Jim Rouse: Capitalist/Idealist is the story of a very special businessman. A successful capitalist a real estate developer Jim Rouse led his life as a practicing idealist. He sought to help people enrich their lives. He wanted people to live in an enjoyable environment and to experience the joy in caring for each other. But he knew that to raise the capital to accomplish those goals his companies had to be profitable. As an enthusiast of urban renewal, he worked to rid core downtown areas of American cities of blight and despair. He created indoor malls in the new post-war suburbs that would be focal points for community life. He developed a whole new city Columbia, Maryland to show what an American city could be like. For one thing, it would be a city totally integrated racially, a city in which anyone could buy or rent on any street. In retirement, Rouse founded the Enterprise Foundation to produce profits that would be used to provide the poorest of Americans with a decent place to live. Rouse was one of America's first practitioners of social enterprise.

Examining the occupational variation within non-standard employment, this book combines case studies and comparative writing to illustrate how and why alternative occupational employment patterns are formed. Non-standard employment has grown significantly in most developed economies, varying between countries. Different institutional settings have been deemed accountable for this variation, although inadequate consideration has been given to differences within national labour markets. Through an occupational perspective, this book contends that patterns of non-standard employment are shaped by flexibility in hiring and firing practices and the dispensability of workers' skills. The framework integrates explanations based on labour market regulation, industrial relations and skill supply, filling the gaps in previous scholastic research. A necessary and discernible insight into employment patterns, academics in the fields of economics and sociology will find this book of great value. Policy makers and practitioners alike will benefit from the comparative analysis of rich empirical material. Contributors: F. Berton, M.R. Busemeyer, H. Chung, M. Dieckhoff, W. Eichhorst, B. Francon, V. Gash, A.C. Gielen, M. Keune, A. Koslowski, J. Leschke, P. Lopez Roldan, P.K. Madsen, P. Marx, C. McLean, A. Mertens, O. Molina, R. Muffels, M. Nelson, M. Richiardi, L. Romeu-Gordo, S. Sacchi, T. Schils, K. Thelen, V. Tobsch

Insecure temporary employment is growing in Europe, but we know little about how being in such jobs affects political preferences and behaviour. Combining insights from psychology, political science and labour market research, this book offers new theories and evidence on the political repercussions of temporary jobs.

This volume explores how digitalization-in different forms-affects the welfare state. Digitalization is likely to have a lasting impact on work, welfare, and the distribution of income. It will radically transform not only social risks in health, education and the labour market, but also the means by which these risks are addressed. The volume studies how digitalization affects policies as well as the underlying power relationship between actors, i.e. the politics of the welfare state. The volume brings together internationally renowned welfare-state scholars to identify - the socio-economic challenges that result from rapid technological change; - the ensuing political conflicts and struggles in the domain of welfare state reform broadly defined; - how these changes challenge and shape existing labour market and welfare state arrangements. Overall, the volume explains the potential and real political and policy responses to these challenges, grasps the contours of future developments, and reflects on whether the current wave of technological change might promote the emergence of a new paradigm of welfare state policy-making. The rapid and accelerating pace of technological change has potentially radical ramifications for the welfare state that demand an engagement with possible future scenarios. The authors therefore adopt a forward-looking perspective. Based on this approach, the volume uniquely offers a theoretically informed empirical basis for social science and public debates about the long-term implications of the digital revolution for the welfare state, covering a broad range of policy areas such as education, pensions, labour market policies, tax policy, and health care.

Recommender systems (RS) are intended to assist consumers by making choices from a large scope of items. By recommending items with a high likelihood of suiting a consumer's needs or preferences, they are able to considerably mitigate the information overload problem at the user's side, thus increasing their trust in, satisfaction with, and loyalty to RS providers, such as online shops, internet music catalogs, and online DVD rental services. However, recommendations are prone to errors and often fail to address consumers' context specific needs. Explanations of the underlying reasons behind recommendations can allow users to handle algorithmic errors in recommendations and to better judge their suitability for the users' current decision contexts, thus increasing the choice efficiency and effectiveness. The latter, in turn, increases the users' acceptance of and satisfaction with RS, as well as it positively affects consumers' trust in, loyalty to, and credibility of RS providers. However, in order for these benefits of explanation facilities to surface, they should explain the recommendations in such terms that the consumers themselves use when evaluating their choices. The latter sets restrictions upon recommendation algorithms constraining them with respect to how recommendations should be produced and what information they should rely on. This interaction between RS and explanation facilities, however, was not covered by recent research on RS. Therefore, the aim of the current thesis is to narrow this gap and to develop a recommendation technique that accounts for the concurrent objectives of RS, i. e., a method which is capable of providing both accurately predicted recommendations and actionable explanations of the reasons behind them, so that the recommendation process is aligned with the user preference structures.

. After surveying the styles, goals, and motives of some major American leaders, Another Kind of Leader focuses on the distinctive leadership of Jim Rouse. As a real estate developer, social entrepreneur, and activist for social justice, Rouse refused to let himself be driven by self-interest. His governing motives were to help poor people survive, to help middle-class people grow, and to nourish a spirit of community in his towns and malls. Rouse was truly another kind of leader.