Tilburg University

About: Tilburg University is a education organization based out in Tilburg, Noord-Brabant, Netherlands. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Context (language use). The organization has 5550 authors who have published 22330 publications receiving 791335 citations.

How secular is Europe

Abstract: A large body of literature has developed, yielding evidence that religion in general and Churches and Church leaders in particular have lost their once dominant position in contemporary Europe. Evidence is often cited in declining levels of church attendance. Whether Europe should also be qualified as secularized in terms of religious beliefs remains unclear. In this paper we investigate the degree to which European people are secular, focusing not only on religious practices, but also on beliefs. We argue that trajectories of religious change occur all over Europe, but not at similar speeds. We formulate hypotheses regarding the differences in the degree to which individuals and societies are secularized. Data from the recent European Values Study surveys are used to empirically test these hypotheses concerning patterns of variation in religious beliefs and practices. The findings provide evidence in favour of secularization theories and in contradiction to rational choice theories. In Europe, religious pluralism produces not higher levels, but lower levels of religiosity. The findings also reveal that religious denomination as well as cultural and socio-economic heritages are important factors in explaining the patchwork pattern in levels of religiosity and religious participation in contemporary Europe.

Minority employees engaging with (diversity) management: An analysis of control, agency and micro-emancipation

Abstract: This study analyses how minority employees engage with control in organizations. Differently from most critical studies of diversity management, which focus on how minority employees are discursively controlled, we approach (diversity) management as a constellation of both identity-regulating discourses and bureaucratic controls. We assume that minority employees are agents who actively resist and/or comply with the constellation of controls they are subject to. Based on qualitative data collected in a technical drawing company and a hospital, the specific constellation of controls in each organization is first reconstructed. Four interviews with minority employees are then analysed in depth, showing how their engagement with material and discursive controls creates both constraints and possibilities of micro-emancipation.

Investigating consumers" tendency to combine multiple shopping purposes and destinations

Abstract: Because of the increasing time pressure they face, many consumers are becoming more concerned about the efficiency of their shopping patterns. Retailers have recognized this trend and have improved shopping convenience by offering greater variety in product categories and making it easier for consumers to combine visits to multiple stores. However, little is known about how consumers improve the efficiency of their shopping trips or how changes in retail supply affect the way in which consumers combine multiple purposes and destinations. Building on previous work in consumer shopping trip modeling and conjoint design theory, the authors introduce a choice-based conjoint approach to studying and modeling this phenomenon. The authors illustrate the approach in a case study that investigates the tendency of Dutch shoppers to combine grocery, drugstore, and clothing purchases across multiple shopping destinations. The authors observe that the tendency of consumers to combine purchases differs from category to category and depends on category availability. In general, consumers combine considerably fewer purchases than could be expected if their shopping trip planning was based purely on travel cost minimization.

The Impact of Young Children on Women’s Labour Supply: A Reassessment of Institutional Effects in Europe

Abstract: The proportion of women who withdraw from paid employment when they have children differs considerably among the countries of the European Union (EU), and the variation has mostly been attributed to institutional factors. In this study, we reassess the institutional explanation, because earlier supportive evidence is threatened by two alternative macro-level explanations: the influence of the economic necessity to work and the influence of gender role values in society. Our main research question is whether and to what extent these alternative explanations alter the effect of public childcare arrangements on mothers’ labour supply. Using panel data from 13 countries of the EU, we find evidence in favour of the institutional and economic explanations. In countries with more generous provision of public childcare and in countries with a lower level of economic welfare, the impact of childbirth on female labour supply is less negative than in other countries. Economic welfare appears to suppress rather than ...