Women's Economic Empowerment: Issues Paper

This paper was prepared by the DAC Network on Gender Equality (GENDERNET), as an input to the DAC Network on Poverty Reduction's Task Team on Empowerment. It reviews why WEE matters, where donor money is going, specific challenges, suggestions for improving donor practice, and working in partnership for women's economic empowerment

The Global Employer: The Labor Relations and Collective Agreements Issue

[Excerpt] Baker & McKenzie’s Global Employment Practice Group is pleased to present its 56th issue of The Global Employer™ entitled “The Labor Relations and Collective Agreements Issue.” In this issue you will find the first report from our Future of Work Series. Labor Relations Report - Brand Attack: How to avoid becoming the target of a corporate campaign and what actions to take if you do. The Future of Work is a series of client reports based on panel discussions at our Global Employer Forum, a two-day thought leadership conference. During the forum, nearly 70 clients, academics and consultants gathered with our employment partners to discuss pressing workplace topics like talent shortages, data privacy, global mobility assignments, globalization of unions and managing the employment aspects of M&A deals. Rather than the traditional “how to” legal format of most law firm conferences, the Global Employer Forum features panel discussions of in-house counsel and senior-level executives from some of the world’s largest multinational organizations who discussed their personal experiences addressing these challenges and the solutions they have found to overcome them. Following the Labor Relations Report, you will also find information pertaining to the current state of labor relations and union negotiations in Argentina and a general overview of the current state of collective bargaining in Brazil. In Germany, we take a look at some of the numbers behind collective bargaining agreements; and a review of the impacts on labor benefits of the January 2014, Income Tax Law reform in Mexico. From Spain we bring you articles that discuss negotiating with representatives bodies in collective lay-offs and the new role of company level collective bargaining agreements; and from the US, recent efforts by the NLRB as it Targets Successor Issues in US Mergers and Acquisitions

Civil Litigation Reform in the Trump Era: Threats and Opportunities Searching for Salvageable Ideas in FICALA

The Fairness in Class Action Litigation Act of 2017 (FICALA) was introduced in Congress less than three weeks after Donald Trump took office as President. Supported by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and opposed by consumer advocates and civil rights groups, the bill passed the House of Representatives one month after its introduction on a party-line vote of 220 to 201, with 220 Republicans and zero Democrats voting in favor. FICALA stalled in the Senate and, as of this writing, does not appear to be moving toward passage in its current form. But reform ideas have a way of reappearing, particularly when driven by a constituency with much at stake and plenty of resources to push an agenda. Corporations that face mass litigation are a powerful voice for change, and class actions and multidistrict litigation are prime targets. Moreover, the quick vote in the House shows that there is at least some political appetite for the proposed reforms. In anticipation of the reincarnation of the bill in some form, it is worth exploring whether it contains any good ideas

A landscape of repair

This paper reports on EPSRC-funded research that explores the role of repair in creating new models of sustainable business. In the lifecycle stage of repair we explore what 'broken' means and uncover the nature of local and dispersed repair activities. This in turn allows us to better understand how the relationship between products and people can help shape new modes of consumption. Therefore, narratives of repair are collected to identify diverse people-product interactions and illustrate the different characteristics of, and motivations for, repair. The paper proposes that mapping the different product-people interactions across the product lifecycle, particularly at the stage of fragile-functionality (performance or function failure, emotional disengagement, superseded technology) is important in understanding the potential for enduring products and their repair. Building a landscape of repair creates new opportunities for manufacture and for slowing resource loops across product lifetimes, which together provide a framework for a sufficiency-based model of production and consumption

Increasing Effectiveness in Global NGO Networks

A tsunami hits a densely populated coast. Aid organizations mobilize, and the world watches as several national members of the same global network respond independently in an uncoordinated way. A new treaty is being developed that would allow countries to claim carbon offsets through forest conservation. But national leaders in the same global nonprofit network disagree about its value. A large organization solicits funds from a major U.S. foundation. At the same time, its sister nonprofit, with the same brand name, approaches the foundation. The funder's leaders are confused, and wonder about the seeming conflict. The question of how much to centralize -- or decentralize -- decision-making and operations has dogged global organizations for centuries. Studies of for-profits show that the best answer can be different at different points in an organization's growth. But few such studies exist for nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and for too many of these nonprofits, the scenarios described above will sound all too familiar because they reflect flashpoints that occur when an operational structure is no longer optimal. What's needed is a way for an NGO's leaders to get out ahead of these flashpoints when possible, by learning to determine in advance when their organization's approach to operations and decision-making need to be revised, and along what lines. In an effort to help with this important task, we synthesized what we've learned through case work with a diverse group of global nonprofits; we also conducted interviews with the leaders and staff at more than 30 global NGOs. Our findings illuminate an emerging approach that blends the best of efficiencies at an organization's center and local innovation in the field

Corporate governance and the protection of investors: A comparative and critical perspective on the legal responses to the ultimate concern and on potential developments

This paper, after reviewing the mechanisms for the direct and indirect protection of minority shareholders in the US, France, Germany and the UK, assesses these machanisms in light of a "subjective" aspect of minority shareholders protection (protection of weaker shareholders vs. stronger shareholders and/or management) and in light of an "objective" aspect of minority shareholders protection (conditions for the long-term success of the company) that can both be extrapolated from the OECD Principles. In this assessment, the paper, after evidencing the factors pushing towards formal convergence both within the EC and at the wider international level, and the need for functional convergence, calls into discussion the usefulness itself of international comparisons based on the formal rules in place in one jurisdiction commonly used as a yardstick, and suggests that a new minority shareholders protection index could be identified, taking into consideration both the subjective aspect and the objective aspect of investors protection

Housing supply chain model for innovation: research report

The aim of this research is to undertake a case study analysis of successful delivery of an innovation to the Australian housing construction industry. This study is conducted on the “innovator group”; that is, the group that created the idea of an innovation for the housing sector and then were intimately involved in creation, development and diffusion. It is apparent that there were key players involved in this process which are representative of various organisations along the supply chain – designer, developer, subcontractor and supplier. Much rhetoric states that integration of the supply chain actors will solve construction problems, however, in reality we know little beyond this in the Australian context as there has been little research conducted previously. This study will examine in detail the process undertaken by this particular group to deliver an innovation to the housing sector which required an integrated construction supply chain model. This report was published by the Australian Housing Supply Chain Alliance and written by Professor Kerry London, School of Property, Construction and Project Management, RMIT University with Research Fellow, Jessica Siva

The Intuitive Appeal of Explainable Machines

Algorithmic decision-making has become synonymous with inexplicable decision-making, but what makes algorithms so difficult to explain? This Article examines what sets machine learning apart from other ways of developing rules for decision-making and the problem these properties pose for explanation. We show that machine learning models can be both inscrutable and nonintuitive and that these are related, but distinct, properties. Calls for explanation have treated these problems as one and the same, but disentangling the two reveals that they demand very different responses. Dealing with inscrutability requires providing a sensible description of the rules; addressing nonintuitiveness requires providing a satisfying explanation for why the rules are what they are. Existing laws like the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA), and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), as well as techniques within machine learning, are focused almost entirely on the problem of inscrutability. While such techniques could allow a machine learning system to comply with existing law, doing so may not help if the goal is to assess whether the basis for decision-making is normatively defensible. In most cases, intuition serves as the unacknowledged bridge between a descriptive account and a normative evaluation. But because machine learning is often valued for its ability to uncover statistical relationships that defy intuition, relying on intuition is not a satisfying approach. This Article thus argues for other mechanisms for normative evaluation. To know why the rules are what they are, one must seek explanations of the process behind a model’s development, not just explanations of the model itself