Impact of Vacation on Employee Stress, Health and Well-being, and Productivity

Leisure activities have an important part in promoting health and well-being for employees. This research attempts to determine the link between holiday and the health and well-being of employees, while also demonstrating a precedent in improving productivity. There was a study of 75 workers working in India to assess the culture, stress causes and holiday pattern of their employees. The primary indication of our results was a survey of people operating in the Indian subcontinent. The opinions of participants were the information analysed to establish a relationship between health and well-being of employees and productivity. Impacts of better insurance on employees. The consequences of enhancing the insurance procedure would have a greater level of motivation, retention and productivity for employees. This interpretative sociology would help companies build a workforce that can perform better. The researchers investigated the present condition of employees working in India after using academic ideas and assessing their existing perceived workplaces. At the time of holidays which was the most favoured leisure activity in our survey, we sought to develop a better model to achieve employee health and wellbeing.

Practical Reason

Paul Ricœur’s essay “Practical Reason” was initially published in 1979, and later became part of the book Du texte à l’action: essais d’herméneutique II (1986), marking Ricœur’s transition from the general problems of the justification of hermeneutics as a legitimate philosophical discipline to the problems of practical philosophy in a broad sense. Relying on the analytical theory of action, the interpretative sociology of M. Weber, and the Hegelian critique of Kantian ethics, Ricœur seeks to restore the Aristotelian concept of phronesis or “practical wisdom” in the context of modern philosophizing. This turns out to be unexpectedly relevant where neither Kant’s deontology nor the Hegelian Sittlichkeit can adequately express the entirety of human practical experience in a world where ideology and alienation have become inevitable components of social life.

ANALYSE SOCIOLOGIQUE DES PERCEPTIONS DES JEUNES BENINOIS SUR LA MODERNITE POLITIQUE DES ELITES

Political modernity is a negotiated reality, which requires adaptation, innovation. The representations or perceptions of young Beninese constitute variables of recognition of political modernity, even of the modernity of political figures or elites. These are criteria for the recognition and validation of political leadership. How do young Beninese build their criteria of political modernity? In addition, how do they state their perceptions of the modernity of elites or political figures in Benin? Essentially qualitative and based on comprehensive interviews carried out in Benin from a survey integrating about thirty (30) people, this research appropriates the dynamics of interpretative sociology and adopts the model of analysis based on the social construction of reality, with an opening on interactionism and strategic analysis. By postulating that the perceptions of young people on political modernity structure the relationships between their expectations and the behavior of elites or political figures in society, this work has made it possible to elucidate the social representations which guide the modernity of political elites in Benin. It revealed the over-intellectualization of the political arena, the pervasiveness of the bó or gris-gris, the emergence of a new relationship to way of life, to technology, then the modernization of public action and marginalization of the opposition.

Innovative Tools of Educational Organization Development Management: Benchmarking

The article considers theoretical and methodological approaches to the use of benchmarking as an innovative tool in the management of an educational organization. The development of methods and tools for managing the development and competitiveness of an educational organization in the global space is based on systemic, operational, competent and situational methodological approaches; on the methodology of interactive, understanding and interpretative sociology; methodologies of synergy, network thinking and social management, modal analysis. The study found that benchmarking is the most appropriate way to improve the work of the educational organization, which is a process of constantly measuring and comparing the methods and results of the work of the organization, its individual divisions, functions, processes with organizations chosen for imitation. The author presents the results of the study of the forms of benchmarking, conducted a review of research on its application by educational organizations of higher education in Russia, presented a detailed analysis of the main stages of its implementation in relation to the specifics of the activities of the educational organization, visualized a set of types of benchmarking by classification groups.

Phenomenological understanding of M. Weber's postulate of subjective interpretation in A. Schütz's work

Max Weber, as the founder of interpretative sociology, left a significant influence on phenomenological, that is, reflective sociology. His concept of understanding (Verstehen) gained a modified role in the sociological theoretical-methodological directions that emerged during the twentieth century. Understanding is not only a methodological procedure of interpreting social reality but also a condition of its intersubjectivity as a special experiential form. Therefore, in this paper, the theoretical schemes and methodological strategies of Max Weber and Alfred Schütz are problematised with the central attention to the use of the postulate of subjective interpretation. This postulate is presented within the phenomenological sociological model, primarily in the sense of the general principle of constructing types of flow-actions, that is, the typification necessary for social harmonisation of participants in the common-sense world. Since the model of scientific constructs is based on the model of common sense constructs as first-order constructs, this postulate also gained its central place in the methodological sense, as one of three possible forms - experiential, epistemological, and methodological. In the wake of all previously analysed, the specificity of the phenomenological understanding of the concept of action is also pointed out.

The Controversy of Weber: Cultural Sociology, Neoliberalism and Theory of Domination

The article analyzes the most significant properties of the dispute about Weber caused by attempts to “reconstruct” Weberian heritage in cultural-anthropological and liberal “paradigms”. It appears that Weber's theory of domination causes an implicit tension, which calls the canonization of Weber as a “classic” of institutionalized sociology into question. The cultural-anthropological “reconstruction” of Weber’s heritage is characterized by meta-theorizing on the basis of conceptual universalia, which fundamentally contradicts the main provisions of Weber’s understanding (interpretative) sociology in both the substantive and methodological aspects. The “paradigm” of the neoliberal utopia split into two camps: the former ignores Weber’s understanding of sociology as a scientific discipline, while the latter, is characterized by attempts to “distill” his legacy for the needs of the so-called new economic sociology.

Workshops as an Essential Practice in Doing Biographical Research

The aim of the paper is to share our reflections on the meaning, goals, and course of analytical workshops, which are treated by the authors not only in terms of methodological procedures, but also as a process of grounded theory building, where the phase of collective work is pivotal. We present the idea of workshops worked out within interpretative sociology and qualitative analysis and developed in different fields, yet we mainly focus on biographical research analysis. The knowledge and practice transfer between scholars in this respect is also one of the frames of our reasoning. The paper consists of several sections: firstly, we present a short overview of workshop practices in the field of biographical research referring mainly to students’ workshops; in the second part, we describe advantages of workshop practices for researchers and their possible outcomes; the third section describes examples of research and analysis of the same empirical material done by researchers representing different methodological approaches; finally, we finish with concluding remarks.

Research into Transformations in Everyday Life: Three Methodological Notes

The article focuses on the reflection of my research experience in obtaining qualitative data using narrative interviews. I confronted my own research experience with the phenomenological methodology of Alfred Schütz, dramaturgical sociology of Erving Goffman, and interpretative sociology of Max Weber. The article discusses three problems that emerged during a longitudinal study of everyday life transformation in the long-term horizon of sixty years: 1. How to create a concept of everyday life so it serves not only as a tool for collecting, analyzing, and interpreting data, but also as a tool for understanding the meanings of the examined empirical world; 2. How to discursively create an image of everyday life transformations during an interview between a participant and a researcher and what it means in relation to the research subject; 3. How to reach understanding between the participant and the researcher during a face-to-face interview.

Objective meaning: The formation of self in Mead and Sohn-Rethel

This analysis of the work of George Herbert Mead and Alfred Sohn-Rethel compares their respective accounts of the formation of the self. The analysis proceeds from two important similarities: the effort to understand self-consciousness not as primordial but as the product of social processes, and the view that these processes form a circuit: the self arises from consciousness’ return to itself, concluding a movement whereby consciousness is first externalized onto objects and then internalized, taking on the insular shape of self-consciousness. What sets the two accounts apart is the site from whence the self returns: objects. In Mead, the self returns from meaningful objects, and this same (intersubjective) meaning is entangled with the process of self-formation. In contrast, for Sohn-Rethel, the self returns from objects whose meaning is not established intersubjectively but objectively: the self is the unintended consequence of commodity exchange. In Mead, interaction among people affords meaning to objects and thus evokes the self; in Sohn-Rethel, interaction among commodities evokes an objective meaning that renders people as selves. Interpretative sociology should attend to the objectively and unconsciously meaningful forms analyzed by Sohn-Rethel. To illustrate this conclusion, reference is made to a certain experience of the social under neoliberalism.