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In this chapter it is pointed out that leaders who make decisions normally rely on both their intuition and their analytical thinking. Modern research shows that intuitive thinking has the potential to support the analytical, if used properly. Leaders must therefore be aware of the possibilities and limitations of intuition. Fresh thinking and innovation are key elements in leadership analysis, thus creative problem-solving is an important complement to traditional leadership thinking. Creative leaders work extensively with both intuition and logic. They also often work with metaphors, analogies, images and imagination to create dynamism in the analysis of a problem. Many leaders come in daily contact with problems that are not necessarily self-generated. It is therefore important that they have the opportunity to take an outside perspective on the situation. They must be able to define the problems which are of strategic importance for the activity. Leaders should not allow themselves to be stressed too much by various everyday problems, but be aware that they usually cannot just ignore them. After delineating a problem a leader should think through what trials ought to be conducted to
test a given hypothesis about reality. This can be done by showing how different problems are related to each other. When analyzing various problems it is useful to clarify what kinds of decisions theyrelate to. Some decisions must be made directly, while others canbe postponed. Some decisions are reversible in nature while others are irrevocable.

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals appoint that all Member States have agreed to try to achieve Universal Health Coverage by 2030. This includes financial risk protection, access to quality essential health-care services and access to safe, effective, quality and affordable essential medicines for all. The World Health Organisation has defined the Universal Health Coverage as a priority, which means that all people can use the preventive, curative, rehabilitative and palliative health care services they need, of sufficient quality to be effective, while also ensuring that the use of these services does not expose the user to financial hardship. The classic approach of the unmet medical needs is defined as the total self-reported unmet needs for medical care for the following three reasons: financial barriers, waiting times, too far to travel. According to the Eurostat data, overall range of unmet medical needs in Latvia is the highest of the European Union countries, however, the accessibility of health services depends on a multitude of factors that relate to the health system and also to the patients themselves. Therefore the Multi-criteria decision analysis approach could be acceptable for assessment of the unmet medical needs. The data on unmet medical needs for Latvia should be additionally evaluated, taking into account the "therapeutic need", which refers to the need for a better treatment than the treatment currently reimbursed, from the perspective of the patient. Apart from therapeutic need, the concept of societal need should be investigated, which refers to the need for a better treatment than the currently available treatment for societal reasons.

Argues that disputes arising from the FL vote in the 2000 presidential election should have been resolved by Congress rather than the Supreme Court. An analysis of Bush v. Gore maintains that the US Supreme Court's decision to remand the case & stay the recount indicates an inherent conflict of interest on the part of the justices that sets it apart from earlier election law cases reviewed by the Court. Charges of partisanship would have been avoided if the Court had left the matter to the political sphere. Claims that failure of the Court to intervene in the election would have caused a constitutional crisis are based on unfounded fears stemming from distrust of the political process. Not only is there no evidence that the political crisis would have damaged the institutions of governance, but it is likely that the dispute could have been resolved by state actors. If not, it is contended that the proper forum for determining the outcome was the US Congress, which has a framework for constraining opportunism & channeling deliberation. J. Lindroth

This chapter proposes a novel sequential mixed-method design that brings together the strengths of sequence analysis (SA) and qualitative comparative analysis (QCA). Both methods rely on an epistemological framework that combines analytical and holistic elements: they share the notion of analytically approaching social phenomena without disregarding their complexity. We apply SA as a first step to analyze the unfolding of phenomena over time. Specifically, through discrepancy analysis of state sequences, one can identify the time points when trajectories (start to) diverge from each other. In a second, explanatory step, QCA is applied to investigate whether, at such crucial time points, some particular configurations of factors are logically sufficient for the occurrence of a given state (or outcome). We provide an illustrative application to women's employment trajectories in divided Germany by using data from the Adults Cohort of the German National Educational Panel (NEPS). By preserving the analytical and holistic perspective on trajectories, our proposed design highlights the dynamic of socio-demographic factors sufficient for women to be in employment or education at critical turning points over the life course. This design takes on the challenge, summarized in Abbott's call for a 'processual sociology', to investigate both the dynamics of social phenomena as lineages of successive events and the complexity of contextual characteristics of 'present' moments. We conclude with an overview of research fields where our framework holds the promise of being applied fruitfully, namely life-course research, social stratification studies, policy evaluation, and comparative politics.

Over the last 20-30 years, many European governments have implemented reforms to improve the efficiency and competitiveness of their national higher education and research systems. They have granted universities more autonomy while introducing new accountability tools and fostering competition through performance-based funding schemes. The growing emphasis on productivity and efficiency has led to the diffusion of a variety of performance indicators, including publication and citation counts, and university rankings. Another approach increasingly applied in the higher education sector is frontier efficiency analysis. Similarly to university rankings, efficiency analyses include several indicators for research and teaching in order to assess the performance of a university or a university department. However, as opposed to most rankings, they relate the outputs to the inputs used and do not necessarily favor larger or richer institutions. Moreover, estimation techniques such as Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) do not require any assumption about the form of the production function and allow for different factor combinations to achieve efficiency. The method thus accounts for the diversity among universities and does not necessarily penalize more teaching-oriented institutions as compared to research-oriented ones. In this contribution we present the frontier efficiency approach and its application to higher education, highlighting the main estimation techniques and methodological specifications. We provide an overview of studies that have applied DEA to the higher education sector and discuss their results, methodological contributions, and shortcomings. We conclude by identifying the advantages and limitations of frontier efficiency approaches as compared to other performance measures in higher education and delineating possible areas for further research. (HRK / Abstract übernommen).

Ziel des Beitrags ist es, die angesichts einer veränderten Problemkonstellation zutagetretenden Defizite der akademischen Theorietradition aufzudecken und das Problem einer materialistischen Analyse der in den industriellen Beziehungen sich ausdrückenden Klassenkonflikten zu entwerfen. Dazu werden zunächst die traditionellen Forschungszugänge zu der Problematik der industriellen Beziehungen skizziert. Dabei wird festgehalten, daß der wesentliche Kontext dieser Ansätze sich seit den beiden ersten Nachkriegsjahren entscheidend verändert hat. In der Konsequenz daraus wird im folgenden Absatz der marxistische Ansatz herangezogen, weil (1) die kapitalistischen Produktionsverhältnisse einen strukturellen Antagonismus zwischen Kapital und Arbeit widerspiegeln und reproduzieren; (2) der Kapitalismus gleichzeitig die Arbeiter kollektiv organisiert und hiermit die wesentliche Basis schafft für effektiven Widerstand gegen das Kapital und die Prioritäten der kapitalistischen Produktionsweise. Unter der Frage einer möglichen Konvergenz werden anschließend die aktuellen Entwicklungen betrachtet. Im Hauptteil wird in drei wesentlichen Punkten die Bedeutung der marxistischen Analyse herausgearbeitet: die Dynamik der Kapitalakkumulation; die Natur der arbeitenden Klasse; die wechselnden Formen des staatlichen Eingriffs in die Beziehungen zwischen Arbeit und Kapital. Der Beitrag schließt mit einigen Schlußfolgerungen zu den Stichworten Marxismus, Gewerkschaftsbewegung. (RW)

Artificial intelligence is an important innovation in the rapid development of modern Internet. In the 21st century, human beings have been continuously researching and exploring Internet information technology. All kinds of application forms of Internet informatization begin to appear in our life. The rapid change of technology brings a high upgrade rate of internet products. This marks the technological innovation of some traditional concepts and thinking methods. The development mode of artificial intelligence plus education is an important innovation after the deep development of artificial intelligence technology and the achievement of cross-industry application practice. Robots will be the brains of the future education process. This paper aims to clarify the development trend of the application of artificial intelligence in modern education by analyzing the innovation progress of the combination of artificial intelligence technology and contemporary education. This is of great significance for better use of the advantages of artificial intelligence to build a future-oriented high-tech education system.

Examines the justifications put forth by the Republic of Georgia & Abkhazia for their involvement in the 1992/93 war & their claims regarding Abkhaz secession. It is argued that disproving Georgian justifications for war does not automatically legitimate the 1999 Abkhaz declaration of independence. The criteria of just war theory under jus ad bellum & jus in bello are used to determine the degree to which unilateral secession is morally justified; the following are applied to the 1992/93 war & to Abkhazia's demand to have its independence recognized: just cause, legitimate authority, right intentions, last resort, proportionality, & chance of success. It is concluded that neither side's actions accorded with the principles embodied in just war theory. J. Zendejas

The 1896 Democratic National Convention reveals two equally important but very different decision-making situations that converged in Bryan's "Cross of Gold" speech. Analysis of two different decisions in the same convention reveals both a structured game to adopt a party platform, & a highly contingent process to nominate a presidential candidate. The participants were the same in each case, but endogenous factors formed preferences in diametrically contrasting ways. This research demonstrates how the formation of preferences can be either exogenous or interactively endogenous to the making of a collective decision. Although this research could conclude that the strategic environment at the convention induced the formation of delicate preferences, Bryan's speech reflected an instinctive adaptation to what worked. Tables, References. J. Harwell

Der Autor untersucht anhand von Daten des Verbraucherpanels der Gesellschaft für Marktforschung (GfK) die Risikoorientierung beim Kauf alltäglicher Waren. Er analysiert die unterschiedlichen Kaufentscheidungen, die der Verbraucher in Abhängigkeit des verfügbaren Einkommens trifft, mit Hilfe von nicht- und semi-parametrischen Verfahren und zeigt die Kontinuität bzw. Diskontinuität des Kaufverhaltens sowie dessen sozioökonomische Einbettung auf. Der dynamische Charakter des Kaufverhaltens und der Risikoentscheidungen von Privathaushalten lässt sich vor allem im Rahmen einer Verlaufsdaten- oder Ereignisanalyse verdeutlichen, wie der Autor in seinem Beitrag näher zeigt. (ICI)

"The aim of this paper is to investigate the hypothesis of a causal effect of individual labour-market-security and -integration on fertility by looking at the timing of first birth decisions after leaving the educational system. The analysis focuses on two major research questions: First, how is the timing of first parenthood related to previous labour market performance? Second, can we identify differences in first birth risks depending on individual labour market performance? In other words, to what extent do successfully integrated individuals differ with respect to their fertility decisions from those who are poorly integrated (as indicated by discontinuous or precarious employment patterns)? Integral to the analysis is a cross-national comparison of the relevance of institutional settings and their impact on family formation. In this context the editor focuses on the continental conservative German system and the liberal welfare state of the UK. He conceptualizes the initial transition to parenthood as the result of a rational as well as biographical planning process. The empirical investigation of the length of time up to first birth is based on an event history analysis, applying a piecewise constant exponential model to data from the SOEP and the BHPS. Results show the well known patterns of a still widely traditional division of labour between men and women on one hand side and extensive antagonisms of occupational and familial role. The cross-national comparison underlines the picture that this situation is especially virulent in Germany. In the case of German men with weak labour market integration he finds clear evidence of reduced probabilities of first birth - which is most likely due to limited breadwinner qualities. A reduced first birth risk also comes to the fore for women in Germany and the UK who show levels of extensive labour market integration (as indicated by a high amount of doing overtime work, e.g.). Yet an incomplete labour market integration of German women (as indicated by part time employment) also goes hand in hand with a reduced first birth risk. Among British women the editor cannot identify any clear fertility effects, related to initial labour market integration. This may be due to the fact that instable patterns of labour market entry are much more common in the UK and thus do not invoke any unsettling effect on fertility decisions." (author's abstract)

The prevalence of political corruption in Israel, the UK, & the US is studied. Whereas public officials' acceptance of material inducements terminated in the UK during the 19th century, it is contended that these practices are common in contemporary Israel & the US. Noting the inadequacy of existing explanations for the decline/prevalence of political corruption in these nations, Marxist & populist accounts of the perseverance of corrupt behavior by public officials are explored. It is argued that the political elite is primarily responsible for political corruption's longevity; however, bureaucratic elites capable of controlling political elites can effectively reduce corrupt actions by public officials. The cases of Israel, the UK, & the US are then discussed to bolster these assertions. It is asserted that all three cases demonstrate that the politicization of the bureaucracy led to the use of material inducements by private individuals to influence public officials' decision making. It is concluded that true democratic processes cannot be realized unless the bureaucratic elite is able to control the political elite in a given nation. 33 References. J. W. Parker

The prevalence of political corruption in Israel, the UK, & the US is studied. Whereas public officials' acceptance of material inducements terminated in the UK during the 19th century, it is contended that these practices are common in contemporary Israel & the US. Noting the inadequacy of existing explanations for the decline/prevalence of political corruption in these nations, Marxist & populist accounts of the perseverance of corrupt behavior by public officials are explored. It is argued that the political elite is primarily responsible for political corruption's longevity; however, bureaucratic elites capable of controlling political elites can effectively reduce corrupt actions by public officials. The cases of Israel, the UK, & the US are then discussed to bolster these assertions. It is asserted that all three cases demonstrate that the politicization of the bureaucracy led to the use of material inducements by private individuals to influence public officials' decision making. It is concluded that true democratic processes cannot be realized unless the bureaucratic elite is able to control the political elite in a given nation. 33 References. J. W. Parker