劳动争议处理之我见

近年来,我国的劳动争议案件逐年增多,且呈现复杂化、群体化、涉外化等趋势.我国政府为了实现社会公正,走上了通过扩大劳动者个人的权利来解决劳动争议的路子,致使劳动者、企业单位、工会、行政权力以及法院在处理劳动争议过程中的职能、地位发生扭曲.所以必须关注并完善劳资双方的信用关系、工会的职能与地位、行政权力在劳动争议处理中的地位和权威、法院最后的司法救济,从深层次解决原来的处理体制"用其所短"的弊端,实现劳资关系的和谐.     

Food and finance: the financial transformation of agro-food supply chains

This article draws upon existing literature to document and describe the rise of finance in food provisioning. It queries the role of financialization in the contemporary food crisis and analyzes its impacts upon the distribution of power and wealth within and along the generalized agro-food supply chain. A systematic treatment of key nodes in the supply chain reveals four key insights: (1) the line between finance and food provisioning has become increasingly blurred in recent decades, with financial actors taking a growing interest in food and agriculture and agro-food enterprises becoming increasingly involved in financial activities; (2) financialization has reinforced the position of food retailers as the dominant actors within the agro-food system, though they are largely subject to the dictates of finance capital and face renewed competition from financialized commodity traders; (3) financialization has intensified the exploitation of food workers, increasing their workload while pushing down their real wages and heightening the precarity of their positions, and (4) small-scale farmers have been especially hard hit by financialization, as their livelihoods have become even more uncertain due to increasing volatility in agricultural markets, they have become weaker vis-à-vis other actors in the agro-food supply chain, and they face growing competition for their farmland. The paper concludes by identifying themes for future research and asking readers to reimagine the role of finance in food provisioning.     

Socio-economic determinants of the family history of pulmonary tuberculosis patients in Pakistan

This article aims to assess the role of important socio-economic factors in the family history of tuberculosis patients in Pakistan. Data were collected from 269 patients, and a logistic regression was used to determine the association between risk factors and the vicious circle of TB. Results of the logistic model show that significant risk factors associated with TB history in patients were education, household size, house structure, rooms in the home, room ventilation, monthly income, income food sufficiency, smoking, diabetes, and heart disease. The current TB control programme needs to formulate strategies to target specific risk factors and poverty reduction simultaneously to break the vicious circle of tuberculosis.     

Reproductive health services: “Business-in-a-Box” as a model social innovation

Access to reproductive health services and products in remote and rural communities is a critical area of concern for developing countries. This article considers a pilot intervention in three districts of Pakistan where “Business-in-a-Box” as a model of place-based social innovation is used to improve the socio-economic conditions of women in remote rural settings through socially responsible micro-franchising. It finds that such programmes help build a sense of community, ownership and grassroots capabilities and skills. The article also discusses the impacts of such actions on the individual and community life, and the need to upscale and sustain these initiatives.     

Facilitating industrial symbiosis programmes in developing countries: reflections from Gauteng,South Africa

This viewpoint reflects on how to improve the process of introducing facilitated industrial symbiosis programmes (FISPs) to small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in developing countries. Although FISPs are a long-established industrial practice, their formal introduction to SMEs in developing countries has only recently begun, mostly through support from international development agencies. Based partly on anecdotal evidence from Gauteng, South Africa, we identify six key questions which need to be addressed to improve the process of facilitating FISPs.     

Remoteness as a gendered construct

This article explores the potential of using children’s perceptions of distance to reflect a gendered understanding of remoteness. Data collected from 1,549 children in Tanzania concerning their perceptions of remoteness in relation to accessibility of school, health care, and water resources were analysed in reference to their impact on school attendance and performance. Gendered variability in perceived distances to services by children may indicate that remoteness is as much of a social issue as it is a geographic phenomenon, in that girls perceive distance and time between home and destination to be further than boys who travel approximately the same distance.     

Talent alone does not suffice: erotic capital,media visibility and global popularity among professional male and female tennis players

Following Catherine Hakim’s notion of the increasing significance of ‘erotic capital’ in contemporary society, this paper addresses the effects of erotic capital in the realm of professional sports. Erotic capital may be closely related to popularity and thus represents a key marketing asset, in particular for female athletes facing a predominantly male audience. These ideas are examined here through analysing the media visibility of top tennis players in the German print media, as well as their global popularity (measured by search engine queries). The results provide further evidence of gender discrimination in sport since they show that the popularity of female athletes depends on their physical attractiveness whereas such a relationship does not exist for male athletes. Given gender-discriminatory consumer and print media preferences, female athletes face strong incentives to adapt to a sexualized sports culture that reinforces hegemonic masculinity.     

Accountability mechanisms in community-driven reconstruction in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo

A lack of accountability is often considered a root cause of conflict. Many post-conflict reconstruction efforts therefore aim to enhance accountability between authorities and the population through community-driven reconstruction programmes. This article examines the accountability mechanisms in the Tushiriki community-driven reconstruction programme in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. The ethnographic research found little impact of formal programme accountability. Rather, accountability was shaped differently and had its own context-specific meaning. To make accountability more sustainable, stronger embeddedness in local institutions and more appropriate translations of abstract concepts into the local context are needed.     

Public Service Motivation,Organizational Social Capital,and Knowledge Sharing in the Korean Public Sector

This article investigates whether public service motivation (PSM) and organizational social capital predict knowledge sharing in the public sector. The hypothesized relationships in the proposed model are verified with the online survey data of 506 public employees in Korea. The test results show that the two dimensions of PSM (attraction to public service and commitment to public values) and the trust component of organizational social capital are both positively related to knowledge sharing in the Korean public sector, and that the associability component of organizational social capital is indirectly associated with knowledge sharing through its influence on PSM. The article discusses the ways that PSM and organizational social capital may contribute to overcome the social dilemma of knowledge sharing in public organizations. It also suggests that there is need for further research on the individual dimensions of the PSM construct.     

Co-creation of Linking Social Capital in ‘Municipality 3.0’

There is great interest in co-creation of welfare production between municipalities and the civil society in the Nordic countries. Using linking social capital as a theoretical point of departure and examining a qualitative case study in Norway, I critically assess the concepts of co-creation and ‘Municipality 3.0’. It is suggested that even in countries with high trust in the authorities, building linking social capital in the shape of interorganizational networks is a complex process fraught with potential barriers related to trust, network building, municipal resources, and statutory laws and regulations. And while outcomes are promising, they are far from certain.