The Geography of Giving in the Philanthropic Field

Drawing on the neo-institutional notion of organizational fields, we propose the concept of the philanthropic field to conceptualize the geography of giving and the interrelations of benevolent activities across the domains of private, public, and civic sectors. Empirically, we adopt a multi-method approach, including a media analysis of reported acts of giving in the German region of Heilbronn-Franconia, a social network analysis of its regional philanthropic relations, and qualitative interviews with representatives of non-profit organizations, corporations, and public as well as private intermediaries. Based on our analysis, we conclude that the philanthropic field is constituted by diverse actors from all sectors of society who engage in specialization, division of labor, and collaboration. Moreover, practices of giving spread across geographical scales, though the majority of activity concentrates on the local and regional level. We conclude by discussing the potentials and limits of our approach as a means to gain insights into local fields of philanthropy and benevolent action across societal sectors.

Alpenprojekt

Alpenprojekt videos register the action of cutting the skyline in the alpine mountains. The footage was taken at different sites in the Alps. The cutouts evoke the European tradition from the 18th century to depict portraits with scissors and paper. A deliberate intent to apprehend the landscape within a unique line in a reduced dimension is the main issue in Alpenprojekt I and II. To react in the face of this specific landscape as an effort to embrace what is not controllable became a fundamental issue in the Alpenprojekt series of works. Alpenprojekt began with artistic research related to the southern German region closely connected with its physical landscape. Its representation was then perceived as a memory heritage of historical facts, either forgotten or intentionally lost. The entire project is called Trilogy of the Mountains, and it is related to memory and history. Trilogy of the Mountains comprises three phases: Alpenprojekt, based on the alpine landscape; the second one approaches Beckton Alps, an artificial mountain in east London; and the third part is related to artificial mountains made with war debris in Germany. Each piece of the Trilogy comprises a series of works. The project was initially developed based on landscapes where the notion of Romanticism is still present. Then the project was set toward the post-industrialization period—and finally related to reshaping the topography in Germany after WWII. In Trilogy of Mountains, the tension between natural and artificial is a central issue, being rather complementary than the opposite.

Healthcare avoidance: a qualitative study of dental care avoidance in Germany in terms of emergent behaviours and characteristics

Background The treatment of acute pain is part of everyday dental practice. Often, these symptoms result from years of patients' inadequate or missing dental routines and lead to a reduction in the quality of life or health of the patients and to high costs for the health care system. Despite the enormous advantages of modern dentistry, many patients avoid going to the dentist. Therefore, the study aimed to determine the reasons and behaviours that cause patients to avoid visits to the dentist. Methods We conducted semi-structured interviews with patients who had an above-average DMFT index and had been going to the dentist only irregularly for years. The sample participants were recruited from the northern German region of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. 20 individual interviews were recorded, transcribed verbatim and coded. We used a qualitative framework approach to code the transcripts in order to establish a consensus among the researchers. Ultimately, through discussions and reviews of the attributes and meaning of the topics, a typology could be established. Results A typology of patients who avoid the dentist was developed. Four independent characteristic patterns of dentist avoidance could be developed: avoiding the dentist due to "distance" (type A; includes subtype A1 "avoiding the dentist due to negligence" and subtype A2 "dental avoidance due to neutralization"), "disappointment" (type B), "shame" (type C), and "fear" (type D). Using the typology as a generalised tool to determine the minimum and maximum contrasts, it was possible to capture the diversity and multidimensionality of the reasons and behaviours for avoidance. All patients had negative dental experiences, which had led to different avoidance patterns and strategies. Conclusions The identified avoidance characteristics represent a spectrum of patients from Northern Germany who avoid going to the dentist. This is the first comprehensive study in Germany representing avoidance behaviour of dentist patients in the form of a typology. The results suggest that dentistry also needs qualitative research to better understand patient characteristics and provide direct access to patients who avoid regular dental visits. Thus, the results make a potentially fundamental contribution to the improvement of dental care and enrich its understanding.

‘It is not worse than a flu’ – COVID-19 Scepticism and the Role of Trust and Far-Right Attitudes in Germany

Whereas previous social science scholarship on the COVID-19 pandemic has primarily focused on health behaviour, social distancing, or pandemic-related conspiracy beliefs, we investigate the drivers of COVID-19 scepticism. COVID-19 sceptics view the virus as harmless (i.e., not worse than a casual flu). Using data from a representative survey conducted in the East German region of Thuringia in autumn 2020, we show that far-right political attitudes and low trust in political institutions are crucial drivers of COVID-19 scepticism.

Access to Government Support for Innovation — Empirical Evidence From the Ruhr Area in Germany

Governments all over the world support innovation activities in private companies with several different programs. Typical measures are R&D subsidies, consulting services, incubator facilities, opportunities for networking, and subsidized loans. From an economic perspective, public support for innovations may help to compensate for market failure. But government support encounters the risk of being neither effective nor efficient. Furthermore, the ability of a company to successfully apply for public innovation support programs depends on the amount of administrative resources it already is equipped with, i.e. its size and its existing relationships with research institutions. In this paper, we look at public support for private companies in one specific German region, the Ruhr area. We use a sample of 74 companies, all of which engage in R&D activities and have already filed patents. Our findings show that firms need a minimum company size to be able to successfully apply for public innovation support. Furthermore, we show that an existing cooperation with research institutions makes access to public support measures easier. We also find that public innovation support indeed improves the patent position of companies.

Education for Sustainable Development in Structural Change Processes Using the Example of the Coal Phase-out in Lusatia

Within socio-economic transformation processes, the task of education is often reduced to short-term economic factors, that is, a suitable qualification profile of the local population. Transformative education should, however, be based on the broader claim that education contributes to successful transformation processes in the sense of facilitating a high and sustainable quality of life within a democratic society. In this article, we look at the transformation process in the German region of Lusatia. Coal, the region’s predominant industry, will be phased out by 2038. We examine what types of programme content might enable learners to participate in the transformation process, and discuss how different educational concepts (education for sustainable development and related approaches including transformative learning, socio-economic and civic education) could be used to develop an educational approach towards the transformation process. We derive competences that students should possess in two areas and provide recommendations for educational processes and policy.

How Small and Medium Sized Firms Walk the Path to Hybridity

Customers increasingly prefer the provision of comprehensive solutions over buying goods and services separately. Whereas researchers have closely studied the servitization of large manufacturers, the situation of small and medium sized firms as well as of services firms has been neglected. In contrast to the one-sided view of servitization, we propose a comprehensive view of hybridity to capture the transformation of firms from pure to hybrid products and to focus on SMEs across a wide range of sectors. Based on a survey of 190 SMEs in a highly industrialized southern German region, we find hybrid firms to be more likely than pure firms—both manufacturing and service firms—to engage in a higher scale and scope of innovation activities, to use absorptive capabilities in the appropriation of external knowledge, and to collaborate with partners in the innovation process. We argue that collaboration offers a sustainable path towards hybridity for SMEs, and that territorial hybridity can be a viable path for regions towards sustainable development.

Infrastructure as an aspect of quality of life and its influence on life satisfaction in small towns of the German region type central location

According to most (inter)national studies, life satisfaction in small towns is higher than in other types of towns with more inhabitants. With a population survey in eight German cities, we examine the importance of the infrastructure as an aspect of quality of life and the accessibility of infrastructure for local life satisfaction and whether or not the factor of social cohesion has a stronger impact on life satisfaction. The results show a differentiated picture: First, the infrastructure offer, as an aspect of objectively measurable quality of life does not have the greatest impact on life satisfaction. The population of the small towns in central locations apparently takes advantage of the infrastructure offers of their neighbouring towns and other places. Somehow, they are very satisfied with life on site, despite a low level of satisfaction with the infrastructure. The study thus tends to confirm the borrowing size concept, according to which small towns in the surrounding area benefit from the functions of the core city. On the other hand, the two factors of social cohesion and satisfaction with the performance of the local administration are closely related to the individual life satisfaction on site. For further research, the question arises, as which factors can explain local common sense best and how this can be improved through political measures.

Molecular epidemiology of SARS-CoV-2 - a regional to global perspective

BackgroundAfter a year of the global SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, a highly dynamic genetic diversity is surfacing. Among nearly 1000 reported virus lineages, dominant lineages such as B.1.1.7 or B.1.351 attract media attention with questions regarding vaccine efficiency and transmission potential. In response to the pandemic, the Jena University Hospital began sequencing SARS-CoV-2 samples in Thuringia in early 2020.MethodsViral RNA was sequenced in tiled amplicons using Nanopore sequencing. Subsequently, bioinformatic workflows were used to process the generated data. As a genomic background, 9,642 representative SARS-CoV-2 genomes (1,917 of German origin) were extracted from more than 300.000 genomes.ResultsIn a comprehensive bioinformatics analysis, we have set Thuringian isolates in the German, European and global context. In Thuringia, a largely rural German region without an international airport and a population density below the German average, we discovered many of the common “EU lineages”. German samples are scattered across eight major clades, and Thuringian samples occupy four of them.ConclusionThe rapid emergence and spread of novel variants are of great concern as these lineages could transmit more efficiently, evade current vaccine efforts or undermine diagnostic test accuracy. To anticipate and mitigate these threats, a continuous molecular surveillance is essential.Key messagesBioinformatics analysis of 1,917, 4,251, and 3,474 SARS-CoV-2 genomes from Germany, the EU (except Germany), and non-EU, respectively, subsampled from more than 300,000 public genomes and placed in the context of Thuringian sequencesConstant antigenic drift for SARS-CoV-2 and no clear pattern or clustering is visible in Thuringia based on the current number of samplesCurrently over 100 described lineages are identified in Germany and only a subset (9) are detected in Thuringia so far, most likely due to genetic undersamplingFrom a national perspective, it is likely that high-frequency lineages, which are currently spreading throughout Europe, will eventually also reach ThuringiaSystematic and dense molecular surveillance via whole-genome sequencing is needed to detect concerning new lineages early, limit spread and adjust vaccines if necessary

Avoidance of Food Waste from a Grocery Retail Store Owner’s Perspective

The aim of this paper is to examine the causes of food waste and potential prevention strategies from a grocery retail store owner’s perspective. We therefore conducted a case study in a German region through semi-structured expert interviews with grocery retail store owners. From the collected responses, we applied a qualitative content analysis. The results indicated that store owners try to avoid food waste as this incurs a financial loss for them that directly affects them personally, as opposed to store managers of supermarket chains who receive a fixed salary. The main causes of food waste in the grocery retail stores in the region surveyed are expiration dates, spoilage, consumer purchasing behavior, and over-ordering of food products. The most appropriate food waste prevention strategies developed by store owners are those based on store owners’ experience and their own management style, such as the optimization of sales and management strategies, including precise planning, accurate ordering, and timely price reductions on soon-to-be-expiring food products. The redistribution of food surpluses as donations to food banks, employees, and as animal feed further helps to reduce the amount of food waste, but not the financial loss. This study enhances the literature by revealing that grocery retail store owners have the ability and are willing to successfully implement and enforce food prevention strategies in their stores.