinary research. The economic view of supply (construction of preferences) and demand (firm's rationales) shows that institutional systems, which are considered as exogenous, influence the labour market behaviour of individuals and households. These institutional systems which are the 'black boxes' in the economic view, constitute the main focus of the sociological approach to work. This paper shows that a theoretical connection of labour economics and sociology within an institutional approach, coupled with a gender order perspective, provides a useful framework of analysis. Within this framework, I distinguish between the individual actors of a labour market - namely households, firms and the state - and analyse the interdependencies between them. Political measures influence not only households (e. g. education, care activities) but also firms (e. g. organisation of production). The interaction of these three spheres determines the quantity and quality of the labour market participation of women. The empirical part of this paper tests some of the determinants of the labour market behaviour of women with the help of the data of the European Community Household Panel. It is argued that the determinants of women’s labour market behaviour are interrelated with a whole set of social and economic institutions which form a specific employment system.

The Will of Others

Scholarly reflections on the concept of the will as it is articulated in late ancient texts have centered on the male individual and the difficulties he faces as he tries to train or direct his intentions. By contrast, in this article we seek to explore late ancient concepts and negotiations of the will by considering a cluster of ancient Jewish and Christian narrative scenarios in which women are under the threat of sexual assault. Rather than a split between warring parts of one person, these narratives treat moments when the will of one actor is in conflict with the will of another. Thus, these scenarios raise questions that cannot otherwise be accessed about human intention, agency, and subjectivity, and their limitations by social and cultural realities. We argue that these cases should be viewed not as the marginal troubles that sometimes happen to women, but as expressions of the fundamental problems at the heart of the theories of the will embraced within late ancient Judaism and Christianity

Workers on the Border between Employment and Self-employment

The number of workers on the border between self-employment and employment strongly increased across Europe over the last decade. This paper investigates whether and in what respect these workers differ from employees and self-employed and analyses whether these work relationships are a stepping stone to more stable employment in the short-run using Italian data. Depending on the data source the “para-subordinates” represent between 1.8% and 5.3% of the Italian labour force. Since most of them work only for one company and are strongly integrated into the firm of the contract partner, we argue that labour and social security law discriminates against these workers who are in fact very close to employees. We find that they are not low qualified workers, but young, highly educated professionals. At the same time these contracts are not a port of entry into the labour market nor do we find that they are a vehicle to more stable jobs. However, they are a possibility for women to work part-time.Self-employment, Dependency, Outsourcing.

The Morphing Portrait of a Church Father: Evidence from the de morte (PG 4886) attributed to John Chrysostom.

This article investigates the ecloga of passages on death collected from works attributed to John Chrysostom and preserved in New College Manuscript 83, which is classified as CPG 4886. It describes New College Manuscript 83, the contents of its ecloga on death, and provides a direct comparison of this ecloga with another on death published in Patrologia Graeca 63; then the article reflects on what the New College Manuscript ecloga can reveal about the users who created it and their ideas about its use. Because this ecloga attempts to preserve the original location of each passage it cites, and because its author explicitly labeled the rhetorical form of speech-in-character when it appeared, we can speculate that its creators were invested in rhetoric and the preservation of Chrysostom’s authority as the composer of specific individual works. This allows us to see that the ecloga conflates its creator’s intellectual frameworks with those of late antiquity, in effect retrojecting the processes of knowledge creation and preservation so prevalent in the Byzantine era back into Chrysostom’s time

Preserving the Divine: αuτο- Prefixed Generative Terms and the Untitled Treatise in the Bruce Codex

In Greek literature from antiquity, there is a set of terms formed from verbs of origina-tion or generation and prefixed with αὐτο-, which are represented primarily in three types of literature prior to the fifth century: in the surviving fragments from Numenius, in apologetic histories which incorporate oracular statements about first gods,and in the reports about and examples of Sethian literature. By considering the range of transliterated words in the Coptic Untitled Treatise based upon αὐτο-prefixed generative terms from Greek, we can discern several of the traditions that underlie this text’s multiple, often competing, narratives about the structure and population of the divine world. Many of those traditions are also recorded in apologetic histories, and comparison with these shows that the Untitled Treatise is an example of a different mode of historical writing, one which is preservationist rather than explicitly persuasive

Salvage: Macrina and the Christian Project of Cultural Reclamation

While many have seen the equation between Macrina and Socrates drawn in the Treatise on the Soul and the Resurrection as Gregory of Nyssa’s attempt to honor his sister, a closer look at Gregory’s attitude about the relative power of Christianity at the end of the fourth century suggests the opposite: that the character of Macrina lends validity to Socrates and, by extension, to non-Christian intellectual traditions. In this article, I argue that the Treatise is part of a larger project of cultural reclamation enacted by some Christians near the end of the fourth century. The educational reforms of the emperor Julian had instituted a public discourse of evaluation by which one’s reading material indicated one’s religious identity; after Julian, some Christians adopted this idea, yet in reverse, arguing that reading traditional literature was out of the question for Christians, as it would signal a non-Christian religious commitment. Gregory’s Treatise on the Soul and the Resurrection was an effort to walk back the effects of that discourse, and to return Christian pedagogy, philosophy, and cultural evaluation to a stance of ambivalence regarding Greek literature

Ambivalence about the Angelic Life: The Promise and Perils of an Early Christian Discourse of Asceticism

The equation of the ascetic life with "the angelic life" permeates ancient writing about the renunciatory efforts of Christians; indeed, contemporary scholars often use this same discourse as shorthand for the ascetic movement in Christianity. While the analogy between renunciation and angels began as an inventive exegetical extension of a gospel story, it found traction among the fourth-century bishops who were pressed to make sense of new ascetic movements in their territories. Those in late ancient renunciatory communities knew that lay Christians referred to them as "living the angelic life," and community members put this trope to use among themselves: by envisioning angels as a constant audience for their practices, ascetics created and sustained the boundaries between their communities and the world. Imagining ascetic communities to be places where angels could appear at any moment also created constructive solutions for the sometimes difficult navigation between the strict ideal of perfection in virtue and the flexibility demanded by life in community. At the same time, angelic appearances generated their own difficulties on occasion—both conflicts of authority and crises of identity. Far from an entirely positive identification, being thought of as living "the angelic life" was a prospect received in ascetic literature with ambivalence, and at times disdain

Simeon and Other Women in Theodoret’s Religious History: Gender in the Representation of Late Ancient Christian Asceticism

This article explores the use of gender in the Religious History, demonstrating the multiple ways that Theodoret of Cyrrhus marked ostensibly male characters with traits associated in ancient medical literature with female bodies. Beyond simply depicting ascetics as extraordinary human beings, these complexly gendered portraits more importantly served as expressions of an argument Theodoret advanced elsewhere: that men and women shared a common human nature. Based on these observations, the article then offers an interpretation of the two bodily examinations performed upon Theodoret’s most influential character, Simeon the Stylite, namely that these scenes were carefully narrated to suggest that they were examinations of a female body. In conclusion, I argue scholars should consider the peculiar uses of gender in each ancient representation of early Christian asceticism, rather than assume early Christian texts only associated masculinity with excellence in ascetic practice

The Legend of Arius' Death: Imagination, Space and Filth in Late Ancient Historiography

In this piece, I consider the late ancient legend of Arius's death and explain the context in which the legend developed. As I do so, I explore the relationship that late ancient Christians had to their own past, thinking about how they imagine the recent past and how they find confirmation of their view of the past in the urban landscape