Von Leit-Bildern zu Leit-Linien

Von Leit-Bildern zu Leit-Linien“ lautete das Motto der sechsten Wissenschaftstagung zum ökologischen Landbau, den der Koordinator dieses Faches im Wissenschaftszentrum der TU München-Weihenstephan, Dr. Hans Jürgen Reents, zusammen mit der Stiftung Ökologie & Landbau vom 6. bis 8. März 2001 organisierte. Exkursionen, Vorträge und Diskussionsrunden sollten den 350 Teilnehmern neue Impulse und Hinweise zu Strategien für die zukünftige Entwicklung des ökologischen Landbaus in Deutschland geben

Local Worlds of Marketization: Employment Policies in Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom compared.

The majority of the European countries have experienced a turn towards activation policies during the last two decades (Serrano Pascual and Magnusson 2007; van Berkel and Borghi 2008; Bonoli 2010; Aurich 2011; Graziano 2009 and 2012). The interlinked aim to increase employment rates by integrating formerly excluded groups into the labour market requires new forms of governance and new structures of policy implementation. One of these policy changes concerns the marketization of employment and social services (Considine 2001; Newman 2001), an important part of policy delivery in most welfare states although in very different forms and extents. Since the local level plays a crucial role in delivering policies (Künzel 2012; Green and Orton 2012), an important element, and the main focus of the article, is the level of discretion of local actors and their relation to activation interventions.This article draws on the findings of three qualitative case studies on the organization of activation policies in three most different countries regarding worlds of welfare: Germany, Italy and the UK. It develops a theoretical framework of regulating marketization in regard to activation, and analyses the three empirical cases according to it. The findings show a link between the regulation of market-based interventions (i.e. type of marketization, outsourcing decisions and purchaser-provider split) and the level of discretion for local actors with regard to these measures. Local contexts of policy-making and their suitability and willingness to become marketized will affect the usage of local discretion

Does codetermination affect the composition of variable versus fixed parts of executive compensation?

Contrary to previous literature we hypothesize that interests of labor may well – like that of shareholders – aim at securing the long-run survival of the firm. Consequently, employee representatives on the supervisory board could well have an interest in increasing incentive-based compensation to avoid excessive risk taking and short-run orientated decisions. We compile unique panel data on executive compensation over the periods 2006 to 2011 for 405 listed companies and use a Hausman-Taylor approach to estimate the effect of codetermination on the compensation design. Finally, codetermination has a significantly positive effect on performance-based components of compensation, which supports our hypothesis

Advanced Robotic Therapy Integrated Centers (ARTIC): an international collaboration facilitating the application of rehabilitation technologies

Background: The application of rehabilitation robots has grown during the last decade. While meta-analyses have shown beneficial effects of robotic interventions for some patient groups, the evidence is less in others. We established the Advanced Robotic Therapy Integrated Centers (ARTIC) network with the goal of advancing the science and clinical practice of rehabilitation robotics. The investigators hope to exploit variations in practice to learn about current clinical application and outcomes. The aim of this paper is to introduce the ARTIC network to the clinical and research community, present the initial data set and its characteristics and compare the outcome data collected so far with data from prior studies. Methods: ARTIC is a pragmatic observational study of clinical care. The database includes patients with various neurological and gait deficits who used the driven gait orthosis Lokomat® as part of their treatment. Patient characteristics, diagnosis-specific information, and indicators of impairment severity are collected. Core clinical assessments include the 10-Meter Walk Test and the Goal Attainment Scaling. Data from each Lokomat® training session are automatically collected. Results: At time of analysis, the database contained data collected from 595 patients (cerebral palsy: n = 208; stroke: n = 129; spinal cord injury: n = 93; traumatic brain injury: n = 39; and various other diagnoses: n = 126). At onset, average walking speeds were slow. The training intensity increased from the first to the final therapy session and most patients achieved their goals. Conclusions: The characteristics of the patients matched epidemiological data for the target populations. When patient characteristics differed from epidemiological data, this was mainly due to the selection criteria used to assess eligibility for Lokomat® training. While patients included in randomized controlled interventional trials have to fulfill many inclusion and exclusion criteria, the only selection criteria applying to patients in the ARTIC database are those required for use of the Lokomat®. We suggest that the ARTIC network offers an opportunity to investigate the clinical application and effectiveness of rehabilitation technologies for various diagnoses. Due to the standardization of assessments and the use of a common technology, this network could serve as a basis for researchers interested in specific interventional studies expanding beyond the Lokomat®

Local Worlds of Marketization

The paper investigates the way in which local social and employment services have become marketized in different countries, the determinants of this marketization, and its impact on the delivery of activation policies