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Advanced education is often thought to respond to the demands of the economy, market forces create new occupations, and then universities respond with new degrees and curricula aimed at training future workers with specific new skills. Presented here is comparative research on an underappreciated, yet growing, concurrent alternative process: universities, with their global growth in numbers and enrollments, in concert with expanding research capacity, create and privilege knowledge and skills, legitimate new degrees that then become monetized and even required in private and public sectors of economies. A process referred to as academization of occupations has far-reaching implications for understanding the transformation of capitalism, new dimensions of social inequality, and resulting stratification among occupations. Academization is also eclipsing the more limited professionalization processes in occupations. Additionally, it fuels further expansion of advanced education and contributes to a new culture of work in the 21st century. Commissioned detailed German and US case studies of the university origins and influence on workplace consequences of seven selected occupations and associated knowledge, skills, and degrees investigate the academization process. And to demonstrate how universal this could become, the cases contrast the more open and less-restrictive education and occupation system in the US with the centralized and state-controlled education system in Germany. With expected variation, both economies and their occupational systems show evidence of robust academization. Importantly too is evidence of academic transformations of understandings about approaches to job tasks and use of authoritative knowledge in occupational activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The media became the most important research subject at the First German Sociological Conference in 1910 when Max Weber presented a detailed description of a 'Survey of the Press'. This rather sophisticated study, which fitted his research program of a 'disenchantment of the world', was supposed to prove the sociologists' expertise in the area of empirical research. But it was never realized and after its failure the topic even disappeared from the discipline's agenda for many years. In Germany, this only changed more than a decade after the Second World War when communication studies were looking for a new identity as a social science. But there was no systematic research on the question whether and how Weber's suggestions had become relevant. This article seeks to demonstrate that Weber's concerns remain relevant in the area of journalism research. Based on bibliometrics and a keyword-oriented content analysis, it investigates whether Weber's traces can be found in studies aimed to answer the research questions he initially posed and also whether the categories and key terms contained in his oeuvre have been used. The results suggest that Weber's ideas were a valuable contribution to the 'measurement of the media world' that took place only decades later. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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In view of the specificity of the nineteenth century Germany, Weber tries to explain the world in his perspective and he provides many tools that help us to understand not only his era but also today's. His conceptions like the typology of authority, routinization of charisma, disenchantment of the world, rationalization, bureaucracy, capitalism are the main concepts that is referred to Weber by the people who are in the area of management and polititics. Therefore, understanding Weber is very important to understand many concepts that have still been discussed today but rooted in the past like modernity, rationalization, capitalism, bureaucracy. Thus study aims to make a little contribution to this process of meaning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the publication of Risk Society, Ulrich Beck has become one of Germany's leading sociologists. Now, many social scientists--including Beck, Giddens and Lash--in many different fields, are flocking together to conduct their research under the motto of "second modernity": a new sociological paradigm through which they seek to escape the controversies troubling "modern" and "post-modern" theories. This study concerns the other aspect of Beck's theory: the critique of instrumental rationality, which is also contained in the original thesis of the risk society. In this way we discover a fundamental problem in Beck's work. At the beginning he ascribes modern risks to the failure of instrumental rationality, but since he cannot find any objective criterion to prove that modern life is riskier than the earlier ones, there is consequently no epoch of "second modernity." And when he identifies "risk" with "uncertainty," all societies in the human history must be considered "risk societies." On the other hand, Beck could not tame instrumental rationality without components of the "post-modern" theories in his thesis, which is among the most progressive attempts to solve the problems of rationalization. Finally, Beck's normative strategy seems to be like that of Max Weber, who employs a "Handlungsmaxime" instead of a value system for which we should be searching. But it is also important that Beck holds a more optimistic standpoint in contrast to Weber. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The topic of bedside rationing is increasingly discussed in Germany. Further need for clarification exists for the question how bedside rationing (e.g., in the area of overcare) can be justified despite coexistent inefficiencies., Discussion: This paper outlines and analyses the relationship of waste avoidance and rationing from an ethical perspective. Empirical findings regarding the status quo of bedside rationing and rationalization are presented. These normative and empirical explorations will then be further specified regarding opportunities for future physician-driven activities to tackle overuse., Conclusion: The self-government partners in Germany should communicate more explicitly within their communities and to the public how and with which benchmarks they aim to reduce inefficient health care (overuse) in an appropriate manner. Physician-driven activities such as the "Choosing Wisely®" initiative in the USA could provide a first step to raise the awareness for overuse among physicians as well as in the public.

For several years academic disciplines have discussed the potential conflict between scarcity of funding and fair health care. This review article shows the necessity of involving economic scientists in this discussion as well as their contribution to rationalisation, prioritisation and rationing of health care services. Thereby, it becomes clear that rationing and justice are not a contradiction per se. The interdisciplinary discussion in Germany needs less disciplinary egotism and more willingness to seek solutions and compromises. In this context the procedures followed in other countries can serve as examples.

Protestant Deaconess Motherhouses emerged as a German nursing organization in the nineteenth century to be later exported to many other countries including the United States. The motherhouse principle could not be simply transferred without being adapted to the situation prevailing in each of those countries. The essay investigates the conception and transformation of Protestant nursing by comparing a West German and American deaconess motherhouse each in their particular context. It shows that the deaconesses in the United States developed their own, more scientifically oriented understanding of nursing and were therefore more open to the rationalization of nursing than their West German counterpart.

The debate on rationalisation vs. rationing of health care interventions is of great importance for the shaping of social and health care policies. Nevertheless, concrete evaluations mostly deal with health interventions in the grey zone between rationing--withholding effective measures--and rationalisation--avoiding ineffective interventions. The assessment of erythropoietin in tumour anaemia is presented as an example: the results of the treatment of tumour-induced anaemia with EPO are partly unsatisfactory. Only 50-60% of anemic tumor-patients respond to EPO; of these responders 20-30% still require transfusions. The assessment presents the evidence for an "appropriate" application of erythropoietin in tumour anaemia and proposes standard values for a limited access and use of EPO. Additionally the assessment reveals what is known as the benefit of this treatment, and what is questionable. Applying the results of the assessment to clinical practice can be considered as "explicit rationing" according to effectiveness criteria.

Is there a crisis of the German health system? Will necessary medical services be rationed? These or similar questions have been intensely discussed in the public ever since the realization of reforming the health system by the Red-Green coalition. Opposers of the health structure reform 2000 have especially regarded the global budget, which was meanwhile stopped by the Federal Council, as an enormous threat for a functionable health system. Many actors of the health system have uttered deep apprehensions regarding a reform of the health system. As various attempts of legal controlling have proved during the last ten years, it will be necessary in our society to negotiate the health services which we will be able to afford in future at which price, and which we want to realize. Even presently it is not possible to guarantee maximum medical care according to the latest technology. The future question in the german health care system will no more be whether it will be necessary to set priorities, but only how they will have to be established.

In the discussion on cost savings in public health, one can differentiate between rationalisation and rationing. In this context rationalisation means increase in productivity with reduced resources, or more efficient rationing of the available means in order to obtain sufficient room for manoeuvre in the public health system. By efficient use of the existing resources and adaptation to medically appropriate and necessary options one is able to define medical standards for treatment. These treatment standards enable the preservation of medical freedom of action as well as participation in scientific-technological progress with the help of consequent evaluation of treatment patterns. This process could result in the development of a so-called priorisation, i.e. active preference of certain indications or therapies, which correspond extensively to the expectations and priorities of all concerned persons. From the medical point of view explicit rationing of health performances has to be strictly rejected.