Editorial: The times they are A-Changin

The famous1963 song by Bob Dylan The Times They Are A-Changing rings true in the year 2011. As in the1960s, there are young and old people on the streets demanding change to the economic system, an end of war, climate justice, women’s rights, gender equity and true democracy. The year has seen Arab revolutions, European governments toppling, faltering banking systems, and the occupation movement full of young and old spreading the message of the 99 percent fromWall Street to 900 cities around theworld

Why Social Enterprises Are Asking to Be Multi-stakeholder and Deliberative: An Explanation around the Costs of Exclusion.

The study of multi-stakeholdership (and multi-stakeholder social enterprises in particular) is only at the start. Entrepreneurial choices which have emerged spontaneously, as well as the first legal frameworks approved in this direction, lack an adequate theoretical support. The debate itself is underdeveloped, as the existing understanding of organisations and their aims resist an inclusive, public interest view of enterprise. Our contribution aims at enriching the thin theoretical reflections on multi-stakeholdership, in a context where they are already established, i.e. that of social and personal services. The aim is to provide an economic justification on why the governance structure and decision-making praxis of the firm needs to account for multiple stakeholders. In particular with our analysis we want: a) to consider production and the role of firms in the context of the “public interest” which may or may not coincide with the non-profit objective; b) to ground the explanation of firm governance and processes upon the nature of production and the interconnections between demand and supply side; c) to explain that the costs associated with multi-stakeholder governance and deliberation in decision-making can increase internal efficiency and be “productive” since they lower internal costs and utilise resources that otherwise would go astray. The key insight of this work is that, differently from major interpretations, property costs should be compared with a more comprehensive range of costs, such as the social costs that emerge when the supply of social and personal services is insufficient or when the identification of aims and means is not shared amongst stakeholders. Our model highlights that when social costs derived from exclusion are high, even an enterprise with costly decisional processes, such as the multistakeholder, can be the most efficient solution amongst other possible alternatives

Future Generations: economic, legal and institutional aspects

In economics, the issue of ‘future generations’ is mainly related to the environmental problems of resource consumption and pollution and their distribution over long time horizons. This paper critically discusses fundamental concepts in economics, such as efficiency and optimality, in relation to the incorporation of future generations in present day decision-making. Cost–benefit analysis (CBA) and discounting are used as a starting point and criticized for its inherent flaws such as incommensurability of values and its tendency to hide rather than reveal underlying values which are assumed to be fixed. We then investigate alternative approaches, in which, unlike in CBA, the preferences are not assumed to be a priori but must be constructed. Thus, interest groups or individuals must sit down together and figure out what things seem to be worth. The aim is to involve all interested parties in planning for the future. Similarly, on a national and regional level, increasingly stakeholder processes, deliberative and interest group procedures are used to develop strategies and visions for resource management and conservation. A similar case can be made for institutions at the international level. The legal examples provided in this paper show that rather than only installing an institution such as the guardian for the future on the global level, more ‘democratized’ bottom up approaches might be more appropriate

Historia empresarial e historia del trabajo: del aislamiento a la colaboración

Editada en la Fundación Empresa PúblicaPublicad

Online, on call: : the spread of digitally-organised just-in-time working and its implications for standard employment models

This article questions whether the dominant policy discourse, in which a normative model of standard employment is counterposed to ‘non-standard’ or ‘atypical’ employment, enables us to capture the diversity of fluid labour markets in which work is dynamically reshaped in an interaction between different kinds of employment status and work organisation. Drawing on surveys in the UK, Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands that investigate work managed via online platforms (‘crowdwork’) and associated practices, it demonstrates that crowdwork represents part of a continuum. Not only do most crowd workers combine work for online platforms with other forms of work or income generation, but also many of the ICT-related practices associated with crowdwork are widespread across the rest of the labour market where a growing number of workers are ‘logged’. Future research should not just focus on crowdworkers as a special case but on new patterns of work organisation in the regular workforce.Peer reviewe

O desafio radical à economia dominante

RESUMO Neste artigo introdutório sobre economia radical, expomos os principais princípios do marxismo, incluindo a natureza do capitalismo, os conflitos de classe, as mudanças econômicas e sociais e a possibilidade de mudança da condição humana. Em seguida, é apresentada uma comparação com a economia ortodoxa

Dimensions freedom within structure

Searching, examining the past and present in painting. Defining - evaluating - thinking - assimilating - groping; all part of the prelude to the process. I am exploring the problems of transparencies and overlays of pure or nearly pure color to produce mixtures of other hues of intensity and incorporating both control and spontaneity in a harmonious balance. Like most contemporary artists I seek the union of reason and intuition. "Pity us," wrote Appolinaire, art critic and writer (1880-1918), “We who are enduring this endless quarrel between order and adventure…” Ultimately I am working towards a feeling of freedom through a structural medium - and I have been able to make my work reflect this. I want to create an art that includes the presentation and solving of formal plastic problems but is not bounded by them - but in fact transcends these concerns. Another one of my concerns is to create a pictorial plastic space with the means of my format and technique. Stanton McDonald Wright ( 1916) delineated in his writings of a plastic form - an intense form. It is this which I refer to as well as a spatial relationship, or the form of the space. In order to stress the two dimensional quality of the paintings I choose to present them directly on the wall rather than conventionally stretched on frames. Visually one perceives the painting and the wall as a combined entity. I prefer to work on a large size canvas. As William Rubin stated so aptly in the New York Museum of Modern Art's catalogue on the Frank Stella exhibition: "...architecture potentially exerts a kind of control and authority over the spectator's experience - The size of the traditional easel picture, which functions as a window on another world, gives the spectator the option of simply disregarding it if he chooses. The large picture, which displaces or identifies itself with the wall, imposes itself on the spector in a more authoritative way, in the manner of architecture itself.” The painting is first part of the wall - possibly expanding onto the wall, then it becomes visually detached from the wall toward the viewer, hopefully in an engulfing experience. My technique consists of using thin layers of acrylic stains and water, applied with very large brushes onto unsized canvas similar to a watercolor technique. This proceedure is followed by pouring layers of paint of different densities on the remoistened canvas. Each coat of paint is of one hue and is allowed to dry thoroughly before the next is applied. The canvas is laid flat on the floor to control the amount of dripping of the thin paint. This enables a comprehensive, yet intimate view of my work from within, on and above. The process allows me to paint with a rhythm, which feels free and exhilarating. My paintings are hung with 1 the 11/2 inch brads, about 10 inches apart along the top edge, leaving the sides and bottom loose. The nails are left protruding about ¼ inch from the wall, and the painting is pulled away from the wall to the edge of the nails. Brads are not visible on most of the paintings from a distance.California State University, Northridge. Department of Art

How Economics Undermines Our Relationships With Each Other and With the Planet

Economic

Foreign Aid and Inclusive Development: Updated Evidence from Africa, 2005-2012*

Objective Motivated by the April 2015 World Bank Publication on MDGs, which reveals that poverty has been declining in all regions of the world with the exception of African countries, this study investigates the effects of a plethora of foreign aid dynamics on inequality‐adjusted human development. Methods Contemporary and noncontemporary OLS, fixed effects, and a system GMM technique with forward orthogonal deviations are employed. The empirical evidence is based on an updated sample of 53 African countries for the period 2005–2012. Results The following findings are established. First, the impacts of aid dynamics with high degrees of substitution are positive. These include aid for: social infrastructure, economic infrastructure, the productive sector, and multisectors. Second, the effect of humanitarian assistance is consistently negative across specifications and models. Third, the effects of program assistance and action on debt are ambiguous because they become positive with the GMM technique. Conclusions Justifications for these changes and clarifications with respect to existing literature are provided. Policy implications are discussed in light of the post‐2015 development agenda. We also provide some recommendations for a rethinking of theories and models on which development assistance is base