Framing competitiveness: the advocacy of migration as an essential human resources strategy in Europe

ABSTRACT

This paper examines how competitiveness has been framed rhetorically and politically by interested actors in France, Germany, and the UK. Skilled rhetorical advocacy clothes particular political demands in the language of competitiveness and purported exigencies of the global economy, thus advancing political goals more easily that might otherwise encounter significant political opposition. In theoretical terms, the paper analyses the ideational framing of policy discourses. Empirically, the emphasis rests on exploring how governments, organised business, and business think tanks have attempted to advance demands for liberalised labour migration schemes in Europe by linking them rhetorically to the prerogative of economic competitiveness. Despite an adverse political climate, sceptical public opinion, and persistent unemployment, it has thus been politically possible to liberalise the regulation of labour migration considerably.     

For the Love of Art? Episodic Volunteering at Cultural Events

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations - Although episodic volunteering is a popular form of volunteering and has received increasing attention from researchers,...     

Pathways to social value and social change: An integrative review of the social entrepreneurship literature

Social entrepreneurship has emerged as an important means of addressing grand challenges. Although research on the topic has accelerated, scholars have yet to articulate an overarching framework that links the different pathways taken by social entrepreneurs with the positive effects of these efforts. To address this shortcoming, we conducted a systematic literature review which enabled us to conceptually differentiate between social value and social change as distinct outcomes of social entrepreneurship and identify seven pathways for achieving these outcomes. Building on our analysis, we outline a research agenda for questions pertaining to: the dynamics between social value and social change; how contextual factors and social entrepreneurs influence various pathways; design principles of business models and innovations that facilitate social value and social change; and defining, measuring, and ensuring accountability for social value and social change.     

Investment and Competitive Matching

We study markets in which agents first make investments and are then matched into potentially productive partnerships. Equilibrium investments and the equilibrium matching will be efficient if agents can simultaneously negotiate investments and matches, but we focus on markets in which agents must first sink their investments before matching. Additional equilibria may arise in this sunk‐investment setting, even though our matching market is competitive. These equilibria exhibit inefficiencies that we can interpret as coordination failures. All allocations satisfying a constrained efficiency property are equilibria, and the converse holds if preferences satisfy a separability condition. We identify sufficient conditions (most notably, quasiconcave utilities) for the investments of matched agents to satisfy an exchange efficiency property as well as sufficient conditions (most notably, a single crossing property) for agents to be matched positive assortatively, with these conditions then forming the core of sufficient conditions for the efficiency of equilibrium allocations.     

Is peer regulation perceived as an effective mediator to strengthen the mission orientation of INGO leaders?

International non-governmental organizations (INGOs) operate in competitive funding markets and face political pressures, which can incentivize their leaders to compromise their mission-oriented strategy for more resource security. This article empirically investigates whether INGO leaders perceive peer regulation as an effective governance mechanism that allows them to strengthen their mission-oriented strategy to withstand these economic and political constraints. In particular, we assess whether peer regulation is perceived to promote organizational learning processes. We test a partial least squares structural equation model (PLS-SEM) based on a unique data set from an international survey among 201 INGO leaders from 21 countries. Our findings suggest that INGO leaders indeed perceive that peer regulation strengthens their mission orientation, despite the economic competition and political opportunity constraints their organization faces. This effect is partially mediated by organizational learning processes. Our findings are based on a constructivist perspective that emphasizes the learneffect of peer regulation on INGOs' strategic orientation, and allows the derivation of several managerial recommendations to foster INGOs' strategic autonomy.     

A Strategic,Area-wide Contingency Planning Model for Oil Spill Cleanup Operations with Application Demonstrated to the Galveston Bay Area*

This paper develops a general integer programming model for strategic, area-wide contingency planning of oil spill cleanup operations. Model inputs include the set of risk points and the likely spill scenarios and response requirements for each, the sites of existing storage locations and the inventory of components at each, and potential sites for new storage locations. The model prescribes a minimum total cost plan to either build new storage locations, expand existing ones, or both, to purchase new components and pre-position them, and a contingency plan that determines which response systems should be composed to enable an effective time-phased response for each likely spill scenario. A family of heuristics based on linear programming (LP) is devised to resolve this strategic problem, providing an area-wide contingency plan. The heuristics are evaluated on a set of 10 test problems that involve 1869 general integer variables and 3264 constraints. Computational tests indicate that four heuristics are quite effective, prescribing solutions for each of 10 test cases within 1.41% of optimum and within a few minutes runtime. This study focused on modeling the Galveston Bay Area, and the test problems represent application in that area. A sensitivity analysis is demonstrated by assessing the impacts of component availability and the degradation of cleanup capability over time. Use of the model as a decision support aid by responsible parties, contractors, governmental organizations and others is described.