Division Of Labor Research Articles

Parental decision-making regarding vaccination: the role of preschool enrolment sanctions, family policies and childcare expectation

ABSTRACT The Czech Republic exemplifies a country with a mandatory childhood vaccination system. A child who has not completed compulsory vaccinations cannot be admitted to preschool until age 5. This paper discusses this measure's impact on parental decision-making processes, interactions with healthcare professionals, and activities and discourses employed by organisations that unite vaccine-hesitant parents. The analysis draws on data from 30 in-depth interviews with vaccine-hesitant parents (all of whom intentionally postponed or refused at least one compulsory vaccination), 19 in-depth interviews with healthcare professionals and 60 hours of observation at three paediatrician surgeries during vaccination consultations. The paper departs from the notion of vaccine hesitancy as a state of indecisiveness or a particular behavioural phenomenon and leans towards specific contexts within which decisions are made. It analyses specific effects of indirect sanctions that are part of mandatory vaccination policies on vaccine-hesitant parents’ interactions with healthcare professionals, strategies, public discourses and decision-making processes regarding vaccination. The paper discusses the measures’ impact in the context of family policies in the Czech Republic (availability of preschool facilities, gender division of labour and social expectations regarding the length of paternal leave).

Study on Evolution Mechanism of Agricultural Trade Network of RCEP Countries—Complex System Analysis Based on the TERGM Model

The agricultural products trade network is essentially a complex adaptive system formed by nonlinear interactions between countries. Based on the complex system theory, this study reveals the dynamic self-organization law of the RCEP regional agricultural products trade network by using the panel data of RCEP agricultural products export trade from 2000 to 2023, combining social network analysis (SNA) and the temporal exponential random graph model (TERGM). The results show the following: (1) The RCEP agricultural products trade network presents a “core-edge” hierarchical structure, with China as the core hub to drive regional resource integration and ASEAN countries developing into secondary core nodes to deepen collaborative dependence. (2) The “China-ASEAN-Japan-Korea “riangle trade structure is formed under the RCEP framework, and the network has the characteristics of a “small world”. The leading mode of South–South trade promotes the regional economic order to shift from the traditional vertical division of labor to multiple coordination. (3) The evolution of trade network system is driven by multiple factors: endogenous reciprocity and network expansion are the core structural driving forces; synergistic optimization of supply and demand matching between economic and financial development to promote system upgrading; geographical proximity and cultural convergence effectively reduce transaction costs and enhance system connectivity, but geographical distance is still the key system constraint that restricts the integration of marginal countries. This study provides a systematic and scientific analytical framework for understanding the resilience mechanism and structural evolution of regional agricultural trade networks under global shocks.

Raising awareness of occupational carcinogens among apprentices in an approach to promoting health in the workplace.

The aim of this article is to report on an interventional research project - based in the human and social sciences, particularly sociology and educational sciences - designed to better understand how auto body technician, hairdresser, and beautician apprentices perceive the prevention of occupational carcinogenic risks, and to experiment with educational interventions aimed at raising their awareness of this issue. The associated methodology combines interviews with apprentices and training professionals (n = 72), and over a hundred hours of observations in practice workshops and in classrooms. Interventions were carried out in four classrooms, the effects of which were measured by interviews and administered questionnaires. Although apprentices are concerned about their health, their position within the division of labour offers them very limited scope for preventive action. Professional norms tend to reinforce certain barriers to prevention. Carcinogenic risk, due to its delayed effects, remains difficult to apprehend and calls for specific intervention strategies. The interventions help to inform and initiate changes in their practices, but they struggle to make learners' awareness of the structural obstacles to prevention. All of these findings have been used to create tools that make up an educational kit available to trainers. Preventing occupational carcinogenic risk among apprentices is a complex issue, and interventions in schools are one way of addressing it. However, a global change in practices requires these projects to be transferred to a larger scale, along with structural changes in working environments to promote the health of apprentices.

Investigating the Impact of Gender, Age, and Parenthood on Household Chores: A Study of Delhi NCR

This study investigates gender disparities in household work and examines how age and parenthood influence the time spent on domestic chores. Using a quantitative approach with convenience sampling, data were collected from 66 respondents through a structured online survey. The results reveal significant gender differences in household chore distribution, with women consistently spending more time than men, especially on cleaning, washing, and laundry. Age also plays a significant role; individuals above 26 years reported notably more involvement in housework compared to younger individuals. Furthermore, having children was strongly associated with increased hours spent on domestic tasks, particularly childcare and eldercare. These findings highlight the persistence of gendered divisions of labor and the compounding impact of age and family structure on unpaid household responsibilities. The study contributes to ongoing discourse on gender roles, domestic labor, and the invisible load disproportionately carried by women in households.

People evaluate idle collaborators based on their impact on task efficiency.

People evaluate idle collaborators based on their impact on task efficiency.

Marx's Critique and Reinvention of Hegel's Theory of World History

Hegel's idea of world history is an important branch of his philosophical system, which mainly discusses the development, essence, meaning of history and the evolution of human reason. He believed that history is the process of realising the Absolute Spirit (Geist), which represents the evolution of human reason, and the end of history is the realisation of human freedom; the ‘world spirit’ is the unfolding process of the absolute spirit, and world history is the writing of the absolute spirit in different time and space. Marx, on the other hand, criticised Hegel's abstract thinking from the materialist conception of history. He thought that Hegel's idea of world history was unable to reveal the complexity and concreteness of real history, and ignored the concrete historical conditions and social practices. After critically absorbing Hegel's view of history, Marx reshaped the theory of world history, established that the subject of history is the real human being, and pointed out that the factors driving the process of history should be established in the real material production activities instead of the pure spirit (Geist) referred to by Hegel. Marx establishes a brand new mechanism of historical evolution, further establishes the foundation of the materialist conception of world history by clarifying the roles of labour, interaction and division of labour and their interrelationships in the process of historical evolution, comprehensively elaborates the theory of social history and world history, and reveals step by step the law of the development of human history under the state of alienation.

Familia y su deconstrucción: Una mirada intergeneracional en torno a sus desafíos en diferentes municipios del estado de Campeche

Referring to the deconstruction of the family implies focusing on the dynamism of the social, economic, cultural, political and environmental changes that are reflected in the structure and organization of the family system; in the present study the following categories are observed: Family structure, with its corresponding subcategories, roles, functions, interdependence; Everyday interpersonal and intergenerational relationships with their subcategories, meaning of life, otherness and immediacy and finally, the category: Articulation with the world of work, with its subcategory: division of labor by gender. It is a non-experimental, longitudinal, qualitative design and descriptive scope; whose approach is biographical, narrative and hermeneutical, oriented within the framework of the systemic model. Its objective: To glimpse in the subjectivity and intersubjectivity of participants of different generations, the process of deconstruction of the family system in different municipalities of the State

The agency of women in the common kitchen programme in Tucumán (Argentina)

Abstract This article examines the agency of women in a state programme which, although its original aim was not focused on improving the situation of women, has had the effect of helping women from poor sectors along a gender path. The analysis uses the concept of agency to explore contradictions between gender roles, the sexual division of labour, and women’s emancipation. While the programme reinforced some traditional gender roles, it also enabled women to develop a certain level of autonomy through emancipatory strategies, such as creating new spaces where they can discuss gender issues and share their experiences. Key findings relate to the role of community activities in building alternatives to current living conditions. The programme helped women save time and money and provided opportunities to step out of their private spaces. In its final year, the programme came to incorporate a feminist perspective, thanks to the efforts of both the feminist movement and the women beneficiaries of the programme. Analysis of the text of interviews and a final focus group provides an assessment of the programme’s outcomes and allows an evaluation of the level of agency achieved.

色谱分析实验教学革新与创新人才培养

色谱类实验是仪器分析实验的重要组成部分。为了适应新形势下培养具有科学思维创新人才的需求，自2017年起，北京大学化学与分子工程学院开设的仪器分析实验课程以色谱类实验教学为改革试点，通过加强实验内容设计，注重实际样品分析，提高学生参与度，增强学生自由探索度，强化学生分工合作并采用虚实结合的教学形式等一系列精心设计的改革举措，有效激发了学生学习的主观能动性，提升了学生对仪器分析原理和仪器结构功能的理解，培养了学生分析问题和解决问题的综合能力，强化了学生的科学思维和科学素养，有力促进了培养创新人才这一核心目标的实现。

A global sense of work place? rethinking the (dis)locality of digital nomads

The growing ‘digital nomad’ movement flourishes amid concerns about the impacts of remote work on workplace culture. This ethnographic study combines a Massey-inspired perspective on space, place, and spatial divisions of labor with a geomedia lens to interpret digital nomad infrastructure as producing a ‘global sense of workplace’. By adopting this perspective, the nomadic lifestyle appears less as a radical departure by professionals from office/life and more as a spatial manifestation of digital labor in the context of neoliberal capitalism.

Culture, Kinship and Women’s Labour Opportunities: Evidence from Malawi and Indonesia*

Economic and anthropological research has shown that gender roles often originate from ancestral divisions of labor in subsistence activities. This paper examines the impact of ancestral matrilocality on women’s employment status in Malawi and Indonesia, focusing on both employment quantity and quality. Using individual-level data from the Malawi Integrated Household Survey and the Indonesia Family Life Survey, combined with ethnic-level cultural data from Murdock’s Ethnographic Atlas, we assess how matrilocality—where husbands relocate to their wives’ families after marriage—affects women’s likelihood of overall employment, wage employment and holding a formal job contract. We find that matrilocality significantly increases women’s likelihood of wage employment, enhances the probability of formal contract work, and reduces overall employment. Mechanisms driving these effects include strengthened household bargaining power and reduced tolerance for gender-based violence among matrilocal women. These results highlight the persistence of ancestral norms in shaping gendered labor market outcomes and support culturally sensitive policy interventions to reduce gender disparities.

Coordinated action by individuals orchestrates infection through the division of labour

Coordinated action by individuals orchestrates infection through the division of labour

War for Work’s Sake

This essay evaluates the ideological compact between U.S. state violence deployed across a decades-long War on Terror and that violence’s foremost cultural mediator, the post-9/11 Hollywood war film. It argues that, counter the tendency to view the Hollywood war film as mere “ideological apparatus,” a media form conscripted into the project of U.S. imperialism, what implicates state and medium is instead a more immanent strategy of mutual self-justification and institutional renewal powered by nostalgia for the Fordist-industrial mode of production and its gendered division of labor. Less neoliberal-imperial jingo than neo-protectionist, post-imperial swansong, the post-9/11 Hollywood war film diagnoses rather than refutes U.S. declension, tracing that declension, as economists Robert Brenner and Giovanni Arrighi do, to the 1970s crises in industrial “overcapacity” and “over accumulation” that precipitated U.S. deindustrialization. The genre moreover implicates Hollywood’s own declension in that systemic diagnosis, coarticulating the institution’s struggle to adapt to increasingly fragmented production processes. The genre’s insistently retrograde protagonists embody a fantasy of reindustrialization in the shadow of global outsourcing, widespread deskilling, and imminent automation that ultimately sublimates war’s violence into the labor of artistic production, binding Hollywood’s fortunes and failures to the state while staking the state’s renewal on Hollywood’s. Doing so, they subsequently convey the cinematic medium’s structural implication in US state violence while affirming its primacy to US hegemony’s maintenance.

Inside the biotech: a dialogue between Rosenberg, Babbage, Smith, and Schumpeter

ABSTRACT This paper contributes to the understanding of the emergence of biotechnology as the outcome of a co-evolutionary process that necessitated simultaneous innovations in four core domains: law, government policy and university-industry links, molecular biology, and finance. The institutional changes that resulted had profound implications for the division of labour and the division of knowledge that characterised the early biotechnology industry. The Smithian interpretation, which suggests that the division of labour precedes and shapes the division of knowledge through learning by doing, may be challenged in conditions of economic uncertainty. From this perspective, we argue that the division of knowledge can precede the division of labour, with organisations making deliberate decisions about the allocation of resources to core and non-core competences. The varied distribution of roles and institutions influenced the trajectories of early biotechnology start-ups. These trajectories manifested in two theoretical models, wherein differing emphases on scientific research and commercialisation coexisted to varying degrees, thereby influencing long-term profitability and growth.

Clausal anaphors and their division of labor in Japanese

Clausal anaphors and their division of labor in Japanese

Production automation and skill premium: a perspective of deepening the division of labor in enterprises

This article describes the deepening of enterprise division of labor from three dimensions: vertical specialization level (VSI), global value chain (GVC) level and global value chain (GVC) position, and integrates production automation and deepening of enterprise division of labor within a framework to explore the impact of production automation on enterprise skill premium and the mechanism by which production automation affects skill premium by promoting deepening of enterprise division of labor. This article uses the matching data of the International Robotics Federation IFR data, Chinese industrial enterprise data, and Chinese customs data from 2001 to 2014 to conduct an empirical test. The result shows that the improvement of production automation level has expanded the skill premium of enterprises. The amplifying effect of production automation on the skill premium is stronger in firms with high levels of specialization and high levels and positions in global value chains. Improving production automation has expanded the skill premium in the context of deepening the division of labor in enterprises. The mechanism test shows that production automation can promote the deepening of enterprise division of labor, and there are chain and ripple effects of production automation on skill premium from the perspective of deepening multi-level division of labor. Heterogeneity testing shows that the chain and spillover effects have different strengths and weaknesses in the skill premium of general trading enterprises, enterprises in the Middle East, and non-state owned enterprises.

Resettlement and Relational Adjustment: Gender and Liberian Couple Relationships After Forced Migration

ABSTRACTObjectiveThe goal of this study was to explore key informant and community members' perspectives on relational adjustment in one of the largest Liberian communities in the U.S., including ways that cultural and gender norm changes influenced couples post‐resettlement.BackgroundDisplacement, resettlement, and acculturation challenge traditional cultural norms and family processes. Gendered notions, or common family‐ and community‐level beliefs, values, and practices, are often upended and must be re‐negotiated after resettlement.MethodHermeneutic phenomenology procedures informed the current study design. Across a total of 40 participants, 20 engaged in individual key informant interviews and 20 individuals participated in one of three focus groups for women (n = 6) and men (n = 6) above 25 years of age, or young adults 18–25 years of age (n = 8). Hermeneutic coding and data analysis protocols emphasized meaning‐making within participants' shared observations of their lived contexts.ResultsQualitative perspectives on gender and Liberian couple relationships yielded common themes in two contexts: pre‐migration (traditional beliefs and values, division of labor, and power and control) and post‐migration (changes in beliefs and values, division of labor, power and control). An additional theme, relational outcomes, and two sub‐themes, financial acculturation and violence awareness, emerged as uniquely salient to post‐migration contexts.ConclusionResettled Liberians managed complex adjustment challenges following war‐related displacement and navigated salient changes in gendered norms and other sociocultural values that had observable impacts on couple relationships. This study expands socioecological perspectives on refugee resettlement. We discuss research, clinical, and policy implications, with considerations for interventions with forcibly displaced couples, families, and communities.

Experiences of providing end-of-life care in adult intensive care units: a qualitative study

ObjectiveTo explore the perspectives and experiences of nurses providing end-of-life care in the intensive care units.MethodsThis study employed a descriptive phenomenological approach, conducting semi-structured interviews with 13 intensive care units’ nurses from November 2023 to February 2024. The interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed verbatim, and analyzed using Colaizzi analysis to categorize and organize the data.ResultsWe categorized the findings into four themes: (1) Institutional constraints in end-of-life care, (2) Cultural-cognitive conflicts, (3) Communication breakdown and trust crisis, (4) Healing and resilience.ConclusionThis study provides an in-depth analysis of the key factors influencing the implementation of end-of-life care in intensive care units within the Chinese cultural context, highlighting the multidimensional challenges encountered. By meticulously analyzing barriers and facilitators, the study offers insights for effective resource utilization (division of labor within the medical team, balancing the intensity of medical interventions with patients’ comfort needs) and targeted strategy development. Optimizing intensive care unit environments, enhancing cultural sensitivity education, promoting team collaboration, and providing emotional support for nurses are essential pathways to improving the effectiveness of end-of-life care in the intensive care units.

Lactate as a key energy source facilitating cooperative behaviour in helper Damaraland mole-rats.

This study explores the metabolic factors that may aid in the division of labour in cooperatively breeding Damaraland mole-rat (Fukomys damarensis) colonies, particularly during digging activities. In these group-living mammals, both breeders and non-breeders participate in digging, among other cooperative tasks; however, non-breeding males and females (NBFs), often referred to as 'helpers', undertake this task at a higher frequency and engage in other energetically demanding activities more often than their breeding counterparts. We investigated how variation in glucose and lactate levels, two key energy substrates, relates to different levels of digging activity between breeders and non-breeders and how these metabolic patterns might underpin reproductive differences in activity and energy budgets. While both breeding females (BFs) and NBFs exhibited similar decreases in glucose levels after digging, lactate dynamics revealed a key distinction, NBFs experienced a significant drop in plasma lactate, suggesting lactate utilization. In contrast, BFs showed an increase in lactate, indicating its accumulation rather than utilization, potentially contributing to their reduced involvement in digging activity. These findings suggest that lactate recycling and metabolism may play a crucial role in sustaining prolonged physical exertion in NBFs, providing a potential physiological explanation for the division of labour in mole-rat colonies.

On the instrumental meaning of communication

Introduction. Modern research is characterized by diverse, often contradictory, interpretations of the communication process and an extraordinary variety of terminology. This applies, among other things, to the interpretation of instrumental characteristics of communication. Purpose setting. The task of the research is to consider communication as a tool of cognition and as a tool for the transformation of an integratively understood environment. Methodology and methods of the study. The article examines communications from the point of view of studying their instrumental characteristics. The authors believe that the unity and contradiction of communication with industrial relations is manifested precisely in the instrumental nature of communication. Considering communication within the framework of such a methodology, we will see the possibility and necessity of changing approaches to communication research. According to the authors, the instrumental nature of communication is best revealed in the context of the division of labor (production). Results. The authors consider the process of communication formation in a logical aspect and come from the simplest natural attitude to a specifically human one through consideration of expedient activity (labor) and its division. The approach used by the authors allows us to define the boundary of the concept of «communication», which is revealed during the transition from the consideration of the technological division of labor to the consideration of the social division of production. The authors find a historical and philosophical analogy of the described process in the early works of K. Marx, where the concept of «communication relations» was present, which later transformed into the concept of productive forces. Conclusion. Communication functions are defined as the coordination of goals (results, products) of technologically separated labor processes, which means their connection. However, when separating management into a separate work process, the goal may not be agreed with the performer. When we move to the level of the whole society, we are no longer talking about the instrumental characteristics of communications, since at the level of the whole society, the coordination or opposition of interests occurs in the form of ideology.