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This article explores pre‐school reform and shifting norms of parenthood in Singapore. Whereas current education reforms in many Western countries focus on improving academic performance, pre‐school reform in Singapore de‐emphasises academic learning and urges parents to adopt 'relaxed' parenting practices. Analysing the position of parents in this process, we show, however, that the outcomes of this reform project are highly ambivalent. Reform makers view parents' mindset as the main obstacle to reform, while parents experience pre‐school reform itself as prompting inconsistent messages. To account for the disorientation that this creates among parents, we draw on Bateson's concept of double bind.

Institutionalisation of employee representatives on boards of directors and the social construction of the board as a practical strategic actor

In this study we attempt to analyse how the implementation of employee representatives on Danish boards of directors transformed labour market relations, and how boards of directors developed integrative rather than aggregative decision making processes. The 1973 legislation granting employees of private Danish companies the right to elect members to the board of directors broke with a 75 year old tradition of labour-management rela-tions. The article analyses the role of the political parties (from a wide political spectrum) to the development of the law. Thereafter the article analyses its implemen-tation. The authors see this development as on of a struggle bet-ween two kinds of logic: aggregative as opposed to integrative logic, or consistency versus practicality. The credibility of these boards depends on the fact that they make decisions from the point of practical logic, but employ consistency logic when they explain these decisions to their voters.

The focus of the article is on the dominating assumptions in theories of decision making and the relationship between decisions and change. This discussion is used to understand strategic decision making in Danish companies in which, since 1973, employees have been able to elect representatives to the board of directors. It is the authors' observation that employers and employees develop joint perspectives on the realities facing their company and also try to influence the decision from the point of view of their respective interests. To understand these processes, it is claimed that interest and identities must be treated as endogenous rather than exogenous variables, that these processes need to be understood in a social constructivist rather than a social realist paradigm, and that a relational paradigm must replace the dominant substantialist paradigm. These positions challenge dominant assumptions in traditional decision-making theory. The authors work toward formulating a decision-making theory based on a relational perspective.

In this article, the authors try to develop a theoretical frame of reference to help us understand the social construction of employees as strategic company actors on boards of directors. In 1973, the Danish Parliament passed an act granting employees the right to elect two members to sit on a company's board of directors. The authors attempt to understand the processes by which employee representatives infused this institutional form with meaning through a process of identity construction. This construction process draws on general cultural forms in the Danish society, primarily the institution of democracy. However, the authors' focus is on the board level. They observe that employee representatives come to share with their board colleagues, the representatives of capital, a market or company strategic perspective on board decision making, simultaneously maintaining the perspective of employee interests. This article is based on a series of in-depth analyses of company boards and interviews with a number of directors.

In Denmark, the first actual towns can be dated to the eighth and ninth centuries. The establishment of towns became more significant in the eleventh and twelfth centuries in connection with the state-building process, and these towns were distinctly consumer towns serving as administrative, religious and military centres. From 1200 to 1350 Denmark, similar to the German area, underwent considerable urbanization; a large number of market towns were created, and in contrast to the older ones they were mercantile towns. Denmark thus clearly became the most urbanized country in Scandinavia. As Copenhagen grew in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the urban system decisively changed its character in the direction of a primate system. The characteristics of the primate system are particularly distinct within the boundaries of the Kingdom of Denmark, but less pronounced if the entire monarchy is included in the period in which Denmark was a conglomerate state. The institutional conditions must in general be attributed considerable importance in explaining Danish urban development. Thus, Denmark is one of the countries where town privileges were of great significance until the middle of the nineteenth century.