An Assessment of a Drastically Changed Federal Workplace in the United States

Abstract

Written by four experienced government employees, this article discusses many alarming changes that have been forced on the Federal government workplace over the past 20 years. The article identifies actions by elected and appointed officials that have greatly changed and weakened a workplace that was a model for America. Several attributes of the Federal workplace of the past and of the present are compared and contrasted.     

Assessing the Impact of Microcredit: A Zambian Case Study

Expectations are high, but evidence of the impact of microcredit remains in short supply. This article estimates the impact of an urban credit programme in Zambia on business performance and on a range of indicators of wellbeing. Borrowers who obtained a second loan experienced significantly higher average growth in business profits and household income. Inflexible group enforcement of loan obligations resulted in some borrowers, especially amongst those who had taken only one loan, being made worse off. Our methodological investigations suggest that the supply of rigorous impact studies can be increased by basing them on data collection that serves a wider range of purposes, including market research.     

Economic discourse and the capitalist order

This paper uses the concepts of business model and financial ecosystem to analyse the relation between the US capital market and corporate business. Under a capital market double standard, from 1995 to 2000, new companies with digital prospects could recover their costs from the capital market; but, after the tech stock crash in 2000, all companies were required to generate profits from the product market. This encourages a blurring of old and new firm identities, because sectoral power is increasingly necessary to secure cost recovery. But this does not imply any return to business as usual when the financial ecosystem for new technology survives the crash and large-scale venture capital investment continues. From this point of view,the new economy illustrated, concretely, the determining role of finance in the broader processes of financialization.     

Business associations in China: Two regional experiences

This article compares different practices of business associations in two localities in China – Wuxi and Wenzhou – and examines the internal linkage between associational practices and patterns of economic development. In Wuxi, business associations are organised and run by government in a top-down approach, and serve as state corporatist instruments; while in Wenzhou, there emerged many grass-roots business associations initiated and governed by entrepreneurs from bottom-up, working for societal purposes. The distinctive associational practices in the two localities are linked with their local economic development patterns: government-led development in Wuxi versus entrepreneur-initiated development in Wenzhou. The article concludes that the growth of private entrepreneurship and the spread of market relations, together with the willingness of government to leave space to societal actors, are the primary conditions for autonomous, vibrant business associations to occur.     

商业贿赂的概念、特点与规律研究

商业贿赂表现形式纷繁芜杂,对商业贿赂的治理带来诸多难题,科学界定商业贿赂的概念,分析其特点和规律,是治理商业贿赂的首要和前提。对商业贿赂的商业应当作广义的理解,不能仅仅包括商品的买卖活动;商业贿赂具有主体的广泛性、商业贿赂行为所侵犯客体的多重性、行为人主观上的故意性和行为客观上的违法性等特点。贿赂是一种以财物为媒介物的由行贿方和受贿方组成的相互关系的链条。行贿是贿赂链条的起点,起决定作用的是受贿方。商业贿赂与其他贿赂相比,具有连续性和稳定性,贿赂物数额较大,贿赂手段形式更加多样,具有更大的社会危害性。     

新就业形态劳动者权益保障问题研究——基于平台责任的理论思考

在平台经济蓬勃发展的背景下,区别于传统用工模式的新就业形态对劳动者权益保障提出挑战。国家相关部门近期发布多个文件,从劳动关系、劳动标准、社会保险等方面对新就业形态劳动者的权益保障提出要求,然而地方实践表明要将保障真正落到实处仍存在现实困境。其中,平台责任及其与劳动者关系问题是核心难点,基于风险完全转移和风险不完全转移进行平台责任的理论探讨,有助于建立兼具可行性及可操作性的制度落地计划。