text:
Tag: #SocialChange
Under the radar: How companies can redefine what we consider socially responsible
By Verena Girschik
◦ 2 min read ◦
Notwithstanding promises of win-wins and synergies, we have good reasons to question whether companies address social problems in society's best interests. As many critics have pointed out, companies tend to promote solutions that foster their commercial interests – often without considering their broader social impact.
Do our suspicions stop them? Of course not. Companies are usually well aware of any concerns and continuously evaluate the risk of prompting a controversy around their social activities. When they don't have the social license to operate, they simply cultivate relations with organizations that do and get them to act on their behalf. Using such relational strategies, companies' efforts remain hidden from public scrutiny insofar as they operate under the radar. Smart!
It's not quite that simple, however. Legitimate organizations such as NGOs are just as aware of those widespread suspicions, and they are therefore often reluctant to work with companies. Indeed, if an organization's relations with companies are perceived to be inappropriate, the organization risks exacerbating concerns around corporate influence and may thereby jeopardize its legitimacy too. The widespread suspicions of companies' intentions thus make it more difficult for companies to participate in social change. Let's call this a legitimacy barrier.
Overcoming the legitimacy barrier through relational work
How do companies overcome the legitimacy barrier and become legitimate actors in social change? In a recent publication (Girschik, 2020), I theorize how companies may engage in relational work to cultivate and shape their relations with legitimate organizations in such ways that redefine their involvement as socially responsible and thus legitimate. The paper details that companies can take four interdependent steps:
Cultivating communal relations: As a first step, companies can form or strengthen personal relations with people who work for legitimate organizations and who are likely to be interested in addressing the social problem in question. On a personal rather than organizational level, it is easier to align and create a shared understanding of potential courses of action.
Extending organizational support: Once a shared understanding is evolving, the company can start diligently targeting resources that enable the other organization to boost its activities and address the social problem. Such support has to happen on the organizational level to make sure that it is not considered for individual gain.
Articulating a partnership: Because the second step produces salient practical outcomes and illustrates the benefits of corporate involvement, it opens a window of opportunity to formalize collaboration through a partnership agreement. As part of this agreement, the company can participate in defining not only further courses of action but also the company's role.
Differentiating as a socially responsible company: At this point, the company's competitors have likely become interested and may try to imitate the company's involvement by forming partnerships with the same or similar legitimate organizations. That's a good thing for the first-moving company because it promotes the legitimacy of such partnerships. And benefiting from its strong relational embedding, the company is likely to outperform competitors through superior compliance with expectations. Being perceived as less sincere, competitors' efforts are thus less strategically valuable and the first-moving company stands out as most socially responsible.
This process is time- and resource-consuming, but my study shows that it may pay off: it may enable companies to legitimate their involvement in social change while securing a competitive edge.
For better or worse?
These four steps explicate subtle yet consequential efforts through which companies may shape social change. The good news is that it is not easy and takes genuine long-term commitment. The bad news is that companies' commercial interests may inform and mold trajectories of social change while their actual influence is hidden under a CSR veil. We need to keep deconstructing the relational constellations through which companies establish and exert their influence.
Girschik, V. (2020). Managing Legitimacy in Business‐Driven Social Change: The Role of Relational Work. Journal of Management Studies, 57(4), 775-804.
Verena Girschik is Assistant Professor of CSR, Communication, and Organization at Copenhagen Business School (Denmark). She adopts a communicative institutionalist perspective to understand how companies negotiate their roles and responsibilities, how they perform them, and with what consequences. Empirically, she is interested in activism in and around multinational companies and in business–humanitarian collaboration. Her research has been published in the Journal of Management Studies, Human Relations, Business & Society, and Critical Perspectives on International Business. She's on Twitter: @verenacph
Source: photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash
Posted on February 23, 2021 January 5, 2023 Categories About, Accountability, Concepts, CSR, Featured, News, Research, Social, SustainabilityTags #barrier, #CSR, #involvement, #legitimacy, #partnerships, #relationalwork, #relations, #Responsibility, #SocialChange, #socialresponsibility, #strategy
How do the arts impact our societies in times of digitalisation?
By Kirsti Reitan Andersen and members of the Artsformation consortium
Two decades into the new millennium it is almost impossible to imagine a future in which digital technologies do not play a key role. Today, digitalisation changes the way things are done across business and society alike.
This includes for example the impact of new technologies on processes of democratisation, like the role of Facebook in the UK referendum in 2016. Or the increasing collection and analysis of personal data in the use of any social media. Another area in which technology is having an enormous impact is in our ways of communication and being together, for example through technologies like Zoom or Facetime.
Throughout history, the arts have always reflected major transitions as they unfold.
Therefore, it is perhaps no surprise that the social, environmental and economic consequences of the digital transformation are now also increasingly addressed by artists. For example, with the project SOMEONE (2019), Lauren McCarthy tries to address the advances in human-machine relationships represented in 'smart houses' and try to give back a human identity to artificial intelligent devices through active human participation.
As part of the H2020 research project Artsformation, we explore the current and potential role of the arts in the digital transformation. Exploring the role of the arts across both business and society, one part of the project has a particular focus on marginalized groups of people who today do not reap the acclaimed benefits of the digital transformation (e.g. Gangadharan and Niklas, 2019; Gebru, 2018; Neves, Franz, Munteanu and Baecker, 2018; Park and Humphry, 2019). In this context, the "socially engaged arts" (Bishop, 2012) is of particular interest.
In contrast to more traditional forms of art, socially engaged artists often work closely with their audiences in one way or other.
For example, by gaining in-depth knowledge of particular challenges in specific communities and creating awareness about such issues through the artwork or by directly engaging people in the production of art. One such example could be the engagement of people in the production of artwork using the so-called maker spaces as a place of work and thereby also introducing "audiences" to new digital technologies and skill sets. Catch, a center for art design and technology located in Elsinore, for example, has much experience facilitating such processes of learning.
In recent years we have seen artistic examinations of the digital transformation become increasingly complex, evolving from what we might understand as a fascination or embracement of digital tools to reflections on the transformation itself. In general, we find that socially engaged artists are addressing societal issues (of the digital transformation) in three ways (Andersen et al., 2020):
The artist as a commentator: The artist as a commentator is not directly concerned with audience engagement as part of the artistic process. The work of Dr. Ahmed Elgammal and an artificial intelligence named AICAN exemplifies "the artist as a commentator". In this case Dr. Elgammal and AICON created an exhibition of prints called Faceless Portraits Transcending Time. While there is no direct audience engagement, the work of Dr. Elgammal and AICON brings attention to current debates about technology and creative work.
The artist as one who gives voice to a community: More than ever, artists have become ever more important as voices of reason and clarity, pressing for social justice and engaging the public conversation about the controversial issues shaping the world in which we live. Forensic Architecture's attempt to raise awareness of oil and gas pollution in Vaca Muerta, Argentina, is a good illustration of this approach. Vaca Muerta has become one of the world's largest shale oil and gas fields. It is also the home of indigenous communities, including some of the Mapuche people who live between Chile and Argentina. In collaboration with The Guardian newspaper, Forensic Architecture investigated a local Mapuche community's claim that "the oil and gas industry has irreversibly damaged their ancestral homeland and eroded their traditional ways of life."
The artist as a social entrepreneur: consults and facilitates a community problem in a much more 'organised' and 'long-term' manner than is typical of the two previous roles. This, for example, is what happened when artist Olafur Eliasson and engineer Frederik Ottesen at London's Tate Modern launched the social enterprise Little Sun in 2012, setting out to change the world with 'solar art'. Little Sun aims to bring clean, reliable and affordable energy to the 1.1 billion people who live without electricity while raising awareness of energy access and climate action worldwide. Eliasson demonstrates his conviction that art can change the world by continuing to promote Little Sun as an extension of his art practice, arguing that many of Little Sun's "current and future projects stem from art, involve artistic thinking or use our products themselves to create art".
While all three roles co-exist, intersect and share the ability to imagine new ways and generate change, each role does so in slightly different ways. We suggest that each of the three roles requires artists to organise in different ways, which may also impact the kinds of change they can facilitate. Moving forward, we are extremely eager to explore the ways in which artists as social entrepreneurs may inspire and offer new and more sustainable ways of organizing.
The Social and Civic Impact of the Arts
Kirsti Reitan Andersen is a Post Doc at the Department of Management, Society and Communication, Copenhagen Business School. In her current work, she explores the role of the arts in the transformation towards more sustainable ways of organizing.
Photo by Stan Narten and Otto Saxinger, SOMEONE.
Posted on January 12, 2021 January 12, 2021 Categories About, Concepts, CSR, Development, Featured, News, Social, Sustainability, TechnologyTags #art, #artists, #challenges, #change, #digitalart, #digitalisation, #digitaltransformation, #Impact, #SocialChange, #socialentrepreneur, #societalissues, #sustainability, #voice, society, technology
Insecure work: rethinking precarity through Kenya's tea plantations
Over the last decade, the term 'precarity' has become ubiquitous in studies of work and labor, as jobs are increasingly characterized by temporary and insecure contracts; lack of basic welfare provisions such as paid leave; and low pay. The informalization of work has gained pace in a post-Fordist world. And we can expect to see more precarity. The COVID-19 pandemic is pushing employers the world over to think of new ways to reduce labor costs as economies flounder.
Anthropologist of work Kathleen Millar has argued that we need to be careful about how we think about 'precarity' when we talk about insecure work. The term can inadvertently "smuggle in a conservative politics", valorizing and romanticizing a Fordist past of full-time wage labor. This employment past is not universal. In the majority of the world, economies have historically been characterized by informality. Here, formal secure work has been more of an idea, a promise tied up in teleological ideals of modernization and development, than a reality. Furthermore, in former settler colonies such as Kenya and South Africa, formal wage employment has roots in colonial capitalism, coercion and exploitation.
I've been thinking about precarity through the case of changing employment conditions on Kenyan tea plantations, where I've been researching the production of certified sustainable tea as part of the SUSTEIN project. I carried out my latest fieldwork between January and March this year, right up until the majority of European countries went into lockdown. A few weeks later, Kenya followed suit. In Kericho, the heart of Kenya's tea production and where I spent most of my stay, there was little sense that the world was on the brink of an impending global pandemic, let alone reflection on what that could mean for the tea industry. And yet, in conversations with diverse actors in the sector, there was a shared narrative that the industry, responsible for one of Kenya's biggest export commodities and foreign exchange earners, was struggling.
Enduring low prices of tea on the global market and rising costs of production have led multinational companies owning large tea plantations to look for ways to cut labor costs.
Tea is a labor intensive crop, and companies have historically depended on large resident workforces to pluck tea, plant and prune tea bushes and operate factories, among a multitude of other tasks required to maintain vast tea plantations. Biannual collective bargaining agreements led by the workers' union have seen wages increase at a rate companies say is unsustainable for business. Citing high wages relative to other agricultural sectors in Kenya and the additional costs of employee benefits such as free housing and water, payment of retirement funds, and contributions to health insurance, along with the costs of maintaining infrastructures used by workers and their dependents such as schools and dispensaries, companies argue for the need to reduce labor forces.
The gradual reduction of company-employed low-level or 'general' workers has been taking place through parallel processes of mechanizing tea harvesting and outsourcing tasks outside of companies' core activities of tea harvesting and factory processing. While workers carrying out core tasks continue to be employed directly by the company, thus receiving a union-negotiated wage and the package of employment privileges described above, outsourced workers are hired on insecure terms by external service providers who hold contracts with tea plantation companies. Outsourced workers are typically employed on short contracts, sometimes for as little as a few days. This renders them ineligible for union membership, and most earn less than half the daily salary of a company employee. If they are unable to work due to sickness, they will not be paid. The contractors who employ them are required by the company to make deductions from their salaries to national health insurance and social security schemes, but low wages and short-term employment mean that contributions are meagre.
Kenya has a large work-seeking population, and people are prepared to take outsourced jobs because of few employment opportunities.
In spite of the striking unsustainability of labor outsourcing for these workers, international sustainability standards say surprisingly little about this category and establish few mechanisms to safeguard them.
In the context of decreasing opportunities for employment in permanent company jobs on tea plantations, current and former workers talk with nostalgia about a time when company jobs and their related securities were a plenty. This nostalgia echoes the valorization of stable, full-time wage labor that Millar identifies as lurking in the notion of precarity. But, without dismissing workers' nostalgia, we should be careful not to romanticize plantation jobs of the past which were, in spite of their securities relative to outsourced work, inherently precarious.
During the early twentieth century, the colonial administration sought to disrupt and undermine subsistence economies so that people would be forced to seek work on infrastructure projects and in settler industry and agriculture, including tea plantations. For decades, the industry struggled with labor shortage which undermined its growth and expansion. During the 1940s and 50s, efforts were made to create permanent resident labor forces through welfare provisions such as housing, kitchen gardens and retirement funds. Yet workers could never own the houses they lived in, nor the land they were given to cultivate, which remained the property of the company.
In seeking to create a stable workforce that could make Kenya's tea industry sustainable, the colonial administration destabilized rural economies and created a class of people who would be forced, for generations, to seek wage labor.
If, in these uncertain times, we shouldn't wish for a whole-sale return to permanent, full-time wage labor, what might we hope for instead? Millar argues for a critical politics of precarity that problematizes the centrality of economically productive work and its promise in contemporary capitalism rather than calling for a return to stable full-time work. Campaigns that propose alternatives to work include Universal Basic Income – where governments makes regular unconditional payments to every individual – and Universal Basic Services. A 2017 study by UCL's Institute for Global Prosperity proposing Universal Basic Services in the UK argues that government provision of basic services such as food, shelter and transport has the potential to reduce dramatically the cost of living for those on the lowest incomes, making participation, belonging and cohesion possible in the face of increasingly precarious work. These initiatives are becoming more compelling as the world reels from the pandemic and we try to imagine a recovery that prioritizes social and environmental justice.
Kathleen M. Millar (2017) 'Towards a critical politics of precarity'. Sociology Compass, 11 (6), pp. 1-11.
Henrietta Moore, Andrew Percy, Jonathan Portes and Howard Reed (2017) Social prosperity for the future: A proposal for Universal Basic Services. Social Prosperity Network Report: Institute for Global Prosperity, UCL.
Hannah Elliott is a postdoc at MSC focusing broadly on the political and economic anthropology, in particular in eastern Africa where she has been conducting research since 2009. Her current research examines the production of certified sustainable tea in Kenya as part of the SUSTEIN project.
Posted on November 27, 2020 November 27, 2020 Categories CSR, Development, Economic, Environment, Equality, Ethics, Featured, Governance, Issues, News, Research, Social, SustainabilityTags #covid19, #Employees, #environmentaljustice, #labor, #LaborCosts, #pandemic, #precarity, #SocialChange, #TeaProduction, agriculture, employment, kenya
Supplier perspectives on social responsibility in global value chains
By Peter Lund-Thomsen
Worldwide there is now a search for new ideas, business models, and innovations that can help us in rebounding from the global impact of COVID-19 and bring our planet and world onto a more sustainable future trajectory. One of the areas where this is evident is sustainability in global value chains where we have seen a global disruption of world trade in ways that have affected not only global brands but also suppliers and workers around the world. Some observers argue that this will result in a global backlash against attempts at making global value chains, for instance, the global garments and textile value chains, more sustainable. I.e. that COVID-19 will make brands and suppliers sacrifice long-term sustainability considerations at the expense of short-term business survival.
In my understanding,however, what these recent events demonstrate is not so much the need for new innovations and "thinking out of the box" but rather considering how the current organization of global value chains and thinking around sustainability have overlooked the importance of "supplier perspectives" on what social responsibility actually means in these chains. Amongst many practitioners, especially in the Nordic countries, there has been a tendency to assume that global brands' adopting corporate codes of conduct and sustainability standards, asking value chain partners (i.e. suppliers) to implement these, and then auditing for compliance as well as helping suppliers to build capacity to enforce these guidelines would be sufficient.
The case of Bangladesh illustrates why this approach is insufficient. First, many brands have cancelled their orders with Bangladeshi garment suppliers, leaving local factories at the verge of bankruptcy, and hundreds of thousands, if not millions of workers at risk, potentially without any income to support themselves and their families. Second, even with orders that have been completed, some brands have refused to honor their contracts and either not paid for the goods received, substantially delayed payments, or asked for discounts on present or future orders from suppliers.
Globally, there has been condemnation of these "unfair" trading practices by both suppliers themselves (particularly in Bangladesh but also highlighted via social media) and also international labor advocacy organizations.
And third, the level of outrage is so strong that the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association has allegedly been considering placing a ban on particular brands so that they may not source garments from Bangladesh in the future as they have largely failed to live up to their "buyer" responsibilities towards suppliers and workers in Bangladesh.
To me, a key lesson learned from these events is that global brands, business associations, labor advocacy organizations, NGOs, researchers and students can no longer simply "overlook" supplier perspectives on social responsibility in global value chains.
The only realistic way forward is to take account of the concerns of these suppliers if global value chains are to be more resilient in the long run.
Many of these supplier concerns are already well-documented but tend to be either ignored or discarded by "global North stakeholders" in their policies, practices or discourses more broadly – for instance, in how they conceive and talk of sustainability in sustainability conferences around the world.
Just to recap some of the main points that we have learned from studies of supplier perspectives on social responsibility:
a) The factory manager dilemma – e.g., factory managers and owners – for instance, in the global garment industry – have had been asked for continuous price declines by many of their buyers while the same brands have asked for increased levels of social compliance at the same time.
b) The same dilemma arises when factory managers are asked to provide living wages around the year by their buyers when demand is seasonal and price competition is fierce in the global garment industry. For most suppliers having workers sitting around idle for part of the year is not a viable business option.
c) In addition, there is a general unwillingness amongst most (but not all brands) to co-finance – for instance, 50% – of the necessary social upgrading of factories in countries such as Bangladesh. Hence, brands tend to push "social responsibility" onto their suppliers rather than co-investing in and jointly bearing the costs of these improvements themselves.
d) Profits earned from selling goods sold to end consumers in the global North remain highly unequally shared amongst the (ironically called) value chain partners – often with suppliers winding up with 10-20 percent of the value of final retail price.
e) In addition to this, global North (read: Scandinavian) stakeholders including brands, government representatives, NGOs, students, and others often perceive "sustainability" in value chains as mainly relating to environmental and (to a lesser degree) social responsibility in the value chain. Hence, the general talk often seems to be about how suppliers should make environmental and social investments without considering the need for addressing existing inequalities – i.e. unequal distribution of value in these chains – and the business aspects of running supplier operations. In fact, for many suppliers in countries such as India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, sustainability is first and foremost related to "economic" or "financial" sustainability. Only when suppliers are profit-making can they afford to invest in social and environmental improvements. This is not exactly rocket-science but a point that often seems to be completely overlooked by Scandinavian "sustainability" advocates.
f) Finally, what is sometimes considered "social responsibility in global value chains" in the global North might be narrowly defined as the payment of minimum wages, overtime payment, social insurance, and the implementation of occupational health and safety measures in supplier factories. Of course, I am all for supplier factories implementing these measures. However, I also sympathize with many suppliers, NGOs and other stakeholders in the global South that point to other aspects of social responsibility that may be more contextualized.
For instance, in South Asia, many studies have pointed to factory managers helping to finance the education/school fees of the children of some of their workers. Financing the weddings of young workers or the weddings of the sons/daughters of their workers is another sign of social responsibility amongst many factory owners in South Asia.
From a Scandinavian perspective, this may not be related to "social responsibility".
However, in the sub-continent, where your wedding day is often considered the most important day in your life, and very important for your family's wider social standing in society, employers' financial support may be seen a very valid act of practicing "social responsibility".
Providing tea to your workers may also be considered an act of "social responsibility". Again – from a Scandinavian perspective – this may not be considered a big act of social responsibility. However, then again, is it really that difficult to understand? How many of us in Scandinavia do not value it when our own employers provide us with free tea or coffee? It gives us the opportunity to socialize with our colleagues or take a much needed break between different work tasks. Why should it be any different in countries such as India and Pakistan where tea drinking could almost be considered a national sport?
Moreover, some factory managers in South Asia allow especially young mothers or women with even slightly older children the option of either working part-time (when the kids are in school or someone else is at home to take care of them) or engaging in home-working so that they may look after their kids while engaging in for instance (embroidery) whenever there is a free moment. Of course, I do recognize that home-working is also often associated with receiving very low wages and not having any social insurance.
However, during COVID 19, even in the Scandinavian context, homeworking has become an absolutely essential part of keeping private companies and public institutions afloat crisis under such compelling circumstances. It has also involved many challenges for families with young children who had to engage in home-based work (typically computer-based) and taking care of their children simultaneously.
Yet if homeworking is indeed not only allowed but also encouraged by most employers in Scandinavia, why it is that brands in the global North sometimes impose an outright ban on their suppliers outsourcing particular work tasks to "home-based locations"?
No wonder that many factory owners and managers in the global South believe that global brands practice double standards when it comes to their social responsibility requirements (i.e. 'do as I say but not as I do').
In conclusion, there seems to a great need in Scandinavia for raising our own levels of awareness about the commercial challenges faced by suppliers and acknowledge the myriad ways in which "social responsibility" may be thought of and practiced – of course, without throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Compliance with core labor standards remains a key concern, but it is not the only way of conceiving of supplier responsibility in global value chains.
Peter Lund-Thomsen is Professor at the Department of Management, Society and Communication at Copenhagen Business School. His research focuses on sustainable value chains, industrial clusters, and corporate social responsibility with a regional focus on South Asia.
Image by International Labour Organization ILO
Posted on June 8, 2020 June 8, 2020 Categories About, Communication, Concepts, CSR, Development, Economic, Equality, Ethics, Featured, Governance, Issues, News, Partnerships, Policy, Regulation, Reporting, Social, Stakeholders, Standards, SustainabilityTags #coronavirus, #CSR, #Responsibility, #SocialChange, #sustainability, corporate responsibility, Fashion, global value chain, supply chain, sustainability integration
By Isabel Froes
Cities are hard and complex systems. With their defined policies, grids and routes, they offer limited space for experimentation, with a low threshold for any type of interference to their regular flow. To test and prototype [1] in the urban, besides dealing with regulatory procedures, require clear indications of the positive impact those tests might bring. Thus, any change in routine flows is disruptive and not necessarily welcomed by all.
Some of these difficulties have become explicit during the processes carried out by various cities in four EU funded neighbourhood projects, Cities-4-People, Sunrise, MUV and Metamorphosis [2]. These projects have brought together citizens and other key city stakeholders to identify and co-create mobility solutions and approaches to tackling local problems. Each project has had a distinct goal, but all are part of the CIVITAS initiative focusing on 'sustainable neighbourhood mobility planning' and have been running since 2017, with three of them to end in 2020 and another in 2021. In the case of the Cities-4-People project, running in the cities of Hamburg, Istanbul, Oxford, Trikala and Budapest, cities, citizens and transport authorities have worked closely together to co-create and implement solutions addressing congestion, bike parking, safe and new routes to reach public transportation, and more [3].
Primarily, one of the biggest difficulties in deploying urban prototypes deals with permissions, space sharing, closing parts of or an entire street, or pavement, changing traffic routes, etc.
Even when implementing aspects citizens see as valuable and beneficial, such as bike racks, paths, during construction, these processes tend to be perceived as a nuisance. Another aspect stems from the fact that, unless it is a whole new city or neighbourhood been planned, the city, as a canvas, is never blank. Therefore, cities are constantly bound to develop solutions, which are imposed over an existing and fixed grid with very little wiggle room. All true, until March 2020.
The pandemic, through lockdowns and other movement restrictions, has changed the flow of cities almost overnight. For the first time, since the widespread city development focusing on automobiles, cities have had a chance to look at their now empty public spaces and rethink their use and purposes. These changes have forced the neighbourhood projects into a sudden halt, as people's engagement with urban spaces has been very limited. However, while physical workspaces, shops and many businesses closed their doors, with citizens mostly at home, cities have encountered an unprecedented opportunity to rethink their streets.
In two related mobility examples, Vilnius, Lithuanian capital, the city Mayor has opened up eighteen of the city's public spaces, free of charge, to bars and restaurants, so they can run while keeping the required social distancing [4].
In Milan [5], over the summer, the city will engage in a large-scale urban prototype, deploying 35km of temporary biking lanes and enlarged pavement areas.
While the city slowly opens up, with most employees still working from home and not commuting as much, citizens, when going out, should have enough space to keep a safe distance, while also experimenting in environmental friendly modes, such as walking and biking.
When some of the neighbourhood projects, such as Cities-4-People, resume in a few months, their cities and citizens might have changed. However, instead of considering the data that has been collected in the projects prior to the lockdown as 'outdated' or no longer valid, these projects can consider repurposing this data, using it as a robust baseline to be compared with post lockdown. From a mobility perspective, this 'new normal' might prove itself a valuable mobility asset. As people return to their streets, they can experience these known spaces in new formats encountering novel mobility patterns, where people and businesses can repopulate streets differently, reconfiguring city flows.
Furthermore, some of these temporary changes might prove to be popular and become permanent, promoting not only better mobility, but also lower pollution and improved air quality [6], indirectly helping cities leapfrog into achieving some of their sustainable development goals (SDGs). The opportunity to reset busy urban centres is rare; however, as it has occurred and continues to run with the pandemic, more cities and citizens have the unique chance to engage and exploit their cities' canvas in new ways to seize their days.
[1] Implementing a temporary solution
[2] https://civitas.eu/projects/research
[3] https://cities4people.eu/
[4] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/28/lithuanian-capital-to-be-turned-into-vast-open-air-cafe-vilnius
[5] In Milan, the lockdown brought a city to an almost complete stand still, decreasing an endemic congestion problem by 30-75%, thus improving air quality. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/21/milan-seeks-to-prevent-post-crisis-return-of-traffic-pollution
[6] https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/automotive-and-assembly/our-insights/the-impact-of-covid-19-on-future-mobility-solutions?cid=soc-app
Isabel Fróes is a postdoc at MSC Department at Copenhagen Business School working in two EU projects (Cities-4-People and iPRODUCE) dealing with distinct aspects of urban services and sustainability. Her latest publications deal with urban planning and co-creation based on results from the Cities-4-People project. Isabel also has wide industry experience and has worked both as a user researcher and service design consultant for various companies in Denmark and internationally. For more detail please see her Linkedin profile
Photo by ?? Claudio Schwarz | @purzlbaum on Unsplash
Posted on May 18, 2020 May 18, 2020 Categories About, Cities, Citizenship, Development, Featured, Initiative, Innovation, Issues, News, Regulation, Social, SustainabilityTags #cities, #coronavirus, #innovation, #SocialChange, #sustainability, #sustainableDevelopment, #transformation, #urban mobility, behavioural change
By Stefano Ponte
This article is based on his previously written piece for the Centre for Business and Development Studies.
The COVID-19 crisis has made evident the limitations of existing thinking, preparedness and policy in relation not only to health pandemics but also to the sustainability challenges we face, locally and globally. Contemporary capitalism, with its hyper-individualistic culture and just-in-time – instead of just-in-case – approach to infrastructure and essential equipment, is not geared towards solving global problems that require coordination, cooperation and solidarity. As some activists, scholars and medical personnel have stated recently, 'We don't need heroes if we have preparation'.
Clear examples that have emerged with particular force in the past few months include the political inability to coordinate emergency responses within the EU and the US, cut-throat competition among countries seeking to procure essential medical gear, and the realization that we have been undermining the working conditions for 'essential workers' for decades. Therefore, an expansive economic stimulus to restart the economy during/post-covid-19 cannot be based on the first-line response of capitalism – restoring production and consumption back to 'usual'.
This is the time to expand and rethink our socio-economic models to stimulate a more sustainable approach to consumption – not limited to consuming more sustainable goods and services (such as organic milk, ecotourism holiday or FSC certified timber), but also on consuming less.
We need to rethink the current organization of the global economy, reform the national economic and political institutions that govern it and devise new forms of governance and collective action within states and across borders. Contemporary hyper-capitalism, rather than humanity per se, is the root cause of the global sustainability crisis and the spread of pandemics – and thus should be the focus of action.
To achieve this, we need a different kind of 'green entrepreneurial state' that de-couples sustainability from growth, and that does not intervene to bail out carbon-intensive industries tout court. Oil markets have tanked in recent weeks, and $0 (or even negative) oil prices are devaluing oil industry assets dramatically. A green and just recovery in the oil industry transition means focusing on helping workers first and foremost, rather than executives or shareholders. This could entail partial nationalization of assets to essentially shut the oil industry down in the mid-term and open the way for further investment in renewables, which would otherwise be dampened by competition from cheap oil.
Second, what we need is more community involvement in the economy, changes in labour law to make unionization easier, tax reforms to make municipal and cooperative forms of organization more attractive, corporate regulation to facilitate employee ownership, and stimuli to expand the radical and democratic ecological experiments that are already in place – such as the shared living communities that have been active in Denmark since the 1970s.
Third, important insights for a recovery plan can be offered by the idea of 'just sustainability', which incorporates 'the need to ensure a better quality of life for all, now and into the future, in a just and equitable manner, whilst living within the limits of supporting ecosystems'. Therefore, a path towards recovery during-and-post COVID-19 needs to address inequality – as it drives competitive consumption and leads to lower levels of trust in societies, making public action (including under a pandemic) more difficult. Excluding companies from recovery funds which have made use of tax avoidance tools is one of the necessary steps. But broader and collective actions to stamp out tax heavens are needed more than ever.
Stefano Ponte is Professor of International Political Economy at Copenhagen Business School and Director of the Centre for Business and Development Studies. His latest book Business, power and sustainability in a world of global value chains was published by Zed Books in 2019.
More about coronavirus pandemic:
Photo by Edwin Hooper on Unsplash
Posted on April 30, 2020 April 30, 2020 Categories About, Behaviour, CSR, Development, Economic, Featured, Issues, News, Social, SustainabilityTags #Capitalism, #coronavirus, #ecosystemservices, #SocialChange, #sustainability, #sustainableDevelopment, Economy, society
Normalizing Sustainability
By John Robinson, University of Toronto
We often hear the argument that, given the urgency of climate change and sustainability concerns, significant changes to individual behaviours and lifestyles are required. This has led to a wide array of public education and climate literacy campaigns aimed at changing such behaviours. In this blog, I will argue that some fairly strong research findings suggest that such campaigns are of limited value in influencing behaviour change, and moreover that focusing on changes in individual behaviours may be distracting us from much more significant possible steps.
There are many models of behaviour change in the literature, and of the relationships among values, attitudes, intentions and behaviours. It is probably fair to say that many of the most influential conceptualizations of behaviour change assume that most individual behaviours are the result of some form of conscious decision-making about desirable outcomes based in turn on some assessment of the consequences of different courses of action. [1]
On this view, people act in environmentally irresponsible ways because they lack the information they need to make better decisions. Such an 'information deficit' model leads in turn to what we might call a persuasive communication approach to stimulating behavior change, which assumes that providing more information as to those consequences, through information provision, educational programs, and science and climate change literacy campaigns, will lead to better and more environmentally responsible decision-making [2].
Unfortunately, the relevant research on the relationship between information and behaviour shows that persuasive communication approaches based on an information deficit model are not only ineffective in changing behaviours in the desired direction [3], but may in fact have perverse consequences.
Studies of the relationship between knowledge and attitudes have found that increased science literacy does not lead people to become more concerned about climate change, but on the contrary, actually increases polarization on this issue[4]. It seems that educating people on the science of climate change, or other sustainability problems, will not lead them to change their views on the problem itself, but instead may further reinforce their prior position.
In fact there is evidence from many fields of study, going back multiple decades, that information is only weakly connected to behaviour change. Studies of the effectiveness of energy efficiency programs [5], research in health promotion[6], or community-based social marketing[7], over many decades have all reached similar findings. So widespread are these findings that it can be said, in the words of my colleague David Maggs that:
The best evidence that information does not change behaviour is that we have decades of evidence in multiple fields that it does not do so, yet we continue to create and implement pubic education campaigns intended to change individual behaviour.
While this is bad enough, the problem gets worse.
It turns out that it is not clear that changing individual consumption behaviour is the right goal anyway. A number of studies have shown that there is no significant difference in either the carbon or ecological footprint of individual who cares deeply about environmental issues and behave accordingly, and those who do not care at all and do not behave in environmentally responsible ways [8]. The reason is that the ecological and carbon footprints of individuals are determined much more by their income than by the degree to which they choose more environmentally appropriate behaviours such as recycling or buying sustainable products.
So we seem to be in a depressing circumstance: information and literacy programs won't change behaviour; moreover, it wouldn't much matter, in term of overall environmental impact, if they did.
But rather than ignoring this evidence and intensifying our efforts to educate people into sustainability, or else throwing up our hands and retreating into apathy, perhaps a more fruitful approach is to reframe the original questions and ask whether a different approach altogether might be useful, on both these questions.
With regard to information provision, instead of a persuasive communication approach, it might be more useful to take what we might call an emergent dialogue approach [9]. Instead of assuming that we know the right answers and we have to get those answers into the heads of our audience, perhaps we need to listen as much as we speak, and to find two-way approaches to dialogue in order to co-create narratives with citizens that describe our circumstances in ways that are more faithful to the disparate views and values of different groups and that thereby offer the possibility of finding common ground on controversial societal problems.
The goal switches from a focus on changing behaviours to a focus on trying to create shared narratives, in order to better inform collective decision-making processes, and to foster social mobilization in support of policy change.
With regard to individual behaviour change, perhaps we need to rethink our ideas about change itself. As long as sustainability requires change, then it is fragile because human activities and practices will often snap back to prior unsustainable normals. Instead, we need to normalize sustainable practices, so that they become the default, not the required change [10]. In this connection, it might be useful to move from a focus on conscious individual behaviour and pay more attention to more collective processes of activity. There has been an upsurge of work on social practice theory approaches to human activity, which suggests that much of that activity is unconscious and collective, connected to social processes and relationships, and social and cultural norms [11]. Can a focus on collective social practices lead us towards processes of normalization of sustainability?
Following this line of thought, it is not about encouraging behaviour change instead of technological change, but of exploring how the overall socio-technical system itself, including powerful social norms, influences and is influenced by individual choices and actions, including political demands or support for changes in collective decisions. Perhaps we need to try to create 'virtuous cascades' 12 of positive normative change and identify leverage points that will allow us to foster and encourage more sustainable outcomes. Trying to convince people to change their lifestyles in the absence of change in the overall system will be ineffective and may even work against larger system change.
John Robinson is a Professor at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy and the School of the Environment at the University of Toronto. He is also an Adjunct Professor at Copenhagen Business School. His research focuses on the intersection of climate change mitigation, adaptation and sustainability; the use of visualization, modelling and citizen engagement to explore sustainable futures; sustainable buildings and urban design; the role of the university in contributing to sustainability; creating partnerships for sustainability with non-academic partners; the history and philosophy of sustainability; and, generally, the intersection of sustainability, social and technological change, ways of thinking, and community engagement processes.
[1] E.g. see Ajzen, I. (1991). The theory of planned behavior. Organizational Behaviour and Human Decision Processes, 50(2), 179-211
[2] Masud, M.M., Al-Amin, A.Q., Junsheng, H., Ahmed, F., Yahaya, S.R., Akhtar, R., & Banna, H. (2016). Climate change issue and theory of planned behaviour: relationship by empirical evidence. Journal of Cleaner Production, 113, 613-623. See the discussion in Kollmuss, A., & Agyeman, J. (2002). Mind the Gap: Why Do People Act Environmentally and What are the Barriers to Pro-Environmental Behaviour? Environmental Education Research, 8(3): 239-260.
[3] See, for example, Kollmuss & Agyeman, op. cit.; Sheeran, P., & Webb, T.L. (2016). The Intention-Behaviour Gap. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 10(9), 503-518; Ungar, S. (1994). Apples and oranges: probing the attitude-behaviour relationship for the environment. Canadian Review of Sociology, 31(3); Steg, L., Perlaviciute, G., & van der Werff, E. (2015). Understanding the human dimensions of a sustainable energy transition. Frontiers in Psychology, 6; Owens, S. 2000. `Engaging the public': information and deliberation in environmental policy, Environment and Planning A, 32, pages 1141-1148; Shove, E. 2010. Beyond the ABC: climate change policy and theories of social change, Environment and Planning A, 42, 1273-1285.
[4] Kahan et al, (2012) The polarizing impact of science literacy and numeracy on perceived climate change risks, Nature Climate Change, 2(10), pp.732-735; Drummond, C., & Fischhoff, B. (2017). Individuals with greater science literacy and education have more polarized beliefs on controversial science topics, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 114(36), 9587-9592.
[5] Stern, P. C. 1986. "Blind spots in policy analysis: What economics doesn't say about energy use." Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 5(2), 200-227; Hirst, E. (1990). Progress and Potential in Evaluating Energy Efficiency Programs. Evaluation Review, 14(2), 192–205; Robinson. J. (1991). "The proof of the pudding: Making energy efficiency work." Energy Policy, 19(7), 631-645; Abrahamse, W., Steg, L., Vlek, C., & Rothengatter, T. (2005). A review of intervention studies aimed at household energy conservation. Journal of environmental psychology, 25(3), 273-291.
[6] Green, L. W., & Kreuter, M. W. (1993). Health promotion planning: An educational and ecological approach. McGraw-Hill
[7] McKenzie-Mohr, D. (2011). Fostering sustainable behavior: An introduction to community-based social marketing. New society publishers.
[8] Csutora, M., 2012. One more awareness gap? The behaviour–impact gap problem. Journal of Consumer Policy, 35(1), pp.145-163; Tabi, A., (2013). Does pro-environmental behavior affect carbon emissions. Energy Policy, 63, pp.972-981; Moser, S., & Kleinhückelkotten, S. (2018). Good intents, but low impacts: diverging importance of motivational and socioeconomic determinants explaining pro-environmental behavior, energy use, and carbon footprint. Environment and Behavior, 50(6), 626-656.
[9] Robinson, J. (2004) "Squaring the Circle: Some thoughts on the idea of sustainable development", Ecological Economics, 48(4): 369-384; Antle, A. N., & Robinson, J. (2011). Procedural Rhetoric Meets Emergent Dialogue: Interdisciplinary perspectives on persuasion and behavior change in serious games for sustainability; Bendor, R., Lyons, S. H., & Robinson, J. (2012). What's there not to 'like'? sustainability deliberations on facebook. JeDEM-eJournal of eDemocracy and Open Government, 4(1), 67-88; Maggs, D. and Robinson, J. (2016) "Recalibrating the Anthropocene: Sustainability in an Imaginary World", Environmental Philosophy, 13(2), 175-194; Robinson, J. and Cole, R. (2015) Theoretical underpinnings of regenerative sustainability, Building Research & Information, 43(2), 133-143; Westerhoff, L. and Robinson, J. (2013) "'Practicing' narratives: exploring the meaning and materiality of climate change", Proceedings of Transformation in a Changing Climate, June 19-21, 2013.
[10] John Robinson, "Normalizing Sustainability: from behavior change to metamorphosis", Keynote Presentation at IST2019: Accelerating sustainability transitions: Building visions, unlocking pathways, navigating conflicts, Ottawa, Jun 25 2019
[11] Gram-Hanssen, K. & Georg S. 2017. Energy performance gaps: promises, people, practices, Building Research and Information 46(1), 1-9; Strengers, Y., & Maller, C. (Eds.). (2014). Social practices, intervention and sustainability: Beyond behaviour change. Routledge; Shove, E., Pantzar, M., & Watson, M. (2012). The Dynamics of Social Practice. London, UK: SAGE Publications; Hargreaves, T. (2011). Practice-ing behaviour change: Applying social practice theory to pro-environmental behaviour change. Journal of consumer culture, 11(1), 79-99; Reckwitz, A. (2002). Toward a theory of social practices: A development in culturalist theorizing. European journal of social theory, 5(2), 243-263.
[12] Homer-Dixon, T. Coronavirus will change the world. It might also lead to a better future. The Globe and Mail, Mar 5, 2020 https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-the-coronavirus-is-a-collective-problem-that-requires-global/
Photo by Francesco Gallarotti on Unsplash
Posted on March 18, 2020 March 19, 2020 Categories About, Behaviour, Communication, Concepts, Education, Environment, Featured, News, Policy, Regulation, Research, Social, SustainabilityTags #SocialChange, #sustainability, behavioural change, society
We can't better the world at once. So let's do it together!
By Julia Köhler
Sustainability – a concept that accompanies us every day: whether it is sustainable consumption, sustainable nutrition, sustainable traveling or sustainable management. What does sustainability actually mean and does it only serve as a means to an end?
Meet oikos Copenhagen
A big topic that concerns a student organization. Founded in 1987 in St. Gallen, oikos has ever since grown into an international student initiative with 50 local "chapters", as we call it, on almost every continent in the world. With the underlying idea of integrating sustainability as one of the core topics in economics and business, this initiative has now been running for more than 30 years.
With its 48 active members, oikos Copenhagen is one of the largest chapters and contributes to the sustainability discussion at the Copenhagen Business School since 2012. By bringing students of different backgrounds together, the six projects are looking at the topic from various perspectives and are aiming at more sustainability in business and management education.
Image by oikos Copenhagen
The triple bottom line is at the center of our values. Future leaders should be empowered to take change into their own hands. Integrity is a central component of organizational DNA: members stand behind the core values and actively develop them further. For this, our members are in a constant dialogue with each other and deal critically with the topic.
We see ourselves as representatives of the sustainability movement and each fulfills the role of a moderator in discussions with social environments.
That's the way it should be. On the way there, oikos regularly encounters hurdles. Not only in management issues but especially on a personal, cultural and financial level. Our core values reflect a way of thinking that is becoming more and more recognized but is still not adequately represented and acknowledged by our educational system. Is it even possible to combine sustainability and business at all or is a system change required first?
What if you can make a change?
I started my time at oikos in 2018 as the Project Manager of oikos Impact, one of the six projects of the Copenhagen chapter. The project objective is to improve sustainability on the CBS campus.
Our team was negatively surprised that a university in one of the sustainable Nordic countries does not recycle.
In May 2019, we launched a pilot project with two recycling stations on campus. Recently, the campus management decided to launch recycling stations inspired by oikos Copenhagen at every canteen.
A very central project of our organization – Curricular Transformation – deals with the integration of sustainability topics in the curricula of all degree programs. oikos Copenhagen does not intend to create separate study programs exclusively on the subject of sustainability.
We see sustainability as a relevant topic just like accounting, taxation, innovation, strategy and entrepreneurship.
Our team is in touch with the Dean of Education and would appreciate supporting departments, course coordinators and professors in the shift to a greener curriculum.
oikos Career reflects the typical cycle of a student preparing for a career in the sustainability scene. Initially, students are accompanied by the content design of the curriculum vitae. Afterwards, networking event participants have the opportunity to meet potentially attractive employers. With the Career Fair, we optimally made it easier for some students to enter sustainable businesses.
Social Pioneers offers companies, mostly start-ups but also established smaller companies, a platform to teach students that it is possible to profitably combine entrepreneurship and sustainability. Students gain insights into the day-to-day work of companies, find out which obstacles founders have encountered on their way and can clean up the assumption that one cannot be profitable in running a responsible business.
As one of our most established projects, the annual GreenWeek marks a week in which the CBS campus and teaching activities are focused exclusively on sustainability. Here we invite guest speakers, representatives of sustainable companies, experts, researchers, and generally interested people to discuss the topic together and to seek mutual exchange. In addition to lectures, keynotes, and panel discussions, we offer workshops on the topic. This year's GreenWeek will take place from the 10th to the 12th of March 2020.
The oikos Case Competition is a project that connects students with different backgrounds to an interdisciplinary collaboration. Students from across the Copenhagen area: from the Danish Technical University (DTU), Copenhagen University (KU) and the Copenhagen Business School (CBS) work together with companies and/or public institutions on sustainability issues. Our past cooperation partners include Accenture, the city of Copenhagen and IBM.
Let's make a change, altogether…but how?
Since June 2019, I am sitting on the board of oikos Copenhagen with five other members and as the president and head of project management, I am leading the organization.
When requesting more support from decision-makers I often get asked about the competitive advantage the university could expect from oikos' work. oikos Copenhagen stands for values that are hard to 'sell' as a business case.
The general opinion about sustainability is an important cultural barrier for oikos Copenhagen, as it is still considered an annoying side issue for 'hippie' students. The challenge is to build and maintain an exchange of ideas and communication about the relevance of the topic. I believe that business schools are an extreme example of this.
Meanwhile, several other organizations are being founded around the topic of sustainability and it is becoming increasingly difficult to keep track of the various initiatives. Questions like: 'Who works on which topic?', 'How can we collaborate on solving the problem most efficiently?' and 'How do we communicate that we are working on something?' pop up.
Another problem is the lacking overlap with other disciplines outside economics. Currently, our members are mainly CBS students. Although we offer room for students from other universities to be oikos members and to participate in the oikos Case Competition, this is not enough to recruit active members from other universities.
In my opinion, this interdisciplinarity is extremely relevant in all sustainability issues. In addition, it would help us to break away from the typical business thinking so present at CBS and to look at the challenge from several perspectives.
To achieve an effective transition towards a greener Copenhagen Business School, including a sustainable campus and direct as well as indirect education in sustainability for every CBS student, we want to be the bridge to bring all actors together to work on a solution.
For more information about oikos Copenhagen, visit our website at www.oikos-copenhagen.org
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/oikosCopenhagen/
Instagram https://www.instagram.com/oikoscopenhagen/
LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/oikos-copenhagen.
You are also very welcome to contact me personally via e-mail: president@copenhagen.oikos-international.org.
Julia Köhler is the President of oikos Copenhagen and a student in the management of innovation and business development at Copenhagen Business School.
Posted on January 16, 2020 January 16, 2020 Categories About, Behaviour, CBS, Citizenship, Communication, Environment, Featured, Initiative, Innovation, News, Partnerships, Social, Stakeholders, SustainabilityTags #CollectiveImpact, #responsibleleadership, #SocialChange, #studentengagement, #sustainability, CBS
Is Social Media Redefining the Pursuit of Social Change?
Social media has become a battleground where NGOs with global perspectives, corporations and new digital social movements all fight to shape public opinion in the pursuit of social change
Though often criticized for the low quality of online deliberation, social media has become one of the primary avenues for diffusion of information, and increasingly an embedded part of our infrastructure
This calls for more research on how social media is changing various aspects of our lives and how we, through collaborative efforts, may foster change
Approximate Reading Time: 2-3 min.
Social Media for Social Change?
The impact of social media on the way we live our lives is undeniable. Recent statistics suggests that there are more than three billion active social media users. This makes social networking sites like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter some of the most influential contexts regarding diffusion of information and they are, to a certain extent and as many of us would admit, emotionally contagious. This has created a digitalized world where social media has 'given a voice to the people', as civil society can use social media to express concerns. However, the debate about whether expressing concerns through social media leads to any substantial change is only just at the beginning.
What is your take on this? Is social media cultivating global collaboration and facilitating a pursuit for a better world, or instead disrupting the debate by cultivating polarization and fragmentation? – And are these two arguments necessarily mutually exclusive? Join me as we explore these two sides a bit further to understand how social media might be the key to pursuing social change.
The two sides of the debate
On the one side of the debate, we have the argument that social media facilitates constructive, powerful and impactful digitally networked action to pursue social change, as for example seen with the Arab Spring and recently the #Metoo movement. This follows the argument that these online platforms are evolving from a tool for social interaction towards becoming an embedded part of our infrastructure and some of the primary contexts for collaborative efforts.
On the other side, we have the argument that simply enabling collaborative efforts is not enough to promote social change, as social media is argued to be "ripping apart the social fabric of how society works" (former Facebook executive Chamath Palihapitiya. The challenge is that social media is heavily criticized for disrupting the pursuit for social change by cultivating echo-chambers, destructive polarization, fake-news and filter bubbles which hinder constructive online deliberation. This critique is further substantiated by critics arguing that social media cultivates non-committal activism (often referred to as slacktivism), which can thwart efforts to achieve social change, as 'likes' or 'shares' still can't be eaten, and sharing or liking an image of a starving child doesn't solve any issues by itself.
Why you shouldn't disregard social media's potential
The keywords here are "by itself", because while the isolated ability for social media to cultivate social change is questioned, social media's ability to connect millions of disparate actors and facilitate engagement in collaborative efforts cannot be denied. Social media has the innate ability to link individual contributions and facilitate large-scale collaboration that leads to a better outcome than what each individual could have achieved on his or her own as for example illustrated by how Change.org and SumOfUs.org use social media to fight social injustice and socially irresponsible corporations. Fostering polarization might very well be destructive, but it can also be constructive and facilitate social change by inspiring stronger commitment within specific groups, which might help 'fuel' collaborative efforts towards more substantial change.
These two sides are thus not necessarily mutually exclusive, as the coherent large-scale collaboration potentially benefit from emerging through more polarized communities that can give a 'voice' to otherwise squelched and 'minor' opinions, as seen with the #BlackLivesMatter-movement and the #Metoo-movement. The key to using social media in the pursuit for social change is therefore to harness the ability for social media to link disparate like-minded actors and facilitate coherent large-scale collaboration, as illustrated by the Occupy Wall Street-movement as well as the Tunisian uprising that sparked the Arab Spring. The ability to connect globally disparate actors based on perceived shared values and some form of collective mind-set is thus one of the primary ways that social media is changing the pursuit for social change.
Social media has become a battleground
These examples illuminate that social media has become a battleground where NGOs with global perspectives, corporations and new digital social movements all fight to shape public opinion on the pursuit for social change. The important thing to note is that we are seeing the beginning of change. Implications of business practices are becoming a matter of civic concern, as evidenced by how consumers use social media to express their concerns and continuously attempt to influence corporate behavior in the pursuit for a better world. Social media is thus at the core of pursuing social change, as consumers can circumvent the traditional 'gate-keeping' function of traditional media and directly interact with organizations, which to a certain extent have empowered the digitalized civil society.
The critique of social media should however not be disregarded. Echo-chambers can be highly destructive, and social networking sites can create personalized 'bubbles' where your exposure to information is determined by the platform, as illustrated by the recent Facebook-data leak suggesting that data was harvested and exploited in an attempt to reshape political deliberation.
However, using the strengths of social media to unite in numbers has undoubtedly created new opportunities for us as consumers to affect public opinion towards an increased emphasis on social responsibility and social change. The next question is then how these collaborative efforts lead to substantial change, potentially by influencing the behavior of organizations, which is something I will continue to investigate in my research going forwards.
Daniel Lundgaard is a PhD fellow at the CBS Governing Responsible Business Research Environment. His research is mainly focused on the impact of the digital transformation, in particular, how social media has 'given a voice to the people' as a way to challenge norms and dominating discourses, and thereby changed our world and influenced the relationship between business and society.
Pic by Kym Ellis via Unsplash, edited by BOS.
Posted on March 26, 2018 March 26, 2018 Categories Accountability, Citizenship, Communication, Concepts, Featured, Issues, Models, News, Social, Stakeholders, TechnologyTags #SocialActivism, #SocialChange, #SocialMedia


text:
Q: Default Xcode 4.5 font What is the default font and font size in Xcode 4.5? I ask because Im trying to configure Eclipse to use the same syntax colouring and editor font as Xcode.
Edit 03.08.2013
For future reference: I used Eclipse Colour Themes to automatically set the syntax colouring properties in Eclipse, rather than manually configuring individual colours, which is a tediously annoying  (if not painful) process to do within Eclipse.

A: The default one is Menlo Regular - 11.0

A: I just wanted to point out that the default one now in Xcode 8.2.1 is SF Mono Regular - 11.0. Maybe someone finds it helpful.

A: Font : Menlo Regular - 11.0
syntax colouring: See image

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
Q: jsoup: selecting table without specific ID that contains certain text string (select two conditions) I'm trying to extract the quotes from the following forum:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1772338
All worked with:
Elements postquote = doc.select("table[cellpadding=6][cellspacing=0]");

BUT: The problem in this particular thread is, that the editor used the quoting-format to format his text and not to quote another user.
My approach was to search aditionally for "Originally Posted by"
Elements postquote = doc.select("table[cellpadding=6][cellspacing=0], table:contains(Originally Posted by)");

*

*How can I combine two ore more select conditions? (Jsoup syntax states "," but that does not work)

*What's wrong? How could I extract the REAL Posts more easy?

A: If you want to find table[cellpadding=6][cellspacing=0] that also contains Originally Posted by then just use
doc.select("table[cellpadding=6][cellspacing=0]:contains(Originally Posted by)").

Also , represents OR so it will try to find somethingLikeThis OR somethingLikeThat so it will generate additional results rather than narrowing them.


text:
The SCS instrument is a branch beam line and located at the undulator source SASE3 which produces intense X-ray pulses at soft X-ray energies (250 eV - 3000 eV). The SCS beamline can be operated in pink and monochromatic beam mode. The mirror benders of the Kirkpatrick-Baez refocusing optics will deliver the beam to two interaction points separated by 2 meters. This allows not only a small beam focus of 1-2 micrometers for high peak intensities in coherent diffraction imaging experiments but also a variable beam diameter of up to 500 microns. The larger beam diameter optimizes for time-resolved spectroscopy studies by making the best use of the high-average photon flux while avoiding sample damage without further beam attenuation.
The SCS instrumentation encompasses the FFT experiment station (forward-scattering and transmission geometries) and the XRD experiment station (back- scattering and reflection geometries). The SCS instrument is equipped with 2D array detectors, the 1MPix DSSC detector (4.5 MHz rep rate) and the 2Mpix FastCCD detector (10Hz), for coherent x-ray diffraction experiments. A high-resolution Resonant Inelastic X-ray Scattering (RIXS) spectrometer, contributed by the Heisenberg-RIXS user consortium, complements the spectroscopy tools at this instrument for which a chemistry chamber station for liquid jets will be available in addition to the XRD experiment station.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Chris Sale's Head Would've Exploded! Ugliest Uni's Ever!
Chris Sale's Head Would've Exploded! Ugliest Uni's Ever!
First of all, a confession. Yes, when it comes to sports clothing, I'm a geek. I have probably a dozen sports jerseys, jackets, etc. The one in the picture is the most topical, but it's not the ugliest. The Fresno Grizzlies' are.
First things first. Yes, that is the home version of the throwback uniform that Christopher "Sizzorhands" Sale chose to cut up during his tantrum last Saturday night. I don't know how much of a throwback mine is. I probably bought it a few years after it was the current one.
Remember, you can't unsee these.
Just down I-69 in Ft. Wayne, they'll be wearing these.
Almost makes you want to put on a Coldplay song.
If you're a Tiger fan, or a Cubs fan, appreciate the "Olde English D" or the pinstripes. It's saving your eyesight.


text:
Keystone takes 6-1 loss to New York in Mid-Atlantic Championship
CRANSTON, RI — The Keystone 8-10 All-Stars ended up making the Mid-Atlantic Championship in the 9/10 Eastern Regional Invitational, but unfortunately for Keystone, they suffered a 6-1 defeat to New York.
In the top of the first, it was looking good for Keystone after they put a run on the board right away. Lead-off batter Darius Shade was able to get on first base after a New York error. After a fielder's ground out by Hunter Donley, Shade would get to second base. He would then score on a Watt Probst base hit. Keystone would take a 1-0 lead into the bottom of the inning — this would be their only score of the game.
In the bottom half of the first, New York would respond right away with a run of their own to tie the game up at 1-1.
The bottom of the third was even better for New York, scoring three more runs to put their lead over Keystone at 4-1. In the bottom of the fifth, they would put up two more runs for a 6-1 lead and would eventually get the victory at that score.
New York was only able to get three hits, but it was Keystone's five total errors that would cause their defeat.
Both Austin Frank and Hunter Donley had Keystone's only two hits of the game.
Pitching for Keystone was Shade with 2.2 innings and Walker with 2.1 innings. Two strikeouts, three hits and three walks was their statline.
The Keystone 8-10 All-Stars finished their 2018 tournament season with an 11-3 overall record — all three losses didn't come until the 9/10 Eastern Regional Invitational, competing against all state champions.
Softball: Clinton Juniors open States with 8-1 win over Indiana
FROM STAFF REPORTS BERWICK- The Clinton County (Junior) All Stars opened the State Tournament with a 8-1 win ...
Penn State Athletics Again Ranked Among Nation's Top 10 Programs
JS Bulldogs to host football camp
FROM STAFF REPORTS The Jersey Shore football program will host its 2019 Football Skills Camp July 16 and July ...
Keystone Intermediates get win, advance to PA title game
FROM STAFF REPORTS BEECH CREEK- The Keystone Intermediate squad cruised to a 5-4 win over the West Side All ...
THURSDAY-JULY 11 SOFTBALL CLINTON COUNTY (Juniors): at State Championship ...
Clinton County (8-10) wins big versus Minersville, 23-2
Copyright © The Express | http://www.lockhaven.com | 9-11 W. Main Street, Lock Haven, PA 17745 | 570-748-6791 | Ogden Newspapers | The Nutting Company


text:
Rapunzel (Phyteuma) is een geslacht uit de klokjesfamilie (Campanulaceae). Het geslacht kent circa veertig soorten. Ze komen van nature voor in Europa en West-Azië.

Het zijn 5-90 cm hoge, vaste planten. De bladeren zijn afwisselend geplaatst. Op een enkele plant variëren de bladeren in grootte en vorm, de onderste bladeren zijn groter en breder dan de bovenste, die lang en smal zijn. De bladrand is getand.

De bloemen staan in dichte pluimen. Elke bloem heeft een smalle, diep vijflobbige bloemkroon van 1-2 cm of langer.
De meeste planten hebben paarse bloemen, maar lichtblauwe, zwarte, roze en witte komen ook voor.

De bloemformule is: K(5) [C(5) A5] (3).

De vrucht is een doosvrucht met veel kleine zaadjes.

Soorten
In de Benelux komen in het wild voor:
Phyteuma spicatum met twee ondersoorten:
Zwartblauwe rapunzel (Phyteuma spicatum subsp. nigrum)
Witte rapunzel (Phyteuma spicatum subsp. spicatum)

Hiernaast worden wel onderscheiden:
Phyteuma balbisii
Phyteuma betonicifolium
Phyteuma charmelii
Phyteuma comosum
Phyteuma confusum
Phyteuma globulariifolium
Phyteuma hemisphaericum
Phyteuma humile
Phyteuma michelii
Phyteuma orbiculare
Phyteuma ovatum
Phyteuma pauciflorum
Phyteuma pedemontanum
Phyteuma scheuchzeri
Phyteuma sieberi
Phyteuma speculum
Phyteuma tenerum
Phyteuma tetramerum
Phyteuma vagneri
Phyteuma zahlbruckneri

De naam 'Rapunzel' in het Duitse sprookje verwijst naar de Duitse naam voor (gewone) veldsla (Valerianella locusta).

rapunzel

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


text:
Jennifer Hudson Net Worth 2019
July 18, 2013	0	By Net Worth
One of the world's most dynamic superstars, whose powerful voice drove her rise to fame. Jennifer Hudson first made her mark as an American Idol. Then turned a stunning defeat into Oscar glory. This is what great stories are about when the Underdog gets a chance to win. Her fairytale reached it's peaked when she fell in love. But just when she had it all she lost everything. Her mother and brother were found in her home dead.
Rocked through grief she found strength through the healing power of music. But her greatest comfort came from a precious gift of her own. Being a mother she says reminds her of her own mom. She believes she has seen the highest of the highest and the lowest of the lows.
source:instagram.com
The Grammy and Oscar winning superstar enjoys showing off her sleek new look and showing off the biggest gift in her life her little son David. Jennifer is still getting adjusted to being a mom. Balancing the career and staying at home to raise her son. She strives to give him the same love and upbringing her mother gave her and her siblings.
Jennifer Hudson was born September 12,1981 in the south side of Chicago. She was the youngest of three children. She, her brother and mother were raised by their single mother Darnell. She used to sing to Jennifer on her lap the Temptations. But the real singer in the family was Jennifer's grandmother who sang in the church choir. She remembers hearing her sing in the kitchen every morning in her slippers. As a seven year old Hudson joined her grandmother in the choir. But when she was a teenager they asked her to sing a solo for the first time. That was the last time she feared singing in front of a crowd. After her performance the entire church was standing on their feet.
By the time she enrolled in Dunbar High School she would sing everywhere and anywhere. Her childhood friend Walter Williams helped her make a name for herself around town. He fell in love with her voice and felt so passionate about her. He wanted every one to hear what he heard. At one point he became her manager. He would fund her outfits and hair and set her up with different events in talent shows, weddings and anywhere to get exposure. They would go to gay bars and sing in Drag shows. She received tons of tips because of her raw talent.
At 21 her raw talent landed her her highest paying gig yet. She landed a job singing on the Disney Cruise ship. In 2004 she auditioned for American Idol in Atlanta, GA where they were holding an open casting call. Randy Jackson remembers the audition like it was yesterday. His thing about her the first time he saw her was that she had natural raw god given talent. Randy gave her a yes and the other three judges including Simon sent her to Hollywood. Her mother was waiting outside the door of her auditioned and greeted her with a big scream. It was just the beginning of a budding music career.
She was an unknown girl from the south side of Chicago and now faced the biggest challenge of her life thus far competing on the most watched television show in history. Each week the Idol contestants gave it all they had knowing the nationwide vote could send someone home. All of them felt as though they could win but every contestant knew in their hearts with Jennifer they were looking at a star. As Jennifer survived each round her family cheered from the front row. They wanted her to know she had support from home. She was becoming a local hometown Hero. She was on the front of local newspapers and the entire city all knew her name. Jennifer also became a fan favorite across America. Audiences loved her singing and the judges loved her sass. She and Simon had this back and forth going on about her outfits. He critiqued her as she responded with clever wit and they laughed. Their dynamic became a popular part of watching that season.
Unbelievably Jennifer was voted off the show. her dream of becoming the next American Idol had ended. Fantasia won the season. It was due to a super storm that had rushed through Chicago knocking down power lines making it impossible for her Hometown fans to vote for their hero. But despite her loss at 22 she had made a name for herself on the biggest reality series. At 22 she was on her way to being a star on the biggest only to see her dream derail. When she was eliminated she heard left and right she was going to get a record deal and don't worry about it. After the series ended she continued on the American Idol tour and shortly after she was back to singing at small local gigs. It was almost as if nothing had happened.
source:npr.org
She figured if nothing happened she would take her money and go int real-estate. After years of paying her dues in 2005 Hudson's appearance on American Idol finally paid off. She was called to audition for the part of Effie White along with 700 other women. She imagined it was stiff competition. After multiple call backs over a grueling eight month stretch Jennifer finally received word from Casting director Bill Condin she had gotten the part. Like every milestone in Jennifer's life this was a victory not just for her but the entire Hudson family. She couldn't decide who to call first. She called her mom and she dropped the phone and went running through the home yelling to the entire family, it was an overwhelming experience. She was now in a major blockbuster with Jamie Foxx, Eddie Murphy and Beyonce.
During filming she had her first kiss with Jamie Foxx. He knew nothing about her except that she had appeared on American Idol. She was a natural on camera. And her crowning moment came when she performed the film's most pivotal song "And I Am Telling You." She describes it as extremely emotional. Anything she felt she just put it into that moment. If there was any questions about if she could handle that song it was gone within the first line. Jamie recalls having tears in his eyes.
source:imdb.com
Released in December 2006, Dream Girls was a huge hit. Fans and critics alike were blown away by her performance. Jennifer took home over 30 awards for her role including the prestigious Golden Globe. And only the Oscars remained. Nominated for Best Supporting Actress. Jennifer's wild ride met a dizzying climax in February 2007. While attending the ceremony when her category was announced the presenters called her name and she was in shock. Just two years after being voted off American Idol Hudson was a Academy Award Winning actress.
CategoryMusic Singer
TagsJennifer Hudson Jennifer Hudson Net Worth Jennifer Hudson Net Worth 2019
Rachel Jeantel
Richard Rawlings


Well, I've been sunning myself in an English seaside town for a week, so that might explain a few things. And yes, the sun did shine. Wonders will never cease.
You'd think the long break from blogging has produced a backlog of news – well if you call signing Mart Poom on loan a backlog of news then yes, I suppose it has.
The arrival of a long-forgotten Estonian, coupled with the exits of two more Englishmen – Hoyte and Bentley – brought a rather sedate end to the transfer window for us, and whilst we should see more of the former, the latter appears to have burned his bridges somewhat with a petulant outburst. A decent talent, and one I'd like to have seen given more of a chance, but he's got to prove he's worthy of his own hype, and he hasn't done that yet. We shall see.
We're an English-lite club these days (I do lament this, despite accepting the whole if-you're-good-enough-you'll-play thing), but one still battling to make his name is Ryan Smith, back from a long injury lay-off. Good luck to him say I. Trouble is, he's a left-footed winger – so has to make it past the likes of Pires, Reyes and Hleb first. See how hard it is?
I think it's well known now that, by and large, Wenger does not buy English players (off the top of my head I can think of only Pennant, Campbell, Upson, Jeffers and Wright in almost ten years, though there must certainly be one or two more), so it's even more crucial that some come through the ranks at Highbury. Unfortunately, that's not really happening either – just Cole has made himself a permanent fixture in Wenger's time. Either our system is failing, or English boys just don't have the right mental attitude. It could be a mixture of them both. It might be neither.
I totally accept that football is an international game these days, and that players are sourced from over the globe, and I certainly wouldn't want an English player to play if he wasn't up to it. Just look at our team for proof: They love wearing the shirt (mostly) and we love 'em for it. That's the way it should be.
Don't get me wrong, Wenger's made few mistakes with the English lads he's let go, and the current crop of youngsters (Clichy, Senderos, van Persie, Fabregas, Flamini et al) are absolutely superb talents, a joy to behold, but am I alone in wishing that we had a few more English players to compete with them for places?


text:
Q: How to do unions from different tables in QueryDSL my question is simple how can I select from different tables using SQL QueryDSL
for example
SELECT cat.name as name, cat.voice as voice , cat.purr FROM cat UNION
SELECT dog.name as name, dog.voice as voice , NULL as voice FROM dog;

A: Something like this should work
QCat cat = QCat.cat;
QDog dog = QDog.dog;

StringPath name = Expressions.stringPath("name");
StringPath voice = Expressions.stringPath("voice");
StringPath purr = Expressions.stringPath("purr");

SQLQueryFactory queryFactory = new SQLQueryFactory(MySQLTemplates.DEFAULT, null);
SQLQuery<Tuple> cats =
    SQLExpressions.select(cat.nome.as(name), cat.voice.as(voice), cat.purr.as(purr)).from(cat);
SQLQuery<Tuple> dogs =
    SQLExpressions.select(
            dog.nome.as(name),
            dog.voice.as(voice),
            Expressions.as(Expressions.nullExpression(), purr))
        .from(dog);
queryFactory.select(name, voice, purr).from(SQLExpressions.union(cats, dogs)).fetch();


text:
Эбру́ Озка́н (; род. 18 ноября  1978 года, Анкара, Турция) — турецкая актриса театра и кино, фотомодель.

Биография
Родилась 18 ноября 1978 года в Анкаре в семье . Окончила университет языков, истории и географии. Первые шаги в актёрскую карьеру Эбру начала с театра и модельного бизнеса. В Турции Эбру стала известной сыграв роль Мелисы в фильме «Дом кошмара». С 2009 по 2011 год Эбру играла в сериале «Усадьба госпожи». Позже она сыграла Дефне в сериале «Дочки-матери». А в 2012 году сыграла Элу в сериале «Роль моей жизни» и Суну в сериале «Записки». В 2015 году Эбру сыграла Лейлу в фильме «Воспоминания ветра» совместно с Хатидже Тубой Бюйюкюстюн.
С 2014 по 2017 год Эбру играла Диляру Гюрпынар (Терзиоглу, Эргюван) в сериале «Вдребезги». Этот сериал стал самым успешным проектом Эбру и принёс ей большую славу.
В 2018 году имела одну из главных ролей в сериале Хиляль Сарал «Соколиный Холм». Но проект был досрочно завершён по причине неоправданных рейтинговых и внезапного решения телеканала. В 2023 году в прокат вышел сериал «Шахмаран», в котором актриса сыграла одну из главных ролей.

Личная жизнь
В 2008 году состояла в отношения с Мертом Фырат.
С 2009 по весну 2014 год была в долгих отношениях с Джанером Джиндоруком.
Так же состояла в отношениях с Неждатом Ислер.
С конца 2014 / начала 2015 года в отношениях с Эртаном Сабан. 3 июня 2016 года влюблённые сыграли свадьбу. 12 января 2018 года у них родилась девочка, которую назвали Бириджик.

Фильмография

Театр
 Pandaların Hikayesi (2012)
 Romeo ve Juliet (2008)
 Arzu Tramvayı (2008)
 Atları Da Vururlar (2005)


A final reminder that this year the DEW, kindly sponsored by Dublin's Chamber of Commerce, will be held at the CastleTroy Park Hotel in Limerick from 18-20 of October. The final programme is here.
All bookings and reservations for the conference should be directed here.
The 36th DEW Annual conference will see more than 30 presenters, with Ministers Michael Noonan and Pat Rabbitte giving plenary talks, along with policy makers, academics, and members of the business community, it's going to be a lively debate. See you there.
Here is the link to the paper at DEW as promised.
@Gregory Connor,thanks Gregory looking forward to reading it.All the best with the paper and the conference.
Any sign of Cormac Lucey's presso. Is it to avoid offending DOCM.
The Eurozone falls far short of the conditions for an Optimal Currency Area. A key symptom of this is that an interest rate appropriate to the Eurozone as a whole is very significantly inappropriate for large regions of the zone. For the first decade of EZ membership this resulted in an interest rate much too low for Ireland's circumstances. This caused Ireland's property and debt bubbles as well as very significant real effective exchange rate appreciation.
It addresses symptoms and not causes. The consequences of an inappropriate interest rate regime – insolvent banks, rampant government spending deficits, grotesque unemployment rates – are the objects of policy-makers. The monetary policy cause of the crisis and real effective exchange rate imbalances are not. Growing aggregate debt levels across the Eurozone periphery (including Ireland) demonstrate that Plan A is not working.
The appropriate solution for Ireland is that recommended by the IMF on countless occasions where previous credit bubbles have led to over-indebtedness and exchange rate imbalances: debt restructuring, domestic reform and currency devaluation. This requires Eurozone exit. Ireland could then grow again quickly with deleveraged balance sheets and a more competitive exchange rate, like several emerging markets after defaults and devaluations in the late 1990s.
The mechanics of Eurozone exit and debt restructuring are clear in principle, even if difficult in practice. They would involve special sittings of the Oireachtas, bank holidays, capital controls, currency stamping and printing, expedited bankruptcy proceedings and negotiations with Ireland's creditors. They would also render Ireland's banks insolvent once again.
There will be some clear winners and some clear losers resulting from any decision to opt for Plan B. There is also the danger that an Irish EZ exit coupled with other EZ exits could unleash financial contagion and cause collateral damage on a global scale.
Since 1916 the Irish political establishment has been clear about one policy direction, whatever the political colour of the day: we want less Britain and more Europe. Any EZ exit decision would fundamentally reverse this stance. It would also require politicians to do something for which they are not renowned: make a decision with high and definite upfront costs and hard-to-quantify medium term benefits. But the alternative, in the words of Bush White House economic advisor Pippa Malmgren, is a "twenty year economic slump".
The Lucey Plan B is worthy of serious debate. However, it will be ignored by the commentariat because it raises uncomfortable questions. Meantime, at a Citibank function, Buiter quoted as saying Europe owes Ireland 30-60bn for taking one for team. It seems after 90 years of chequered Independance we have swapped British hegemony for a more insidious German hegemony. Give me the Brits every time.
As comprehensive a statement as one could wish for of what to do when government finances escape control is contained in this Swedish report.
The political debate in Ireland has not yet reached even the point of recognition that a radical re-think of the present ad hoc approach is required.
The recourse to drastic embargo measures is simply a reflection of previous failures to reform and modernise administrative practices. The present situation puts the government in the position of a coachman having lost the reins – of tight budgetary practices – of a runaway team. The only hope of salvation is to throw everything at the problem of recovering the reins. The runaway team may then be slowed sufficiently to allow more considered action.
Congratulations to Cormac Lucey on a very courageous presentation.
One of the best parts of the presentation was the look of astonishment on the face of Peter Breuer (IMF), at the end of the presentation, when the audience reception was much more than that of polite applause.
Peter Breuer's IMF solution of fix the banks, fix the banks again and fix the banks again and again is getting more empty by the day.
It emptiness was further underlined by Alan Aherne opining that the State might 'lob' a further 25 billion of part thereof into the banks, if the new stress tests showed up more losses (labelled 'a need for recapitalization' in the jargon of the day).
Its looks as if 'we' (official Ireland) might prepared to bankrupt the State a second time to 'fix' the banks. ie. Pay the further and continuing losses of investors, both private and official.
On whose behalf is the State to be bankrupted a second time?
The next 25bn probably will not be coming from the Treasury. It will be coming from the liability side of the balance sheet. Lucey's plan is intriguing and should be debated but it won't be cos the PTB all love going to France on holidays.
It's important that a big issue like this is addressed when only a fool would argue that the EMU is immutable.
There are a lot of angles to the issue and Cormac covers some of them.
The presentation suggests that the insiders who do well from the system would only contemplate a return to the punt in a dire situation.
Imagine the silk hierarchs in the Law Library voting for a democratic or fairer system!
People got used of a lifestyle during the bubble that was built on leprechauns' gold and it has been sustained since the crash by loans akin to ones available in Asian casinos frequented by Chinese where the losing punter is always helped real-time by the sharks that are let in for that purpose.
The Irish Times today has a piece on teachers' pay. What is interesting about for example Finland and New Zealand is that in purchasing power parity terms teachers are paid significantly below Irish teachers and their pay corresponds with the average of pay of 3rd level workers in their countries, but in Ireland teachers are at 80% of the Irish average.
The problem with the exit scenario is not the potential losers but the time it could take the potential winners to realise that they are not losers.
Recent big examples of default are not very useful as guides as a remarkable trend came to an end about a decade ago – falling real commodity prices through most of the 20th century.
The blanks that need to be filled in are how the indigenous manufacturing sector that ticked along in pre-euro times, net of increased priced imported inputs, would be able to boost exports.
On the internationally tradable services side, the indigenous sector is not material and in agriculture a half billion worth of fruit and vegetables are imported annually.
In recent years Iceland could at least feed itself and it was seen as the model by a lot of people. However, it has a lot of problems and a recent report suggested that current account surpluses would not cover non-krona private sector debt in coming years.
It would surely be naive to expect positive responses from the IMF and ECB to a unilateral default.
What are the implications for the FDI sector?
Unless Barryroe (previously a townland between Bandon and Kinsale) pays big oil dividends, its's unlikely that Ireland could forge a path to prosperity by asserting independence and absent some credible engine for sustainable jobs, we would end up closer to Belgrade than Berlin.
It's also a reality that the present path may see us at the same destination.
It should always have been the liability side of the balance sheet that bore the losses but the mood music seems to be more of the same.
Ireland was out-thought and out-muscled muscled by countries that were far better at protecting their national interests than Ireland. These countries saw their first priority at the protection of their national interest; Ireland's first priority was 'saving the euro'…which saved the jobs and salaries of the elite.
There have been several softening up articles already, with the Irish Times as volunteer propagandist.
However, those thinking of putting more State money into the banks, may be completely underestimating the reaction that may happen this time. People will no longer buy the line that the interests of the country are coming first. They suspected it to be a lie the last time; there will be no doubt in their minds next time. A further dipping into the empty coffers of the State to bail out both banks investors and their regime supporters, will cause a complete collapse in people's willingness to leave any liquid assets in the country. The ECB will not be able to print enough ELA, or whatever, to contain the exodus.
re: Debate on Cormac Lucey argument.
In fairness, Cormac Lucey's proposition can hardly be debated openly by those in power, without the imposition of credit controls first. But there is no reason that a national stocktaking should not take place, on where we are and where the best interests of the next generation lie; a generation that has been badly sold out by predecessors.
Indeed it is a reality. Michael Burke (NERI) gave an excellent presentation on where we are headed. Using the IMF's own figures, our 'public spending' (?) as a % of GDP will fall from the high 30s in 2013 to 31% by 2018. This while the rest of Europe has figures generally in the low to mid forties.
If anybody thinks that services can continue, given those figures, they are in living in cloud cuckoo land. A wider number of people seem to be realizing this. I confess that the figures presented were new to me and were pretty alarming in terms of what is coming down the present track.
The question that needs to be answered is why Ireland should swap horses in mid-stream against such a background, assuming that the objective is to regain the country's sovereignty defined – for the moment at least – as the willingness of investors to lend the government money at sustainable rates.
However, as MH points out, and to mix some metaphors, if the present political and administrative Punch and Judy show continues with regard to government spending, the outcome may be equally bad whatever decision is taken.