SASE 2004: Papers

Papers for the SASE 2004 Conference

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Kiki Anastasakos: Labor Aspects of Internationalization: Multinational Corporations and Employment Relations in the U.S. and Germany

anastasakos_vasiliki.pdf (PDF, 222 KB)

Backes-Gellner, Mohnen & Werner: Team Size and Effort in Start-Up-Teams – Another Consequence of Free-Riding and Peer Pressure in Partnerships

Start-Up-Teams are almost always small and very often consist of no more than three members. Why is this? We argue that founders choose the size of their start-up-team in order to economize on the effort costs of teams. We develop a model to analyse the relationship between effort and team size. Free-riding and peer pressure, both have an effect on the effort level, however in different directions and their magnitude depends on the size of the team. The theoretical implications of our model are twofold. First, given the particular business situation of a start up we expect an optimal team size with regard to effort and second, this optimal team size should usually be small in numbers. We test these implications based on a large data set on start-ups in the Cologne area. All implications are borne out in the data. Individual effort of the founders varies significantly with team size and we clearly identify a maximum which is on average given with three team members.

backesgellner-mohnen-werner.pdf (PDF, 536 KB)

Uwe Becker: (Consensual) Corporatism as a Variety of Capitalism: the Small Northwest-European Political Economies in International Comparison.

The small Northwest-European political economies of the Alpine region, Scandinavia and the Netherlands have performed very well in the decade up to 2002. Their GDP growth rates have been above OECD average (though Switzerland was a laggard), employment has reached (or consolidated at) levels higher than anywhere else and their relatively generous welfare systems have proven relatively resistant against the challenges supposed to stem from globalisation. It is not a surprise therefore that these countries and particularly their corporatist arrangements of coordinating economic and social targets are internationally discussed. It is a surprise, however, that it is barely asked whether these political economies or to be more precise whether corporatist capitalism is a specific variety of capitalism with a specific nexus of market, political regulation and welfare system. This paper discusses this question. The answer is positive: corporatism is a specific form of socio-economic regulation and in this regard distinct from liberal, etatist and communitarian varieties. Looking at institutional advantages of corporatism in international competition the findings are rather negative or mixed at best, however.

becker_uwe.pdf (PDF, 197 KB)

Tom Beckman and Michael J. Novak: Competency-Based Socio-Economic Development

For the past three decades, the concept of competency-based management has received everincreasing attention in the business management literature. This attention assumes crucial proportions as the industrial base of many countries is supplanted by the "knowledge economy" or "Post-Industrial Society."
As the knowledge economy grows, intellectual capital becomes the key differentiating factor for organizations. To assure success, organizations must find ways of identifying, quantifying, measuring, assessing, and enhancing their intellectual capital assets. One way of accomplishing this oftentimes difficult task is through competency-based management.
This paper describes the concept of competencies as defined by leading scholars, presents examples of competency-based management as practiced in important organizations, and shows the benefits of competency management. The paper presents an example of a construct that was developed to address competency-based development of individual employees, work groups, and organizations. Building on this micro- level approach, the paper illustrates how the model can be tailored to meet socio-economic development needs through the intermediate level (urban planning and renewal), to the macro level (nation building).

beckman-novak.pdf (PDF, 100 KB)

Avner Ben-Ner: For-Profit, State, and Nonprofit: How to Cut the Pie among the Three Sectors

What is the best way to deliver various goods and services in the advanced complex economy? What is the appropriate division of labor among the state, the private for-profit, and the nonprofit sectors? This paper explores these questions relative to the well-being of consumers, and offers a set of broad answers grounded in a benefit-cost analysis that balances (1) the value of the to consumers and customers from their relations with organizations from the three sectors, and (2) the efficiency of the internal organization of these types of organization. The paper illustrates this benefit-cost analysis in the context of several industries.

benner_avner.pdf (PDF, 263 KB)

Luigi Bonaventura: The Underground Labor Market, between Social Norms and Economic Incentives

This paper examines the phenomenon of the underground economy. We analyze the choice by firms and workers to carry out their economic activities within the formal economy context (regular economy) or the underground economy context (irregular economy). We assume that there are two types of labor markets, a regular one, and a irregular one; and starting from a coordinated interaction between the firm and the worker we show the existence of multiple symmetric equilibria in each market. The proposed game of coordination (2x2), can be interpreted as a pre-contract interaction between the agents through which they determine in which labor market they will �meet�. In the model, we insert an exogenous policy parameter (t) that measures the impact of legislative policy interventions on the regular labor market. The parameter takes on a positive value with respect to those interventions that increase the incentives to operate in the regular market. Through the utilization of evolutionary dynamics we can explicate the mechanism that leads the system towards one of the two equilibria, and explain the fact that these equilibria are sustained among the different populations (firms and workers) by taking on the role of a social norm. In this framework, we show that policy interventions (t) do not alter the choice dynamics of each actor, nor do they eliminate the probability of having certain dynamics that push the system towards the underground market, even where there are strong incentives for acting in the regular economy.

bonaventura_luigi.pdf (PDF, 302 KB)

Reinoud Bosch: An Operational Socio-Economic Paradigm

In this paper I present an operational socio-economic paradigm, which is to some extent consistent with and supplementary to the paradigm recently proposed by Amitai Etzioni in the Socio-Economic Review. It consists of: a systematic method for the interpretation of theories and empirical findings, with a personal, action, and institutional level of analysis; the concept of power as a central analytical and causal concept; and a method for the interpretation of values. An example of applying the paradigm is provided from the field of human resource management.

bosch_reinoud.pdf (PDF, 257 KB)

Eric Cahuzac & Vanessa di Paola: Overeducation and Wages Downgrading: Conditions of a Spatial Di.erentiation

Most previous studies modeling overeducation has failed to take into account the impact of the local labor markets characteristics. We investigate overeducation in such a context, focusing on employment density. In this paper we restrict our analysis on a statisti- cal approach of the overeducation phenomenon . both for skill levels and wages . of the early career of French people. Selective access to employment is corrected using a probit analysis with sample selection. Estimations highlight the importance of the characteristics of the labor market to avoid overeducation, more particularly : employment density, commuting time, increase in population or unemployment rate. We also emphasize a substitution (comple- mentary) e.ect between unemployment and overeducation from a skill (salary) point of view.

cahuzac-dipaola.pdf (PDF, 298 KB)

Thomas E. Chamberlain: Does Uneven Expected Risk Promote Poverty and Instability?

Many believe that poverty can be defeated by the Washington Consensus. But could higher expected-risk in the planning by disadvantaged people defeat confidence and discourage investment in education and business? In addressing this possibility, the more substantive instant utility methodology is used to show that increased expected-risk results in a diminished rate of investment, in personal and material capital. This recommends a more definitive guideline for justice in socioeconomic interrelationships—in particular, Rawls’ criterion is revised to read “ there is no injustice in the greater benefits earned by the few provided that the **benefits and discretionary-power** of persons not so fortunate are thereby improved.” In adopting this criterion it is recognized that standard utility theory, and Pareto optimality in particular (along with utilitarianism), are insufficient due to more general or higher-level considerations for advancing freedom and human welfare. The new perspective recommends a different direction—-define and employ international institutions to offset uneven expected risk through regulation of the global market at the borders. This would require (continuing) resource transfers from the advantaged to the disadvantaged—within nations and between nations. It is understood, in this new guideline, that the disadvantaged will primarily lift-themselves to better social and material conditions.

chamberlain_thomas.pdf (PDF, 204 KB)

Peter Doeringer and Sarah Crean: Can Fast Fashion Save the U.S. Apparel Industry?

doeringer-crean.pdf (PDF, 234 KB)

Julio Cesar Donadone: The Growth, Diversification and Forms de Dispute in the International Market of Consulting

The present study intends to contribute to understanding the growth process of the consulting market, its forms of activity and relationship to other organizations, starting with two reference points. First, focusing on the international consulting market, seeking to identify its characteristics and major changes over recent decades. In the second part, the focus is on changes in the business and management over recent decades as a way of visualizing the activity of managers in private companies and state in the face of the new organizational shapes and demands, From this starting point, I refer to the formulations that come to support the concepts associated with the growing influence of financial logic in management forms and the privatization process seeking to relate them to the issues of growth and forms of consultant activities as well as the role carried out by the ranks of management in midst of these circumstances.

donadone_julio.pdf (PDF, 240 KB)

Nicola Düll and Kurt Vogler-Ludwig: The socialisation of labour market risks – the case of Germany

Germany has been known for many decades for its generous welfare system. The "German model" has been characterised by a comparatively low degree of wage dispersion and, in contrast to Anglo-Saxon countries, the "working poor" phenomenon does not appear to shape the labour market. However, the persistently high level of unemployment in Germany consumes much of the advantages of social protection. Recent social and labour market reform measures are targeted at re-individualising labour market related risks and the cost of social protection. In a first step, this paper is going to analyse the distribution between individual risks and "socialised risks" and will ask for the interrelationship between stable jobs, "insecure" or "precarious" jobs and unemployment in Germany and the political management of these risks. An overview on the incidence and the distribution of labour market risks in Germany by taking a comparative (European) approach will be given. It will also look at the dynamics and the flexibility at the labour market in terms of transitions between these categories. The second part of the paper will analyse the institutional and political context as well as the economic rationale for delivering the specific distribution between individual and socialised labour market risks. It will then concentrate on recent reform debates concerning both the welfare State and the regulation of the labour market and discuss the balance between labour market flexibility, job quality and social security. A basic question for the political debate is the presumed trade-off between quantity and quality of jobs. Thus, the search for a new "flexibility – quality – security regime" needs to make reference to both, the Anglo-Saxon and the Scandinavian model. Finally, it needs to be asked whether the current German reforms can be looked at as representing a social compromise being able to solve the unemployment problem.

duell_vogler_ludwig.pdf (PDF, 233 KB)

eggert_verena.pdf

eggert_verena.pdf (PDF, 128 KB)

Bernard Fusulier: The Dilemma of a Child Care Provider: To be Flexible and Family-Friendly

fusulier_bernard.pdf (PDF, 144 KB)

Jean-Michel Glachant, Ute Dubois and Yannick Perez: Deregulating with no regulator: Is Germany electricity transmission regime institutionally correct?

It seems hard to believe that electricity transmission lines can be open to “third party access” only with a “negotiated access regime” and no regulator supervision. It seems contradictory with the notion of “ex post contractual hazards” promoted by V. Goldberg and O. Williamson. If such a weak institutional arrangement is really implemented it actually has to be harmful to network and market access. If not, why and how could it work? 1° when looking in Germany at rules and prices for accessing the transmission network and the corresponding wholesale markets, the “club” arrangement for transmission opening doesn’t appear so harmful. 2° accordingly we have to reconsider the ex ante and ex post institutional mechanism of such a “club” arrangement. Ex ante we first reconsider skills and strength of industrial consumers and German Business associations in defining and assessing rules of transmission access, as well as weaknesses coming from incomplete vertical and horizontal integration of German electricity companies impeding extensive cartel collusion. Ex post we first look at a strong Competition Authority backing. Then we discover that ex ante and ex post dimensions are much more mixed and reinforced in an open “cumulative pro-competition process” framed by the Competition Authority.

glachant-dubois-perez.pdf (PDF, 623 KB)

Trygve Gulbrandsen: Owners as political actors

A basic assumption within much of the corporate governance literature is that large private owners govern their firms differently from what employed top managers do and as a consequence may have a significant impact upon the economic results of the firms. In this paper it is discussed whether large owners also behave differently as regards political lobbying. The empirical analyses presented in the paper demonstrate that lobbying is as common among owner capitalists as among the other groups of business leaders. Compared to managerial capitalists, the owners� lobby activities are, however, to larger extent directed toward the decisions in the Norwegian parliament, and they seek out parliamentary leaders more frequently than employed business leaders. Their lobby strategy can be characterized as distinctly "top-level" oriented. The owners� particular lobby strategy appears to be best elucidated by referring to their power position and to a changed ideological climate in the Norwegian society. Their "top-level" lobbying reflects a regained legitimacy, a result of the general "shareholder revolution" and fostered by market liberalism having become progressively more entrenched.

gulbrandsen_trygve.pdf (PDF, 177 KB)

Evelyne Huber, Thomas Mustillo, and John D. Stephens: Determinants of Social Spending in Latin America

We examine the determinants of social expenditure in an unbalanced pooled time series analysis for 22 Latin American and Caribbean countries for the period 1970 to 2000. The data are from a new data set assembled by the co-authors and collaborators. The social spending data are calculated from IMF sources and allow us to separate out education and health spending from social security and welfare spending. We extend the Coppedge coding of Latin American parties to a wider set of countries and years. We also code constitutions in order to develop an adapted Huber and Stephens (2001) constitutional structure veto points measure. Thus, for the first time, we present an analysis of social spending in Latin America and the Caribbean with a full complement of partisanship, state structure, economic, and demographic variables that have been employed in studies of advanced industrial countries. We find that seat share of right-wing parties in the legislature is a highly significant predictor of social security spending, whereas seat share of left-wing parties is a significant predictor of health and education spending. Veto points depress health and education but not social security spending.

huber-mustillo.pdf (PDF, 418 KB)

Evelyne Huber, François Nielsen, Jenny Pribble, and John D. Stephens: Social Spending and Inequality in Latin America and the Caribbean

We examine the determinants of inequality in an unbalanced pooled time series analysis for 18 Latin American and Caribbean countries for the period 1970 to 1995. The dependent variable is the Gini index of income equality, and the data were drawn primarily from Deininger and Squire's World Bank data set supplemented by data from Londoño and Szekeley which meet Deininger and Squire's criteria for "high quality" data. The social spending data are from a new data set assembled by three of the co-authors. Two sets of control variables measuring various aspects of development and investment dependence form the baseline for the study. We find that health and education spending has a negative impact on inequality, which is consistent with the results for OECD countries, while social security and welfare spending (transfers, primarily pensions) has a strong positive impact on inequality, which is the opposite of the findings for OECD countries. We argue that this contrasting finding is due to the fact that, in Latin America and the Caribbean, transfers go almost exclusively to formal sector workers who are concentrated in the upper range of the income distribution.

huber-nielsen.pdf (PDF, 229 KB)

Alma Idiart: Institutional Factors and Neo-Liberal Trends: Maternal Child Health and Nutrition Programs in Argentina and Chile in The Past Two Decades

This paper provides a comparative analysis of the characteristics and the most recent transformations of maternal child health and nutrition programs in Argentina and Chile during the past two decades, focusing on long-term institutional features and the central trends organizing social reforms along neo-liberal lines prevailing during the 1980s and the 1990s. Whereas for the years 1945 to 1949 the average infant-mortality rate (IMR) in Chile more than doubled that in Argentina, in 1998 this rate in Chile represented barely 54 percent of the one of Argentina. How to account for such differences in policy performance in both cases? Are the neo-liberal reforms implemented in Chile since the late 1970s and early 1980s the main reason for such an impressive drop in IMRs? Are long-term coordinated social policy implementations and state institutional capacities the main factors accounting for this improvement? Do these implementation factors merely help realize neo-liberal reforms� potential?
I argue that despite relatively similar overall policy lines being implemented in both cases, the central and contrasting long-term historical and institutional characteristics in Argentina and Chile account for most of the variation in the overall process of reform implementation and in the socioeconomic effects and impact of social policies.

idiart_alma.pdf (PDF, 255 KB)

Gregory Jackson: Toward a comparative perspective on corporate governance and labour management

While stakeholder models of corporate governance support long-term employment, recent reforms have promoted shareholder-oriented corporate governance worldwide. Will reform cause employment to converge on a market system? This paper presents a comparison of the linkages between corporate governance and employment patterns in 22 countries using the QCA method (Qualitative Comparative Analysis). Case studies of Germany and Japan also show that firms must now cope with capital market pressures, but do so by creative adaptation of their existing national employment institutions. International differences are thus growing smaller, but convergence will not occur in the foreseeable future.

jackson_gregory.pdf (PDF, 251 KB)

Tatyana Kozlova: Social embeddednes of competition in St. Petersburg's ICT market

The Russian market of information and communication technologies (ICT) construction is a very competitive one, and St. Petersburg�s ICT market is one of Russia�s most prominent ICT centers. The presented paper is devoted to social embeddednes of competition in St. Petersburg�s market. Different types of competition are embedded in the social and business networks of ICT professionals. Small ICT companies can be described in terms of perfect competition and absence of social networks between competitors. Middle sized companies and most of the large ICT companies have wide social networks that are used to hire staff, to learn competitive advantages, and to advise or assist when needed. These networks are formed this way thank to their long term activities in the market and they are connected with olygopolystic competition. Competition between olygopolystic ICT companies often takes forms of cooperation, which are facilitated through knowledge of each other because of developed networks. Monopolystic ICT companies use networks with competitors in order to build new borders of the market. Business networks between competitors are a source of awareness about each other�s actions and of a market�s image. But they are not able to control competitive behavior. In this way, extended networks of customers are more influential on the social capital of competitors.

kozlova_tatyana.pdf (PDF, 110 KB)

Pablo Lavado Padilla and Guillermo Grande Wong: The efficacy of PRONAA and self-managed community (soup) kitchens in Metropolitan Lima, 2002

The accumulation of social capital in kitchen communities have created and strengthened a local social protection network in civil society in Peru. However, the stagnation of levels of poverty in the 90s, the clientelar utilization by government and the lack of monitoring and evaluation of the activities have stopped the target of kitchen communities: food security. The study evaluates the efficacy of investment made from PRONAA (food program) in favor of self-sustained kitchen communities. We estimated the level of undercovery (96%) and filtration (74%) of the program. Additionally, we find that the gap between the investment made and what is regulated by law is 53%. In that sense, members of kitchen communities must do voluntary work (especially by women) and to sell some rations and, as a consequence, they have deficits and no opportunity to reinvest in order to improve their capital. What is the exit if kitchen communities are to poor? Elimination of levels of undercovery and filtration, regulated by a monitoring and evaluation system, implementation of cross subsidies by PRONAA and a program in social management for women members of the kitchens seem to be a beginning in order to insert them to the market.

lavado_grande.pdf (PDF, 216 KB)

Sandrina Berthault Moreira: What can we Learn From State-Of-The-Art Aid-Growth Econometric Studies?

The effectiveness of foreign aid in promoting economic growth has been the subject of extensive research conducted over many decades. Since the mid-nineties, the cross-country work linking growth to aid has broken new ground in the field by drawing on a flourishing empirical growth literature that provides a different analytical basis compared to earlier work. In light of this distinguishing feature, together with others, the recent aid-growth econometric studies have been classified as a step forward in the empirical literature on aid effectiveness. The bulk of the work was published after the study by Burnside and Dollar (1997); a paper prepared as a background paper to the World Bank’s report Assessing Aid.
This paper concentrates on the latest cross-country regression studies of the aid-growth relationship. Aid (as a share of GDP or GNP) and measures of economic policy and the political and institutional environment are among the variables included on the RHS of the regression. The aim of this paper is to assess whether these variables have growth-enhancing effects in developing countries. As this paper will demonstrate, the studies in focus here show much about the relationship between aid and growth, even though they say little about other growth-enhancing factors among poor countries.

moreira_sandrina.pdf (PDF, 407 KB)

Ochoa & Hernández: Valuation of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in Mexico

ochoa-hernandez.pdf (PDF, 268 KB)

Felicia Pratto & Demis E. Glasford: Prospect theory, ethnocentrism, and the value of a human life

Five experiments examined how much participants valued of the lives of others through decisions they made. Using extensions of Tversky and Kahneman’s (1981) paradigm in which certain or uncertain decisions are made under loss or gain frames, we found that lives were valued to the extent those lives are considered “ours.” U.S. and British participants valued Iraqi lives positively so long as co-nationals’ or allies’ lives were not in competition with them. Under intergroup competition, however, the loss frame made decisions more ethnocentric, implying that prospects of losses invoke ethnocentrism through psychological threat. In other experiments, participants were asked to chose between a taboo trade-off (Fiske & Tetlock, 1997): the lives of one nation (own or a current enemy) vs. material interests for the other nation in loss-loss or gain-gain trade-offs. In such experiments, lives of co-nationals were valued, such that number of lives at stake strongly influenced decision preferences. However, participants were nearly indifferent concerning the loss or gain of lives of those in enemy nations, and were not affected by the number of lives at stake across four orders of magnitude. The need for economic and decision-making theories to consider findings from prejudice and intergroup relations is discussed.

pratto-glasford.pdf (PDF, 39.1 KB)

Maurizio Ferrera and Stefano Sacchi: The Open Method of Coordination and National Institutional Capabilities: The Italian experience

This paper assesses the impact of the European Union’s Open Method of Coordination (OMC) on Italy’s institutional capability in the employment and social inclusion policy fields. Institutional capability is defined as the extent to which a system of collective action is able – by means of interactive dynamics – to elaborate ‘satisficing’ responses to environmental challenges; transform such responses into decisions of a political nature; implement such decisions; and learn from experience.
Both in employment and social inclusion, Italy has suffered from a twofold handicap: initial congruence of its policymaking process with that presupposed by the OMC was low in both fields, and there have been endogenous dynamics of change which have significantly interacted with the exogenous push related to the OMC. However, the evidence provided in the paper points towards a clear strengthening of institutional capability as an OMC-induced effect in the employment field, while the OMC seems to have had little – if any - impact on institutional capability in the social assistance field. This variance is put to work in order to identify clusters of factors that have plausibly affected the impact of the OMC on Italy’s institutional capability.

sacchi_stefano.pdf (PDF, 316 KB)

Gerhard Schnyder, André Mach, Thomas David, Martin Lüpold: Understanding the Politics of Corporate Governance in Switzerland and Germany: Preference Formation, Coalitions and the Impact of Institutions

Germany and Switzerland are both countries with a corporate governance system that is usually classified, in opposition to the “market-centred” corporate governance systems of Anglo-Saxon countries, as belonging to the continental European “Insider” or “bank-centred” model. During the last twenty years, in a context of increasing international pressures (mainly linked to the liberalisation of financial markets), the regulatory framework of the two countries’ corporate governance systems (company law, financial market regulations and accounting standards) have been considerably reformed towards a more liberal and market-oriented corporate governance system.
In this paper, we analyse the political processes that led to these regulatory changes, which are not automatic adjustment and responses to new economic circumstances, but involve policy debates between the economic and political actors. In such a perspective, we can observe that even if the evolution of the regulatory frameworks went in the same direction in both cases, the political processes that led to these policy outcomes were quite different.
In Switzerland, with its broad and encompassing political decision-making processes, power relations are very stable and consensual agreements between the major political actors are necessary in order to achieve policy change. Therefore, regulatory reforms in Switzerland were less far-reaching in comparison to the German ones. Regulatory reforms were made possible only because preferences concerning liberalisation of the Swiss corporate governance system of a considerable part of centre-right MPs, with close ties with economic interests, changed at the end of the 1980s strengthening, thus, the – until then – mostly social-democratic “transparency coalition”. In Germany, on the other hand, the preferences of the major political parties and economic actors remained much more stable during the last two decades concerning corporate governance issues: the SPD and the FDP were favourable to liberalisation whereas the CDU defended the traditional system. In this context, changes were made possible not by changing coalitions, but by changing power relations. Once the SPD, acceded to governmental power, quite far-reaching changes were possible.

schnyder-lupold.pdf (PDF, 641 KB)

Alice N. Sindzingre: Bringing the Developmental State Back in: Contrasting Development Trajectories in Sub-Saharan Africa and East Asia

The concept of the developmental state links economic, political and institutional structures and explains the remarkable performances of the North-East Asian countries. The ingredients of developmental states are often presented in the literature as determining factors in the prospects of catching-up of developing countries and as a paradigm of escaping underdevelopment. The economic stagnation of Sub-Saharan Africa is interpreted as a consequence of common characteristics and the constraints of its states, in terms of history, economy, political economy (e.g. predatory states), and global integration. The paper analyses the different dimensions of the developmental states and shows their systematic contrast with significant features of Sub-Saharan African countries: colonial economic history, international integration, determinants of growth, states. redistributive constraints and institutional capacity. Some features are shared by developmental and African states: limited redistributive capacities, external dependence, overlapping of private and public interests, rents. However, specific modes of interaction between domestic politics, institutions, and economics as well as public intervention in the economy (capacity to implement policies) have enabled certain Asian states to engage in developmental trajectories. After two decades of economic crisis and ineffectiveness of the reforms recommended by international financial institutions, most Sub-Saharan African countries are confronted with the reconstruction of the state and, on occasion, with its very construction.

sindzingre_alice.pdf (PDF, 391 KB)

Diane-Gabrielle Tremblay: Communities of Practice: A Gendered Analysis of their Functioning and Results on the Basis of a Canadian Research

This paper highlights various results from an action-research on communities of practice in Canada, in particular the main conditions and challenges of such new modes of knowledge creation and management and their gendered characteristics. It does this on the basis of seven case studies analysed in detail, as well as the results of a questionnaire survey administered to the participants of these communities of practice. Participants’ commitment and motivation in the project, dynamism and continuity of leadership, organizational support and recognition of employees’ involvement appear to be the key elements, and some of these variables present interesting differences by gender and by age, as well as by type of organization.

tremblay_dianegabrielle.pdf (PDF, 245 KB)

Dr. Iván Ureta Vaquero: ¿Política por servicio social o viceversa?

Policy and social service: The private and public sectors integration and the Internal Resources Optimization in underdevelopment economies.
Perhaps, one of the most important factors that avoids the peripherical economies growth and development, is related with the imposibility or the dificulty to design their own development proposals. In this paper we offer a different point of view betting for the endogenous development theory. In this sense, we analyse the sustainability of the International Cooperation financial programs and we recognize that many programs never were done with a really sustainability criterion. For this reason is frecuently observed many rural communities – most accuratley, in this paper we are studing the peruvian region- waiting for international aids. Consequently, these communities, commonly, forget the autonomous development posibilities. Being this the wide reality, many underdevelopment economies have low productivity because they nor optimice neither planificate their economies, forgetting a perspective that looks for an endogenous growth founded in their Internal Resources Optimization –I.R.O.

ureta_ivan.pdf (PDF, 544 KB)

Aline Valette: Labour Market Segmentation: a Comparison between France and the UK From the Eighties to nowadays.

Regarding changes in French and British labour market as in their educational system since the Eighties, one may address the evolution of their labour market segmentation. Is the predominance of Internal Labour Market in France and Occupational Labour Market in Great Britain (Eyraud, Marsden, Silvestre,1990) still relevant ? We propose a more complex segmentation of labour market with four segments based on tenure, labour mobility and their wage return to account for nowadays situation. Empirical investigations we carried out are based on national labour surveys (Enquête Emploi for France, LFS and GHS for Great Britain). In this paper we expose first investigations and explain which further methods we propose to use in order to characterise French and British labour market segmentation.

valette_aline.pdf (PDF, 188 KB)

Stephen Wilks: Markets and Law: Competition Policy and the Juridification of the Economic Sphere Paper presented at the SASE Conference

wilks_stephen.pdf (PDF, 207 KB)

Geoffrey Wood: Business and Politics in a Criminal State: The Case of Equatorial Guinea

This article assesses the changing nature of the contemporary political economy of Equatorial Guinea. It provides an overview of the complex and dynamic web of elite rent generation and explores the extent to which the development of an oil industry has contributed to a monoculture ofaccumulation. It is concluded that despite the oil windfall, other, 'illicit', modes of elite rent generation persist and have even intensified.

wood_geoffrey.pdf (PDF, 216 KB)

Eddie Webster, Geoffrey Wood and Mick Brookes: International Homogenization or the Persistence of National Practices?: The Remaking of Industrial Relations in Mozambique

This paper is the first systematic attempt to gauge the impact of liberalisation on industrial relations practices at firm level in Mozambique. Through a survey of firms, the paper assesses the extent to which specific sets of practices are associated with particular regions, and/or sectors, and explores the relationship between IR practice and national institutional configurations. The survey revealed that informalism and autocratic managerialism characterize the practice of employment relations and that there is little evidence of the penetration of advanced Human Resource Management practices in specific sectors, firm types or locales. But it would be mistaken to assume a convergence towards a global systematic archetype of low wage/low skill/low security of tenure set of practices. Instead, the authors conclude, contemporary Mozambique employment relations are an example of external market pressures being chanelled and moulded by the persistence of national level realities that stretch back to the colonial era. In the absence of effective institutional mechanisms , familiar conventions are likely to persist because people know how they work in practice. The instrument developed in this study could be used to monitor institutional reform as well as used in a comparative context.

wood-webster-brookes.pdf (PDF, 274 KB)

Mark Young: Civil Society: Modern Aristotelian Polis?

Even in his own day, Aristotle had difficulty identifying a real-life example of his ideal political community. Can we do any better today?
I would propose looking for the current "home" of the neo-Aristotelian polis not in any contemporary political arrangement but rather within elements of modern "civil society". Although the perfect actualization of the neo-Aristotelian ideal is as elusive now as it was in Aristotle’s own day, elements of it can certainly be found in practice. Indeed, it is only in very recent years that modern technology has for the first time enabled human beings to connect with one another in a way which truly furthers each of their eudaimonia in the neo-Aristotelian sense.
In the Western world, the idea of "civil society" has always been a central tenet of any reasoned attempt to organize communal life. I identify four different historical paradigms for this ancient term, arising at different points in succession in the history of Western philosophy. Unfortunately, none of these work particularly well today: modern life requires a concept of civil society which goes beyond the political, the ecclesiastical, the economic and the nostalgically voluntary. If community is to provide the key to the Good Life in the 21st century, it must incorporate all of these and more.
Instead, I propose a more contemporary fifth model of civil society, one built directly on the neo-Aristotelian principles of autonomy, capabilities and flourishing. Under this definition, civil society is seen as any sort of directly linked community of shared values. It is a coming together of individuals seeking political stability in their search for the Good Life as they unabashedly stand for intersubjectively defensible values, but also allowing for the diversity and tolerance both within the community and in relation to others on which the long-term health of any modern Aristotelian polis depends.
Some particularly timely examples can illustrate just how these principles can be put into practice in modern life. Provocatively, while globally linked communities such as Al Qaeda may seem at first glance to fit the bill, this modern polis clearly cannot live up to the normative standards of our neo-Aristotelian paradigm. Communities based on shared sexual identity, such as the Gay Liberation movement, fare somewhat better, but must ultimately discover that this facet of human identity is not enough to truly bind citizens into a flourishing community. The most appealing current example, Amnesty International, is one that is truly based on shared values, and that has found ways to use the global links of modern community to put those values into action, if only in anecdotal and sketchy ways.

young_mark.pdf (PDF, 345 KB)