A comprehensive and accessible guide to learning and successfully applying QCA Social phenomena can rarely be attributed to single causes-instead, they typically stem from a myriad of interwoven factors that are often difficult to untangle. Drawing on set theory and the language of necessary and sufficient conditions, qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) is ideally suited to capturing this causal complexity. A case-based research method, QCA regards cases as combinations of conditions and compares the conditions of each case in a structured way to identify the necessary and sufficient conditions for an outcome. Qualitative Comparative Analysis: An Introduction to Research Design and Application is a comprehensive guide to QCA. As QCA becomes increasingly popular across the social sciences, this textbook teaches students, scholars, and self-learners the fundamentals of the method, research design, interpretation of results, and how to communicate findings. Following an ideal typical research cycle, the book's ten chapters cover the methodological basis and analytical routine of QCA, as well as matters of research design, causation and causal complexity, QCA variants, and the method's reception in the social sciences. A comprehensive glossary helps to clarify the meaning of frequently used terms. The book is complemented by an accessible online R manual to help new users to practice QCA's analytical steps on sample data and then implement with their own findings. This hands-on textbook is an essential resource for students and researchers looking for a complete and up-to-date introduction to QCA.

This book deals with the phonological event of final devoicing in a theoretical framework based on principles and parameters rather than rules. It refers to data coming almost exclusively from German (native and non-native items). The first chapter presents the 'raw facts', providing an outline of the sort of alternations and distributional restrictions on voicing to be accounted for. Previous treatments of final devoicing in German are discussed and evaluated in the second chapter. Chapters 3 and 4 provide an analysis of final devoicing in German couched in the framework of Government Phonology (GP), a phonological theory operating with principles and parameters. Some of the central tenets of GP are introduced at the beginning of chapter 3, and additional concepts of the theory are explained as they become relevant to the discussion of final devoicing. The author argues that final devoicing should be interpreted as a phonological weakening process involving the withdrawal of autosegmental licensing from the laryngeal element L (which represents voicing in obstruents). This occurs in phonologically 'weak' environments, where, due to clearly definable prosodic conditions, only reduced autosegmental licensing potential is available. This analysis, developed with reference to the prestige variety of German (Hochlautung), is then extended to Northern Standard German, and the phonological differences between the two dialects are identified. In the final chapter, the author investigates whether final devoicing results in phonological neutralisation, as is often assumed in the literature. She observes that the GP account developed in chapters 3 and 4 is incompatible with this traditional view. This is desirable, since, among other things, the conflict between earlier phonological analyses and experimental studies of final devoicing can now be resolved.

"Pulling up the Ladder" discusses how Wittgenstein's early philosophy became widely known largely through the efforts of Russell and other empirically-minded British philosophers, and to a lesser extent, the scientifically-oriented German-speaking philosophers of the Vienna Circle. However, Wittgenstein's primary philosophical concerns arose in a far different context, and failure to grasp this has led to many misunderstandings of the "Tractatus". From Brockhaus' investigation of that context and its problems emerges this new interpretation of Wittgenstein's early thought, which also affords fresh insights into the later Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein's first philosophy was a Schopenhauerian neo-Kantianism, and although he soon rejected much of the substance of Schopenhauer's work, his problems remained closely connected with Schopenhauer's view of the world and man's relation to it. Wittgenstein's early philosophy is a departure from Schopenhauer - a rigorously purified form, so to speak, of Schopenhauer's "World as Will and Representation". In "Pulling up the Ladder", Brockhaus explains Schopenhauer's system of the world as Will and Representation, then proceeds to investigate Frege's realism and Hertz's conventionalistic philosophy of science - two of the elements which fuelled Wittgenstein's purification of Schopenhauer. Brockhaus analyzes the relations between the "Tractatus" and Russell's treatment of Incomplete Symbols and Logical Types. He investigates two Schopenhauerian issues which present difficulties for the Wittgensteinian world-view: the principles of mechanics and the propositional attitudes which bring the ego into the world. The final chapters examine the metaphysical ego and its relaxation to value, employing Wittgenstein's metaphor of "my world", since "my world" is permeated by the metaphysical ego, the Schopenhauerian World as Will emerges anew, albeit in a curiously ineffable form.

This series provides an annual examination of the major current research, theoretical and methodological efforts in the field of entrepreneurship and its related disciplines of small business, family business and population ecology, as well as firm growth and emergence research.

A comprehensive and accessible guide to learning and successfully applying QCA Social phenomena can rarely be attributed to single causes-instead, they typically stem from a myriad of interwoven factors that are often difficult to untangle. Drawing on set theory and the language of necessary and sufficient conditions, qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) is ideally suited to capturing this causal complexity. A case-based research method, QCA regards cases as combinations of conditions and compares the conditions of each case in a structured way to identify the necessary and sufficient conditions for an outcome. Qualitative Comparative Analysis: An Introduction to Research Design and Application is a comprehensive guide to QCA. As QCA becomes increasingly popular across the social sciences, this textbook teaches students, scholars, and self-learners the fundamentals of the method, research design, interpretation of results, and how to communicate findings. Following an ideal typical research cycle, the book's ten chapters cover the methodological basis and analytical routine of QCA, as well as matters of research design, causation and causal complexity, QCA variants, and the method's reception in the social sciences. A comprehensive glossary helps to clarify the meaning of frequently used terms. The book is complemented by an accessible online R manual to help new users to practice QCA's analytical steps on sample data and then implement with their own findings. This hands-on textbook is an essential resource for students and researchers looking for a complete and up-to-date introduction to QCA.

This is the first volume in a series which explores current research, and theoretical and methodological efforts in the field of entrepreneurship, and its related disciplines of small business, family business, and population ecology. The book considers various demographic issues.

Produktivitat stellt eine der zentralen Herausforderungen des Dienstleistungsmanagements dar. Dabei gilt es, nicht nur bewahrte Konzepte und Methoden aus dem Sachguterbereich an die spezifischen Gegebenheiten des Dienstleistungssektors anzupassen. Es ist vielmehr auch eine vertiefte Diskussion notwendig, die sich aufgrund der charakteristischen Merkmale von Dienstleistungen auf neue Methoden und Fragestellungen fokussiert. Vor diesem Hintergrund wurden dem Thema Dienstleistungsproduktivitat zwei Sammelbande gewidmet, in denen profilierte Wissenschaftler und Vertreter der Praxis in insgesamt 38 Beitragen zeigen, was genau unter Dienstleistungsproduktivitat zu verstehen ist und wie Dienstleistungsproduktivitat sichergestellt werden kann.
In Band 1 diskutieren Experten aus den Bereichen Marketing, Informatik und Personal die Dienstleistungsproduktivitat aus Sicht des Managements, der Prozessgestaltung sowie der Kunden.

Der Autor leitet aus der Sicht der Unternehmung einen Orientierungsrahmen fur Kooperationen mit gesellschaftlichen Anspruchsgruppen ab. Den Schwerpunkt bilden die konkreten Moglichkeiten und Grenzen dieser Strategievariante sowie die Themen und Partner fur gesellschaftliche Kooperationen."