Five-party Czech government must compromise on policy

Significance The five-party coalition enters office at a time of intense economic and social uncertainty resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic, rising debt and soaring energy prices. Prime Minister Petr Fiala's greatest challenges involve negotiating between the five coalition partners and restoring respectability to Czech politics. Impacts The new government will be less sceptical about closer EU integration, given the upcoming Czech EU presidency from mid-2022. The government will try to reopen EU Green Deal chapters to renegotiate compensation for highly industrialised member states. Former Prime Minister Andrej Babis may run for president in 2023. Babis will strive to avoid losing parliamentary immunity from prosecution relating to the Stork’s Nest affair and alleged EU subsidy fraud.

“I changed, I had to realize that I was wrong”: Identity gap management amidst evolving illness uncertainty

Doubt that a family member’s health issues are real, severe, or even possible entwines some of the most challenging aspects of medical, personal, and social uncertainty. Although several studies have examined doubt, this investigation focuses on how doubt evolves and foregrounds the identity implications of uncertainty. Guided by Communication Theory of Identity (CTI), the purpose of this study was to explore the identity gaps people experience as they navigate evolving doubt about a family member’s health and how they manage those identity gaps. We interviewed 33 individuals in the U.S. about a family member’s health issues that they doubted but began to believe. Our analysis uncovered three identity gaps among personal, relational, and enacted layers of identity: personal-enacted, relational-enacted, and personal-relational-enacted identity gaps. Participants managed identity gaps in two primary ways: (a) closing gaps by altering personal, relational, or enacted layers of their own identity; and (b) maintaining identity gaps by putting the locus of responsibility for identity change within their family member’s relational identities. This study offers theoretical implications for CTI as well as practical implications for individuals navigating doubt and evolving illness uncertainty in their family relationships.

The Anxiety of Political Uncertainty: Insights from the Brexit Vote

Anxiety is driven by cognitive uncertainty, and large political events can change levels of uncertainty in a nation’s population, including among individuals in migrant groups. This article explores the association between the Brexit vote and the relative anxiety levels of various sectors of the UK population: the UK born, EU migrants, and non-EU migrants. Self-reported high anxiety levels among these population groups six months before and after the referendum suggest differences in social and economic uncertainty. After the Brexit vote, EU migrants reported high levels of anxiety at a rate that was 1.8 percentage points lower than the UK born; this suggests economic rather than social anxiety, given that the UK born were losing access to EU opportunities. The reduction in anxiety for EU migrants was marked in regions with greater support to remain in the EU, suggesting its importance in reducing their social uncertainty and therefore anxiety.

Modern society in conditions of social uncertainty: Theory and practice (Conference report)

The article is devoted to the review of the reports of the traditional conference “Dylnovsky Readings” held at the Faculty of Sociology in February 2021. “The Modern Society in the Conditions of Social Uncertainty: Theory and Practice”. Within the framework of five discussion platforms, the most relevant and significant problems of modern society were discussed. The discussion platform “Society, Institutions, Personality: Transformational Design” considered a whole range of issues – from the potential academic mobility of students, the peculiarities of youth participation in the public life of the country, the legal culture of youth, to the change of generations of the political elite in the conditions of social uncertainty, the specifics of interethnic relations in Saratov border region and the characteristics of the transformation of Russian single-industry towns. The discussion that unfolded on the platform “Digital Transformation: Singularity, Everyday Life, New Sociality” in terms of the breadth of copyright reflections, fit into the problematic field of historical inevitability of the information society. In the discussion platform: “COVID Generation: New Forms of Youth Development and Support during the Pandemic”, the speakers’ reports were devoted to topical issues. The full impact of the pandemic on humans is not only related to the potential risks of infection. Quarantine, which was announced due to the spread of COVID-19, negatively affected all areas – from the economy to the field of culture and business. The site “Specifics of Social Processes in Conditions of Social Uncertainty at the regional level” unfolded the discussion on the current characteristic of modern social phenomena in Russian regions, mainly in Saratov region. A large number of representatives of various cities, republics and professional groups participated in the discussion platform “Discourse of Age and Gender in Modern Sociological Research,” confirming the relevance and demand for such a form of work of scientific forums.

“It changed the atmosphere surrounding the baby I did have”: Making sense of reproduction during sustained uncertainty

Objective: This study examines the schemas that women employed during the COVID-19 pandemic to make sense of their reproductive experiences. Background: Existing research on reproduction during epidemics suggests that there are variable population responses to periods of long-term social uncertainty and that individuals and couples can respond to these circumstances in unexpected ways. However, less is known about how individuals make sense of their reproductive experiences during periods of social upheaval.Method: Twenty-nine women aged 25-35 from a mid-sized Midwestern county were recruited and were interviewed about their experiences during the first eight months of the 2021 COVID-19 pandemic. They were asked about their daily lived experiences and about their partnership and reproductive goals during in-depth interviews. These interviews were transcribed and analyzed using thematic coding of the three main schemas that participants used to describe their reproductive experiences.Results: Participants used three main schemas to describe their reproductive experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic. Heteronormative schemas were used by many participants to articulate their commitment to a heteronormative aged-staged progression of life events. Affective schemas were used by participants, primarily those who were currently or recently pregnant, to express grief and loss over the relational experience of having a new baby. Medical schemas were expressed by most participants to describe feelings of fear and risk at real or imagined encounters with medical institutions during the pandemic.Conclusion: The schema that participants use to make sense of their reproductive experiences have real and enduring consequences for their current and future reproduction.

Formation of an innovative project by making effective management decisions

It is known that for the implementation of innovation, it is important to know the level of the enterprise's susceptibility to innovation. Only after assessing the innovative potential of the enterprise, a decision is made on the possibility of conducting innovative activities and an innovative project is developed. At the same time, the development strategy should be based on the enterprise's susceptibility to innovations and readiness to implement them. It has been proved requires special approaches to the perception of problems and their assessment. Since the main feature of the environment of innovative enterprises is market and social uncertainty, there is a need to form specific theoretical and practical methods for ensuring the implementation of innovative projects with a focus on minimizing risks. Research confirms that an innovative project is proposed to be understood as a system of interrelated tasks, is a complex of research, development, production, technological, organizational, financial, commercial and other events, appropriately organized, drawn up with a set of design documentation for estimate calculations and efficiency calculations, which provide an effective solution to a specific scientific and technical problem of an innovative nature in for a certain time. It has been established that an innovative project is based on the concept of its life cycle, which proceeds from the fact that an innovative project is a process that continues from the moment the strategy of a new product is developed until the moment of liquidation. It is advisable to distinguish three stages of the life cycle – the formation, implementation and completion of an innovative project. That the management of an innovative project is an indispensable element of building a competitive strategy for survival in new markets during a period of rapid scientific and technological development and.

Reasoning about social preferences with uncertain beliefs

We propose a computational model of social preference judgments that accounts for the degree of an agents’ uncertainty about the preferences of others. Underlying this model is the principle that, in the face of social uncertainty, people interpret social agents’ behavior under an assumption of expected utility maximization. We evaluate our model in two experiments which each test a different kind of social preference reasoning: predicting social choices given information about social preferences, and inferring social preferences after observing social choices. The results support our model and highlight how un- certainty influences our social judgments.

Spatial Effect of Crime on Peer-to-Peer Lodging Performance

Safety is a major factor impacting consumers’ participation in peer-to-peer (P2P) economies. Using spatial econometric models, this study examined crime effects on the performance (RevPAR) of P2P lodgings at three spatial ranges: property, community, and destination level. The performance of P2P lodgings is negatively associated with crime densities, while the degree of the association varies by crime types and room types. Crime can “spill over” to the neighborhood and have the strongest impact at the community level, followed by the destination level and the property level. The study provides a way to understand tourism risks using criminology theories and the concept of social uncertainty. Empirically, the study provides implications to the governance of community-based lodging business. We suggest that the effect of crime on P2P lodging performance was more conditioned by the safety environment in its neighborhood and the whole destination, rather than individual business operations.

ATTITUDE OF THE UNEMPLOYED TO STATE SUPPORT MEASURES IN THE CONDITIONS OF THE PANDEMIC (SOCIO-PSYCHOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF FORUMS ON THE INTERNET)

В статье показано, что в условиях пандемии COVID-19 и связанной с ней социальной изоляции поиск работы оказался затруднительным, экономическая и социальная неопределенность, связанная с пандемией, привела к снижению емкости рынка труда, и как следствие росту субъективного неблагополучия личности. Проведенный эмпирический анализ сложившейся ситуации позволил авторам сделать общий вывод о том, что потребность в государственной поддержке в условиях пандемии коронавируса обусловлена объективными, независящими от человека обстоятельствами, характеризуется чрезвычайной эмоциональной насыщенностью, узкой направленностью на получение внешней помощи и выраженной психологической напряженностью. Последствия пандемии серьезно повлияли на структуру трудовой занятости, в связи с чем в работе предлагается обратить внимание на то, что важным направлением деятельности в сфере профессиональной подготовки, переподготовки и повышения квалификации становится психологическая подготовка специалистов к профессиональному поведению в условиях социальных, техногенных и природных рисков. В перспективе предлагается обратиться к анализу структурных и содержательных характеристик эмоциональных переживаний безработных, проявившихся в условиях распространения пандемии. The article shows that in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and the associated social isolation, finding a job turned out to be difficult, the economic and social uncertainty associated with the pandemic led to a decrease in the capacity of the labor market, and, as a result, to an increase in the subjective disadvantage of the individual. The empirical analysis of the current situation allowed the authors to draw a general conclusion that the need for state support in the context of the coronavirus pandemic is due to objective circumstances beyond the control of a person, characterized by extreme emotional saturation, a narrow focus on receiving external assistance and pronounced psychological tension. The consequences of the pandemic had a serious impact on the structure of employment, in connection with which the paper proposes to draw attention to the fact that psychological preparation of specialists for professional behavior in conditions of social, technological and natural risks is becoming an important area of activity in the field of vocational training, retraining and advanced training. In the future, it is proposed to turn to the analysis of the structural and content characteristics of the emotional experiences of the unemployed, manifested in the context of the spread of the pandemic.

 A Multi-paradigmatic Interdisciplinary Framework for Human Service Systems

Increasingly, human service systems are complicated by interprofessional spaces, quickening technological change, and social uncertainty. New guides built on existing research, practice, and interdisciplinary knowledge can lead practitioners through these complexities. Targeted toward an interdisciplinary audience, this article introduces four mechanisms to navigate the practical realities of human services organizations. The first, paradigms of organizational analysis, centers on embedded assumptions within human services organizations and their implications. The second, an organizational health paradigm, focuses on organizational health and functioning. The third, an ethical paradigm, incorporates interdisciplinary ethics across various disciplines. The final integrates these mechanisms along four practical pillars of human services systems: policy, organizations, community, and planning/evaluation that incorporate context, focus, and application of organizational practice activities. This framework aims to reduce analytical complexity, comprehensively guide practitioners in understanding contemporary human services systems, and apply these integrated dimensions across policy, organization, community, and planning/evaluation in human services settings.