Jorgen S. Svensson

Professional identity as the key to career change intention

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate career change intention and its predictors among career change seekers interested in a career opportunity in the information technology (IT) industry.Design/methodology/approach – Ajzens theory of planned behavior (TPB) was used to predict career change intention in this group. In addition, we examined the role of professional identity in predicting career change intention. Data were collected in a sample of 225 aspiring IT professionals from four European countries: Austria, Greece, Italy and The Netherlands.Findings – The findings showed that among four variables assumed to predict career change intention, only professional identity appeared to be a significant predictor.Research limitations/implications – The study is limited by the use of career change seekers registered in one web‐based recruiting system.Originality/value – The paper suggests a higher importance of professional identity in prediction of career change intention compared to other f...

Gendered study choice: a literature review. A review of theory and research into the unequal representation of male and female students in mathematics, science, and technology

This article presents an overview of the recent literature on gendered patterns of academic choice in mathematics, science, and technology. It distinguishes in this literature micro-level, macro-level, and institutional explanations. Micro-level explanations focus primarily on psychological constructs, that is, variables at the level of the individual students. Macro-level explanations focus primarily on socioeconomic conditions and cultural understandings of gender roles. Institutional explanations focus on design characteristics of (national) education systems. After a presentation of these perspectives and of recent research progress that has been made, the authors critically discuss the lacunae that still exist in explaining cross-national variety, and provide suggestions for designing future research in this field.

Proactive policing and equal treatment of ethnic-minority youths

Proactive policing aims at suppressing delinquency at an early stage. In the Netherlands, it is applied, inter alia, to youths and youth groups to prevent them from slipping off into delinquent behaviour and crime. Proactive policing implies that police officers keep in touch with local youths and monitor their behaviour. Furthermore, it entails police officers applying discretion in giving warnings, in asking for identification and in conducting stop and search. This contribution reports on an empirical investigation among 231 youths, interviewed on the street and in youth centres, to establish whether this proactive policing results in unequal treatment of ethnic minority youths. The main finding is that although proactive policing in the Netherlands is associated with considerable outcome inequality, the extent of unequal treatment of ethnic minority youths is surprisingly limited.

Electronic Services in a Decentralized State

The Netherlands puts much effort in establishing itself as a modern country and as one of the leading countries in the information age. At the same time, however, it has been losing its position as a forerunner in the electronic delivery of public services. This is mainly due to the fact that most public services are delivered at the level of the Dutch municipalities. At this level eService development is almost stagnant because of a) lacking municipal resources and limited potential benefits and b) a reserved, soft attitude by central government which has adhered to the Dutch institutional principles of municipal autonomy and the consensus model. In recent years, however, we see some developments which may help to solve the existing stalemate and may indeed bring the Netherlands back on track.

Retaliation against reporters of unequal treatment: Failing employee protection in The Netherlands

Purpose – Equal treatment in the workplace is considered one of the most fundamental rights of employees. This right also implies that employees must be able to address any form of unequal treatment freely and effectively, without fear of retaliation. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the prevalence of retaliation against complaints of unequal treatment in The Netherlands and its underlying factors. Design/methodology/approach – This article is based on a telephone survey among employees who filed a formal complaint about unequal treatment at work to the Dutch Equal Treatment Commission. Findings – The main finding is that retaliation against equal treatment reports is commonplace in The Netherlands and in many cases takes on serious forms. Furthermore it is found that the nature and extent of retaliation are primarily explained by the circumstances in which unequal treatment develops and that the extent of retaliation is neither explained by the manner in which unequal treatment is addressed nor by the level of institutionalized protection that is available. Originality/value – The need for a better understanding of retaliation is high, because retaliation and fear of retaliation have broad consequences for the psychological and physical well-being of individual employees and for employment relationships. Yet, studies on retaliation in the context of employment discrimination are rare, especially outside the USA. This article contributes to a better understanding of retaliation, which may be used by policy makers, employees and employers to address it more effectively

Supporting the legal practitioner: LKBS or web?

The legal practitioner is a knowledge worker. Two distinct technologies may be of assistance to this type of professional: legal knowledge‐based system technology and Internet World Wide Web technology. In this paper we investigate the relation between legal knowledge‐based systems and the Internet. Legal knowledge‐based systems have long been surrounded by much optimism, but despite the efforts over the last 20 years, the number of practical applications actually in use is still small. On the other hand, the WWW technology, which in a practical form has been around for only a few years, is gaining momentum and is expected to have a serious impact on many fields of society, including the legal domain. We look at both technologies and try to answer the question of where the future of both technologies lies.

The postmodern perfectionist, the pragmatic hedonist and the materialist maximalist: understanding high school students’ profile choices towards or away from mathematics, science and technology (MST) fields in the Netherlands

ABSTRACT This study focuses on high school students’ profile choices and the choice for or against the Nature and Technology (NT) profile in the Netherlands. A mixed-methods approach is used to study cultural values that affect this choice. The quantitative part of the study shows that being female is negatively correlated with the choice for the NT-profile, irrespective of the grade average for mathematics, chemistry and physics. It further shows that students’ ethnic background does not have a significant effect on this choice. The qualitative part of the study reveals that students’ choice processes towards or away from NT can be categorised in three ideal types: the postmodern perfectionist, the pragmatic hedonist and the materialist maximalist. Gender differences appear to be more pervasive across these types than differences in ethnic background.

Conclusions: Adopting electronic voting. Context matters

In the preceding chapters a variety of views and developments regarding electronic voting has been presented. On the one hand, the evidence makes it clear that in some places the opportunities offered by Internet voting are being keenly explored. In several countries the foundations for online voting are being put in place, experiments have been carried out or policies are being drafted. On the other hand, critical analyses that warn against fundamental problems of Internet voting have been presented, suggesting that Internet voting is not really a viable option for serious democracies. A number of countries otherwise deeply committed to democratic practices hesitate to pursue online democracy. What can be made of these seemingly contradictory trends? Is there a future for Internet voting? Are the critics right in their claim that online election is a dead-end street? Or should we trust the proponents’ belief that technical and social problems will be overcome, and go for the advantages promised by electronic channels of voting?

Enhancing the applicability of empirical data using legal knowledge based systems

Information is considered to be an important prerequisite for the process of social policy making. In the practice of policy preparation however, important problems exist in prowding all the information deerned necessa~. This paper discusses the possibility qf using legal knowledge-based systems to enhance the usability of ahta sets. As I will show, the method of Knowledge Based Microsimulation may be used to enrich data sets with information about the micro-effects of different social policies (existing or proposed). In several experiments in the context of The Netherlands’ General Assistance Act, it was found that this process of enrichment can produce very reliable results, and that there is a high correspondence between the outcomes of the simulations and the decisions made in administrative practice. This high correspondence is also interesting in view of discussions about the role of legislation in public administration. It may well lead to a reevaluation of legislation as a f~tor in administrative decision making.