Search results for "General Social Sciences"

Self-reported playing time and justice as predictors of coach satisfaction: An analysis of elite ice-hockey and handball players

2020

Intrateam competition for specific roles and playing time is a continuous imperative process in elite sport teams. The assessment of this competition is done by the coach and the outcome of this process has a significant impact on the team and the players. The following hypothesis was put forward for testing: Self-reported playing time and perceptions of justice among elite ice-hockey and handball players predict their satisfaction with the coach. Elite ice-hockey and handball players (N = 231) reported playing time and completed the Perceived Justice and Athlete Satisfaction Questionnaires. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses show that self-reported playing time, distributive justice…

Students Mobility: Assessing the Determinants of Attractiveness Across Competing Territorial Areas

2016

A central question for education authorities has become ‘‘which factors make a territory attractive for tertiary students?’’ Tertiary education is recognised as one of the most important assets for the development of a territory, thus students’ mobility becomes a brain drain issue whenever there are prevalent areas that attract students from other territories. In this paper, we try to identify the most important factors that could affect student mobility in Italy. In doing that we analyse students’ flows across competing territorial areas which supply tertiary education programs. We will consider a wide range of determinants related to the socio-economic characteristics of the areas as well…

The Commodification Dilemma: Tourism Pressure and Heritage Conservation in Barcelona

2022

In recent years, the proliferation of tourists in the urban environment has generated several issues in the functioning of cities. As urban tourism has historically been linked to cultural and architectural attractions, this increased tourism pressure has involved and often compromised the common heritage uses. Therefore, many cases saw the implementation of measures that, if on the one hand reduced tourist flows, on the other also drastically restricted the access for residents and totally altered the sense of place in the community. This article explores this topic by applying a Critical Discourse Analysis methodology to the dispute that took place in Barcelona regarding the restricted ac…

A Cross-Regional Exploration of Barriers to the Adoption and Use of Electronic Meeting Systems

2007

Originally published in the journal Group Decision and Negotiation: http://www.springerlink.com/content/100270/ Electronic Meeting Systems (EMS) are intended to support group collaboration in completing tasks. While there have been many case studies and laboratory experiments on how EMS can support group tasks, large scale macro investigations exploring EMS adoption and use have been practically non-existent. Furthermore, while several barriers to EMS adoption and use have been suggested, their validation across organizations remains unexplored. We undertook a global initiative to explore information technology support for task-oriented collaboration in the US, Australia, Hong Kong, and Nor…

Robots, labor markets, and universal basic income

2020

Automation is a big concern in modern societies in view of its widespread impact on many socioeconomic issues including income, jobs, and productivity. While previous studies have concentrated on determining the effects on jobs and salaries, our aim is to understand how automation affects productivity, and how some policies, such as taxes on robots or universal basic income, moderate or aggravate those effects. To this end, we have designed an experiment where workers make productive effort decisions, and managers can choose between workers and robots to do these tasks. In our baseline treatment, we measure the effort made by workers who may be replaced by robots, and also elicit firm repla…

Exploring or exporting? Qualitative methods in times of globalisation

2011

Europeanism, westernism and methodological imperialism all refer to the classic criticism of Western research in non-Western contexts. Though I welcome the debate, I find arguments based on simple binary oppositions and descriptions problematic. This debate is better positioned as one about the quality of qualitative research. With reference to the criticism I ask if contemporary qualitative research is stuck in old problems. Based on my ethnographic data from East Africa I show that the pitfalls of Western research that are pointed to in classic criticisms are the outcome of old models and poor analytic work. I also show that contemporary ‘Western’ qualitative research offers analytic alte…

Bicausative matrices to measure structural change: Are they a good tool?

1999

The causative-matrix method to analyze temporal change assumes that a matrix transforms one Markovian transition matrix into another by a left multiplication of the first matrix; the method is demand-driven when applied to input-output economics. An extension is presented without assuming the demand-driven or supply-driven hypothesis. Starting from two flow matrices X and Y, two diagonal matrices are searched, one premultiplying and the second postmultiplying X, to obtain a result the closer as possible to Y by least squares. The paper proves that the method is deceptive because the diagonal matrices are unidentified and the interpretation of results is unclear. Keywords : Input-Output ; Ch…

The border effect in Spain: The Basque Country case

2006

Gil-Pareja S., Llorca-Vivero R. and Martinez-Serrano J. A. (2006) The border effect in Spain: the Basque Country case, Regional Studies 40, 335–345. This paper investigates the border effect on the Basque Country's trade, using a sample of 28 Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries between 1995 and 2001. The results indicate that after controlling for market size and distance, the Basque Country trades between 12 and 16 times more with the rest of Spain than it does with any other country. The Spanish bias is lower in the case of the Basque Country's exports than in the case of imports. With respect to the time evolution, the results show a downward trend. Th…

2021

The increasing digitalization of economies has highlighted the importance of digital transformation and how it can help businesses stay competitive in the market. However, disruptive changes not only occur at the company level; they also have environmental, societal, and institutional implications. This is the reason why during the past two decades the research on digital transformation has received growing attention, with a wide range of topics investigated in the literature. The following aims to provide insight regarding the current state of the literature on digital transformation (DT) by conducting a systematic literature review. An analysis of co-occurrence using the software VOSviewe…

Analysis of Profiles of Family Educational Situations during COVID-19 Lockdown in the Valencian Community (Spain)

2022

Due to the pandemic (COVID-19), the education system in Spain was forced to close for three months, creating an unprecedented situation: improvised distance schooling. Family characteristics and their life situations with Information and Communication Technology use would be aspects to be studied as educational conditioning factors. This paper presents the ways in which a representative sample of families in the Valencian Community (Spain) assumed the education of their children during the lockdown. Mixed methods (quantitative -surveys-/qualitative -focus groups-) are used. Multivariate profiles are studied (k-means cluster) that summarise the life circumstances, represented by composite in…