Privatization, provision, and targeting: Trends and policy implications for social security in the United States

This paper examines several important trends in the changing structure of social security in the United States and their impact on the elderly in different income groups. These trends involve the shifting public/private mix of retirement income, the declining replacement rates of public benefits, and reforms for targeting benefits by age. An analysis of these trends suggests that (a) social security will provide declining economic support for those most in need; (b) middle- and upper-income groups will have a diminished stake in social security, reducing the programme's political base of support; (c) increasing reliance on occupational pensions will heighten the need for greater public regulation of private schemes; (d) an unplanned two-tiered system of pensions will emerge, with the first tier consisting of a whittled-down version of social security to provide a predominant source of retirement income for low-income wage earners and the second tier consisting of private pensions for middle- and upper-income groups.     

Majority voting on orders

We characterize two lexicographic-type preference extension rules from a set X to the set of all orders on this set. Elements of X are interpreted as basic economic policy decisions, whereas elements of are conceived as political programs among which a collectivity has to choose through majority voting. The main axiom is called tournament-consistency, and states that whenever majority pairwise comparisons based on initial preferences on X define an order on X, then this order is also chosen by a majority among all other orders in . Tournament-consistency thus allows to predict the outcome of majority voting upon orders from the knowledge of majority preferences on their components.     

Poverty and Social Policy in Latin America

Most indicators of human development in Latin America improved considerably until the early 1980s. Unfortunately, the debt crisis which hit most countries in the region during the 1980s badly dented the social record. Not only did it increase the number of people living in poverty but it led to a profound change in the nature of the development model. Neo-liberal economic thought and the lessons of the debt crisis convinced one Latin American state after another that it should follow a different development path.
Economic stabilization and structural adjustment had a profound effect on poverty in the region. Most families became poorer, particularly those living in the cities. Structural adjustment and the new economic model also modified the role of the state. Increasingly, Latin American governments stopped giving general subsidies and introduced a strategy of targeting subsidies at the poor. In places, the new strategy will no doubt provide an adequate safety net, but in others it will fail to provide sufficient help for the poor. All we can predict is that poverty will long remain regrettably common in most parts of Latin America. In places, economic growth will undoutedly reduce poverty but it is not at all easy to predict where it will be reduced. In this respect Latin America is very much like the rest of the world. Globalization has opened up local economies to international competition and offered them the prospect of selling local goods to foreign markets. How many Latin American economies will benefit from the new situation will determine how the poor will fare. Unfortunately, the state's ability to deal with any subsequent poverty has been greatly reduced. That, too, is part and parcel of the process of globalization.     

Talking about Beauty: A Study of Everyday Aesthetics among Low‐Income Citizens of Milan

This paper reports on research undertaken into the aesthetics of the everyday. As well as the subject matter of aesthetic philosophy, art criticism and of the sociology of art, beauty, and beautiful are of course very ordinary matters too. To shed light on the meanings of beauty as used in everyday settings and in natural language, we use the data collected in a study conducted with a group of low‐income residents of the city of Milan. In this study we were interested in analyzing their lifestyle in terms of their relationship with aesthetics, i.e., with “beautiful” objects and/or experiences. Participants' self‐reported aesthetic appreciations suggest that conceptions of “beauty” are used as devices to narrate pieces of identity, memories, experiences, etc. Their aesthetic judgements take on an anthropological function, creating a framework of meanings that help the participants make sense of the world of objects and of their own lives with/through them.     

Fertility treatment and organizational discourses of the non-reproductive female body

This paper contributes to debates on the intersections between organizations, the body, and reproduction by exploring how the non-reproductive female body is discursively (re)constructed by organizations which provide fertility treatment, such as private clinics and fertility magazines. Organization studies has neglected the non-reproductive body, despite a fair amount of research on its reproductive counterpart, especially pregnant and maternal bodies. Equally, these discussions privilege the employment relationship – for example, how women are enjoined to manage their bodies at work – whereas we concentrate on the marketplace, or the field of fertility treatment, and the organizations therein. These organizations, while focused on reproducing bodies, also influence, compound, and challenge notions of the bodies they are involved with. Through a Critical Discourse Analysis of texts produced by UK fertility organizations, we present three discourses of the non-reproductive female body that (re)generate subject positions where the absence of reproduction is a medical condition, an emotionally distressing experience, and something that needs to be cared for. Our argument suggests how the texts can operate as a form of Foucauldian governmental biopower, emphasizing how they hail the infertile female subject.     

Integrating strategic planning and performance management in universities: a multiple case-study analysis

Journal of Management and Governance - Over time, public universities have been involved in a process of modernisation based on a new concept of governance and managerial methods for increasing...     

Product Line Extensions and Technology Licensing with a Strategic Supplier

In many industries, original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) must obtain critical components from a few powerful suppliers. To the extent that the OEMs are also concentrated, the interactions between the suppliers of critical components and the OEMs are strategic, and have implications for how an incumbent OEM chooses its product line and interacts with potential rivals. We demonstrate that, by adding a low‐end product line extension, an OEM can induce a strategic supplier to offer more favorable pricing. Moreover, depending upon the cost structure and relative performance of the product line extension, the OEM may benefit even more from the low‐end line extension if it is produced by a rival instead of by itself, even if it cannot obtain any licensing income from it. Among other things, we show that this can result in a decentralized OEM accommodating competition from rivals producing product line extensions that would not be developed in a vertically integrated supply chain. In an extension, we re‐examine the common assumption that the supplier unilaterally dictates a single wholesale price that is available to all downstream buyers. We demonstrate that, by committing to offer a “lowest available” wholesale price to all downstream buyers, a supplier can encourage an incumbent OEM to share its technology (or otherwise accommodate the entry of a rival) so that the supplier, the incumbent OEM, and the rival are all better off.     

A REGRESSION ESTIMATION METHOD FOR COLLINEAR PREDICTORS

This paper addresses the important and pervasive condition of multicollinear predictors in regression analysis. The paper discusses the rudiments of a recently proposed “improved estimation” procedure (ridge regression analysis) to be used when the predictors are not orthogonal and compares the empirical performance of the ridge technique in estimating some known coefficients with the traditional estimation methods of least squares and stepwise regression.     

Digital internal communication: An interplay of socio-technical elements

Digital transformation has become a research focus in recent years. Likewise, internal communication (IC) is one of the fastest-growing specialisations in public relations and communication management. This research explores digital internal communication (DIC) at the nexus between digital transformation and IC. We provide an integrative review of the literature; our thematic analysis of selected journal articles and other scholarly texts is guided by the concept of organisations as socio-technical systems. Furthermore, we create a template using NVivo software to organise the emerging themes and clusters following the logic of communication levels. This template allows us to explain the phenomenon of DIC in a socio-technical organisational system and discuss how the emerging themes are interrelated, people-focused, and linked to competency development and trust-building. As a contribution to theory, we offer a conceptual model which illustrates the dynamics of DIC as an interplay of socio-technical elements on three communication levels. This conceptual model can be further developed in scholarly discussions on DIC and by organisations reflecting on their IC use in a digital workplace environment.