International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy最新文献

Purpose

This study aims to identify the street-level approaches of professional workers in complex public social service organisations when attending to social assistance claimants.

Design/methodology/approach

The study employed a multifaceted approach comprising documentary analysis, semi-structured individual interviews (17) and focus group discussions (8) with qualified frontline social workers from primary care social services in Tarragona.

Findings

Social workers embodied three specific sets of cognitive, normative and emotional dispositions when attending to people with low incomes. First, the compassionate approach conceives clients as defensive regarding social services and emotionally vulnerable because of deprivation. Second, the instructional approach frames clients as being baffled by a new, precarious, institutional and economic context. They also lack information, abilities and the proper mindset to conceive of and attain available welfare and occupational resources. Third, the enforcement approach tends to define clients as suspicious, trying to obtain an excessive and unfair advantage of the welfare system that would eventually hamper their social opportunities.

Originality/value

Research thus far has tended to define public social assistance programmes in Southern welfare state contexts as mostly inefficient and hardly relevant residual social policies. The street-level approach shows that social workers try to resist the mere administrative processing of benefits, which is a professionally troubling and organisationally unsustainable way to proceed. They attempt to help clients by providing inclusive content in order to implement their benefits.

Purpose

This paper aims to investigate whether Kazakh small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that claim to compete with the informal sector are more likely to invest in innovation than their competitors who do not perceive such pressure.

Design/methodology/approach

Logistic regression and classification trees are performed on the Business Environment and Enterprise Performance Survey (2018–2020) to examine whether the degree of informal competition correlates with a firm's propensity to innovate.

Findings

The findings show that informal sector competition is a critical factor that shapes the organizational behaviour of Kazakh SMEs. There is a stimulating positive effect of informal competition on both product and process innovation, depending on its perceived intensity.

Originality/value

This study challenges conventional thinking that still views informal sector competition as a barrier to innovation and entrepreneurship by assessing whether innovation is compatible with informal entrepreneurial practice.

Purpose

This study aims to investigate how institutional and organisational factors affect case management of patients with mental disorders by GPs in Italy and Spain. The paper highlights the importance of improving the effectiveness of primary care to ensure easy access to mental health services, which is crucial in responding to the increasing incidence of mental disorders and preventing negative outcomes.

Design/methodology/approach

This article details a qualitative research study that examines the management of patients with mental disorders by general practitioners (GPs) in Italy and Spain, using cross-national comparison and in-depth interviews with GPs as research methods.

Findings

The study revealed that Italian self-employed GPs have more scheduling autonomy than Spanish Health Centre GPs. Both face high work pressure and resource scarcity, highlighting the need for targeted training. The COVID-19 pandemic led to a rise in phone consultations.

Originality/value

This study provides novel insights into mental health management by examining the case management of patients with mental disorders by GPs in Italy and Spain, with a focus on the impact of institutional and organisational factors. The cross-national comparison and in-depth interviews enhance the originality of the study, offering a nuanced understanding of the constraints faced by GPs in their work context. Furthermore, the comparison of the similar primary care frameworks of Italy and Spain may offer insight into their evolution.

Purpose

The present study explored the young women's lived experiences of discrimination and othering based on skin tone in two rural localities of Uttarakhand , State of India. The authors used intersectionality as the theoretical lens for this study.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors have adopted an interpretive phenomenological study in the conduct of this research. The authors interviewed twelve female participants in person using a semi-structured interview schedule. The data were analysed using the six-stage data analysis process of interpretive phenomenological analysis.

Findings

The study's findings underline the experiences of stigma, negative self-concept, marriage is a complex reality, media's influence and skin whitening is the first and last resort. Dark-skinned women experience stressful life events due to their skin tone and society's prejudice favouring white and fair skin tones. The experiences of bullying, social shame, guilt and low esteem were also vivid.

Originality/value

This study reveals women's exposure to negative experiences of skin-tone-based discrimination prevalent in Indian society. This is one of the first kinds of such study in India that captures the dark-hued women's recurrent phenomenon of discrimination in their daily lives. It further shows that skin-tone bias and discrimination are widely prevalent and practised despite the claims that Indian society is free from skin-tone biasedness and subsequent discrimination.

Purpose

Village health volunteers are community health volunteers in Thailand that have helped the government deliver public health services for many years, particularly during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Though labeled as “volunteers,” the village health volunteers are recruited, trained and supervised in a manner similar to how a government agency recruits, trains and supervises its street-level bureaucrats (SLBs). This study examines the two factors that affect how these street-level quasi-bureaucrats use their professional discretion: transformational leadership and public service motivation (PSM). Transformational leadership means a leadership style that develops, shares and sustains a vision to elevate SLBs to higher levels of performance, while PSM is defined as an SLB’s predisposition to make a difference by working in the public sector with a sense of calling. This study attempts to analyze the mediating role of psychological empowerment in the relationship between transformational leadership, PSM and professional discretion.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper uses a three-wave survey-based quantitative method to avoid common method biases. This method provides evidence gathered from 105 subdistrict health promotion hospitals and 798 village health volunteers (VHVs) in five provinces in Thailand.

Findings

PSM and transformational leadership influence the village health volunteers' use of professional discretion indirectly through the psychological empowerment mechanisms that make them feel positive toward their village health volunteer role and responsibility. The authors' findings suggest that the hospital directors' transformational leadership induces the village health volunteers' use of professional discretion by making them feel competent to do their work and feel fulfilled and valuable about their work. Similarly, the village health volunteers' PSM leads them to use professional discretion by making them feel fulfilled and valuable and by convincing them of the social and community impact of their work.

Research limitations/implications

While existing research focuses on VHVs' role in alleviating capacity constraints on the health care system, this study revealed an equally important role played by hospital directors. These directors' transformational leadership was instrumental in enhancing VHVs' psychological empowerment – particularly their perceptions of the meaning of their work and their competence – that ultimately enabled them to use professional discretion in their work. This study also highlighted the importance of VHVs' PSM, which leads to their use of professional discretion via the meaning and impact dimensions of psychological empowerment. Based on this study, PSM should also be incorporated into the community health volunteers' recruitment criteria. Also, publ

Purpose

The present study investigates the role of social capital in promoting sustainable livelihood amongst indigenous women in India. The study further analyses the mediation effect of women entrepreneurship between social capital and livelihood promotion.

Design/methodology/approach

Structure equation modeling has been used to empirically examine the effect of social capital in promoting sustainable livelihood. The study has collected 612 samples from indigenous women entrepreneurs across Sundargarh and Koraput districts in Odisha.

Findings

The result highlighted the extensiveness of indigenous women entrepreneurs, who utilized their social capital to improve enterprise performance and livelihood conditions. It is witnessed that social capital has a direct and positive effect on uplifting the living standards of indigenous women. Furthermore, women entrepreneurship mediates the relationship between social capital and livelihood promotion of indigenous women.

Practical implications

The decision-makers, policy practitioners and government agencies must encourage more women's self-help groups to participate in entrepreneurial activities by utilizing social capital through government welfare programs.

Originality/value

The present study adds value to the existing literature on social capital, women entrepreneurship and sustainable livelihood by measuring the importance of social capital in achieving sustainable livelihood. This study will add knowledge to the existing theories and literature of social capital on its use and importance towards the benefit of society.

Purpose

The study examines the effects of religious identity, practices and beliefs on Muslim Americans' perceptions of discrimination and the extent to which religion might shape the perception of discrimination differently within Muslim race/ethnic groups.

Design/methodology/approach

Study data were obtained from the 2011 Pew Survey (N = 1,033), a nationally representative sample of Muslim adults 18 years old and older living in the United States. The sample weights with the exclusion of non-response cases were used for bivariate analyses. For multivariate analyses, multiple imputation procedures were employed to impute missing values on all variables.

Findings

Muslim Americans with high levels of religious practices are more likely and Muslim Americans with strong belief in religious tenets are less likely to report experiencing different forms of discrimination. Black, Asian and other/mixed race Muslims with high levels of religious practices report higher rates of discrimination than their white coreligionists. Within group comparison shows that the pure extrinsic group reports higher rates of perceived discrimination than the pro-religious, pure intrinsic and non-religious groups.

Originality/value

The study emphasizes varying effects of religious factors on different Muslim American groups in perceived discrimination and suggests researchers challenge a common perception of viewing religion as a “master status” for the Muslim identity.

Purpose

This paper embarks on revealing the main factors behind the intentions of youth in Lithuania to get involved in bribery.

Design/methodology/approach

A questionnaire survey of 432 respondents served as a source of primary data. The structural equation modelling – partial least squares techniques was employed as a main research tool.

Findings

It was revealed that youth in Lithuania display a high value congruity with their counterparts in Western Europe and a relatively reluctant to offer bribes. It can be stated that youths’ positive attitude towards some shadow economy activities is a forced response to government failures, rather than an intrinsic motivation created by cultural legacy or psychological issues.

Originality/value

It is one of the first scientific attempt to investigate reasons behind the formation of the positive attitude towards bribery and intentions to get involved in bribery among the youth.

Purpose

The purpose of the study is to research the current state of fathers' involvement in childcare during parental leave and to assess attitudes of Russian population towards possible measures that can expand the use of parental leave by fathers in Russia.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors conducted a survey of Russian parents with children under the age of 18 months in 2022. The sample accounts for 1,000 people; the survey covered almost all Russian regions.

Findings

The authors found that the ideal workload of fathers is not expected to exceed a third of the total parental workload. Russian parents are not ready to admit dissatisfaction with the existing distribution of workload during parental leave. However, an egalitarian demand for greater involvement of fathers in parental responsibilities is forming, and an interest in transforming the parental leave policy is emerging.

Originality/value

The value of the study consists of assessing the effectiveness of measures that may have a beneficial effect on the use of parental leave by fathers, as well as identifying consequences of the possible introduction of mandatory parental leave for fathers.

Purpose

The impacts of institutional quality on entrepreneurship are well established. However, the effects of an external factor, such as the shadow economy, that moderates this relationship have largely been neglected in existing literature. As such, this paper investigates how the shadow economy moderates the effects of institutional quality on entrepreneurship in a global sample of 79 economies from 2006 to 2018, when the latest required data are available.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper utilizes the fixed-effect and generalized method of moments (GMM) estimation techniques. Various scenarios have been considered for the robustness of the analysis, including different estimation techniques, different estimates of the shadow economy and various subsamples of countries with different income levels.

Findings

Empirical findings indicate that improved institutional quality boosts entrepreneurship activities, while the extended shadow economy is associated with reduced entrepreneurship activities. Interestingly, the positive impacts of institutional quality on entrepreneurship will be lessened with a larger shadow economy. These findings have remained largely unchanged across samples of countries and different proxies and estimation techniques.

Practical implications

Findings from this paper offer policymakers the relationships between institutional quality, shadow economy and entrepreneurship and the moderating effects of shadow economy on the institutional quality–entrepreneurship nexus. The implication is that institutional quality should be strengthened while the shadow economy should be controlled to promote entrepreneurship initiatives.

Originality/value

To the best of the author's knowledge, this is the first empirical study to explore the moderating effects of the shadow economy on the institutional quality–entrepreneurship nexus.