Sociological Abstracts

The aim of the research is to investigate unemployed young people’s opinions about work and the workplace in the elderly care sector in Lithuania. The key theoretical concepts of the study are public service motivation (PSM), work meaningfulness and gendered approaches. Quantitative research methodology was chosen to gather the empirical data. The respondents of the survey, which was carried out in 2022, were young unemployed people (aged 18–29) registered in the Lithuanian Employment Service database. The rationale for this analysis is growing demand for labour force in the elderly care services, and fairly significant proportion of NEET youth in Lithuania and other EU countries. Various initiatives globally and particularly in the countries of Europe reveal that if to find ways how to attract this underutilised workforce to the elderly care sector, this could be one of the employment alternatives for young unemployed people. Therefore, the attitudes of the young unemployed people towards workplace in elderly care can be utilised searching how to improve effectiveness of employment services. Our study revealed that young unemployed people in Lithuania agree that work in elderly care sector is valuable and meaningful work to the society, however they see work in elderly care as physically and emotionally demanding, unqualified and low-paid. If youth would have to work temporarily in elderly care, they would prefer working for more independent elderly people.

Based on social representations theory, the paper focuses on the communication of attitudes towards childless women in politics in one of the Internet news sites. One article case was selected, and a qualitative content analysis of comments (365) was conducted. The article and the content of comments were on childless women in politics. The predominant hegemonic social representation is most commonly reflected via an argument that childless women lack practical experience; therefore, they could not represent the interests of families with children. The chosen method allows expressing more radical and aggressive attitudes towards childless women roles. The polemic social representation opposes hegemonic attitudes through the arguments breaking the interlink between female procreation role and their role in the public sphere, also through the critique of double standards. Finally, emancipatory social representation undertakes the neutral position, emphasizing the freedom of choice. Thematic anchoring is the most common communicative mechanism in all three types of social representations.

The article overviews and introduces the current issue of Filosofija. Sociologija. The topics include contemporary problems concerned with the integration of knowledge of Anthropocene and related issues into educational practices as well as how to reach authentic communication in technologically mediated education during the pandemic. The issue also covers the influence of computer and internet technologies on understanding of identity, as well as epistemic issues concerning the creation of artificial knowledge-producing systems, among other themes.

The article is based on the interpretation of Kant’s notion of good will with regard to its meaning for successful communication. It seeks to delineate its necessary relation to spontaneity as opposed to a strictly closed definition – the spontaneity in language as crucial for communication. Agambenian and Wittgensteinian musings on language and paradigm are employed for that purpose. The art of comedy is seen to illustrate the communication based on spontaneity and paradigm and the art of tragedy is seen to depict the condition of radical incommunicability. Alongside this linguistic and epistemological approach, the discussion of the issue also includes the ontological aspect, i. e. the Agambenian-Aristotelian notion of potentiality is described as akin to the Kantian good will (Ding an sich) and is seen as the necessary (and perhaps also sufficient) condition for (successful) communication.

Rapid population growth and urbanization have a strong impact on individuals’ well-being. These trends are currently important topics in city management. As a significant driver of digitalization, technological development has been found to have great potential as a mitigator of a wide range of issues that cities face. To ensure the available technologies are being correctly used, municipalities need to measure their degree of digitalization. This assessment is also important to improve city officials’ understanding of areas that need interventions so that cities can be managed better and provide their residents with a better quality of life. This study applies the baseline principles of the multiple-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) approach to develop a decision-support system that facilitates urban digitalization evaluations. The results rely on insights provided by a panel of experts in this area, who used cognitive mapping and the best worst method (BWM) to identify important evaluation criteria within urban digitalization and to analyze their cause-and-effect relationships. The final outcomes were validated by the panel members and representatives of the Associação Nacional de Municípios Portugueses (i.e., National Association of Portuguese Municipalities) and the Agência National de Inovação (i.e., National Innovation Agency). These specialists confirmed that the evaluation system developed facilitates city differentiation in key areas of urban digitalization. The advantages and limitations of the proposed procedures are also discussed.

The internet space has become one of the essential tools for ensuring continuity of higher education studies during the COVID-19 pandemic. Established distance learning is based on virtual communication, which, by replacing the experience of interpersonal communication, raises many discussions about the possibilities of ensuring efficiency and improvement of distance education. The article deals with Martin Buber’s dialogue education attitudes, which have become especially relevant in the current era of the internet when the absolutisation of technologies and media poses many threats to developing interpersonal relationships and spiritual values. In the first part of the article, the relationship is discussed as the basic foundation of education. It is revealed that Buber emphasises the importance and priority of I–Thou relationship over theoretical knowledge in developing a young person. In the context of Buber’s philosophy, the second part of the article examines the problems of exclusion and alienation that arise in distance learning during virtual communication. Thus, the analysis of the article reveals the possibilities of improving distance learning in order to raise the objective, formal and instrumental I–It relationship of teachers and students to the subjective plane of I–Thou communication.

Due to the vast advantages of Blockchain technology, especially transparency of information and the ability to track transactions, this technology has been considered in several areas, including supply chain management (SCM). However, due to the emergence of this technology, numerous barriers and limitations have hindered its use. Due to the special conditions of developing countries (such as Iran), there is still a need for independent research to localize these barriers in these countries. On the other hand, most of the research has focused more on identifying barriers and less on prioritizing them. Examining the specific features of the Blockchain technology field shows that there is a need to provide a decision-making framework based on large-scale group decision-making methods (LSGDM), which, in addition to simultaneously paying attention to the advantages of previous approaches (including the participation of different groups of stakeholders; the consensus reaching process (CRP) as well as the uncertainty and doubt of the stakeholders in the evaluations), can increase the applicability of the method by reducing the number of pairwise comparisons. Therefore, while identifying and localizing the list of barriers in Iran, the LSGDM method along with the proposed consensus framework can be used to aggregate the opinions between the experts in a network and create a relative consensus between them. The use of hesitant fuzzy (HF) sets has made it possible to model the uncertainty and hesitancy in the opinions of experts. Also, using the Best-Worst method (BWM) instead of the pairwise comparison approach between all criteria, has reduced the number of pairwise comparisons and provided other advantages such as reduced inconsistency and higher reliability. The results of applying this framework in Iran showed that lack of awareness and customer orientation, scalability and lack of management participation and support are the main barriers to the implementation of the blockchain for SCM in this developing country. The results can help decision makers and policy makers in this area to plan more accurately.

The Lithuanian context of an increased need for care in old age is framed by the demographic trends, such as population aging, the intense emigration of younger generations, and a significant proportion of older people living alone on the one hand, and on the other the strong support represented by filial duties in respect of care and insufficiently developed social services. How do older people experience and handle the situation? This paper uses qualitative interviews (N=27) to analyze the preferences and experiences of care among older people living alone in Lithuania. Based on the study findings, older people seek to maintain their agency under all circumstances related to care, and informal support is appreciated as providing more such options. Formal social services are rejected for reasons including distrust, the lack of social skills, or the cost and insufficient accessibility of such services.

This article is an outline of the current issue of Filosofija. Sociologija, thematically divid-ed into four sections. Starting from the most general one, focused on abstract topics of metaphysical kind and big names, proceeding to theorize on practices of human co-existence, then dealing specifically with Marxist paradigm, and finally with problems related to artificial intelligence and digital society. The thought of the 20th century and its socio-political implications up till now unites them all.

Nowadays women often lead teams, hold high positions in top management, plan and make important strategic decisions in firms or groups. However, little attention in scientific literature has been paid to gender difference in implementing CSR practices of firms. Implementing CSR practices successfully in many cases depends on the gender difference of top management. The object of this study is the importance of 'feminine gaze' with respect to gender difference in implementing CSR in firms. This study aims at supplementing feminist ethical - and in part, epistemological - concerns with empirical studies considering the role of women in the top management of firms, then the impact of gender on implementation of CSR initiatives was analysed, and the main drivers linked to gender for the implementation of CSR initiatives were assessed in this study based on the comprehensive literature review. The study confirmed the positive impact of woman representation on the development of CSR initiatives in the firm. The number of women in BOD and employee positions from all stakeholders including customers' perspectives have positive impacts on the penetration of CSR initiatives, and can be considered as an important driver of CSR in the firms.