Panel 7 Paradoxes in Alternative Work Arrangements

This panel will present and debate various paradoxes surrounding the implementation of Alternative Work Arrangements (AWA). AWA includes such topics as telecommuting, remote work, telecenters, and other conceptions of the virtual office. This is an especially relevant topic to the ICIS theme, Networking and Electronic Communities, because the nature of alternative work arrangements requires organizations to rethink the fundamental ways individuals in their communities work, both alone and in groups. The AWA perspective assumes that technologies will not eliminate jobs, but will facilitate the transformation of traditional work arrangements by allowing flexibility in “when” and “where” work is done. The impact on the nature of work, workers, work groups, businesses and home life are all relevant to a debate about AWA

Limits of Policy Intervention in a World of Neoliberal Mechanism Designs: Paradoxes of the Global Crisis

The current global context poses several paradoxes: the recovery from the 2009 recession was not a recovery; investment, normally driven by profit rates, is lagging and not leading economic activity; the crisis is global but debate involves sub-global levels; and public safety-nets, which have helped to stabilize national income, are being cut. These paradoxes can be traced, in part, to the impact of the “truce” that followed the Keynesian-Monetarist controversy on economists’ ideas about policy activism. This implicit “truce” has removed activist macro policy from discussion, and shifted attention toward institutions as mechanisms for solving game-theoretic coordination problems. Policy activism then centers on how the “agents” (nations) can achieve optimal use of their available resources (or optimal access to resources) at the global level; and this involves creating and fine-tuning compacts – neoliberal mechanism designs – that can capture rents and attract globally mobile capital. This approach leads economists to see the key problem in the current global crisis as fixing broken neoliberal mechanisms. However, a global economy dominated by mechanisms that feed on aggregate demand without generating it faces the prospect of stagnation or collapse.Neoliberal mechanism design, Policy activism, Keynesian- Monetarist controversy, Globalization, Capital mobility, Hyman Minsky, Bradford De Long

Toward the Jamming Threshold of Sphere Packings: Tunneled Crystals

We have discovered a new family of three-dimensional crystal sphere packings that are strictly jammed (i.e., mechanically stable) and yet possess an anomalously low density. This family constitutes an uncountably infinite number of crystal packings that are subpackings of the densest crystal packings and are characterized by a high concentration of self-avoiding "tunnels" (chains of vacancies) that permeate the structures. The fundamental geometric characteristics of these tunneled crystals command interest in their own right and are described here in some detail. These include the lattice vectors (that specify the packing configurations), coordination structure, Voronoi cells, and density fluctuations. The tunneled crystals are not only candidate structures for achieving the jamming threshold (lowest-density rigid packing), but may have substantially broader significance for condensed matter physics and materials science.Comment: 19 pages, 5 figure

From relativistic to quantum universe: Observation of a spatially-discontinuous particle dynamics beyond relativity

We perform an experimental test where we directly observe light-induced electron transitions with a macroscopic spatial discontinuity. The effect is related to the fundamental indivisibility of macroscopic orbit-like quantum states reminiscent of so-called extended states in the integer quantum Hall system. The test has become realizable due to the discovering of a quantum phase with spontaneous pervasive quantum ordering reminiscent of that of a single atom. The observed transitions may be regarded as a peculiar quantum dynamics beyond relativity, which implies that the current relativistic model of universe should be replaced by a deeper quantum model. It is the Bohm's model of undivided universe, which now should involve a deeper-than-classical concept of absolute simultaneity and a deeper-than-relativistic concept of space and time. Ultimately, our test thus establishes a new hierarchy of fundamental physical theories where the de Broglie-Bohm realistic quantum theory is the deepest theory which does not contradict either classical physics or relativity but rather is beyond both. This is because the fact that quantum theory is dealing with a deeper reality where physical objects are not self-sufficient entities and therefore their discontinuous transitions are possible within an overall quantum system which may well be macroscopic

His and Hers: Exploring Gender Puzzles and the Meaning of Life Satisfaction

Our paper contributes to current debates around work-life balance and the efficiency and wellbeing costs associated with different models of work and childcare (Gregory and Connolly, 2008). It also contributes from a gender perspective to the life satisfaction literature by providing a test for the hypothesis that women and men with children attribute different meanings to overall life satisfaction. We begin by presenting a conventional model of life satisfaction for British parents in wave 8 of the British Household Panel Survey which includes childcare arrangements; and move on to discuss the possibility that women and men have a different understanding of what matters in life and what constitutes life satisfaction, and accordingly we explore the role of dimensions of life satisfaction in overall life satisfaction. Finally, we try to account for observed differences between women and men and explain some of the paradoxes encountered in the literature on women and work-life balance, and on policy based on happiness scores.

WP 36 - Women's Preferences or Delineated Policies? The development or part-time work in the Netherlands, Germany and the United Kingdom

Within sociological and economic analyses of working time, important questions remain regarding women’s ability to combine paid and domestic work. While there is a growing body of research in this area, our knowledge and understanding of the relationship between working, social and private time, often remains limited, in particular regarding the formation of preferences among women with different family statuses. In this paper, we consider the phenomenal growth of part-time work and the emergence of the one-and-a-half earner model in the Netherlands, comparing this to the growth and high levels of part-time work evident in Germany and the United Kingdom. Despite cross-national differences in the development of part-time work, many working mothers, in all three countries, exhibit a preference for part-time work as a second best option for combining paid work and motherhood. This led to a ‘normalisation’ of part-time work in the Netherlands. We show that despite a similar gendered employment pattern and a strong “breadwinner” welfare state tradition, part-time work in Germany and the UK developed under different conditions, making it more difficult to overcome “marginalisation.

Making Democratic-Governance Work: The Consequences for Prosperity

Does democratic governance expand wealth and prosperity? There is no consensus about this issue despite the fact that for more than half a century, rival theories about the regime-growth relationship have been repeatedly tested against the empirical evidence, using a variety of cases, models and techniques. To consider the issues, Part I of this paper reviews and summarizes theories why regimes are expected to influence economic growth directly, either positively or negatively. After considering these debates, Part II discusses the technical challenges facing research on this topic and how it is proposed to overcome these. Part III presents the results of the comparative analysis for the effects of democratic governance on economic growth during recent decades. The descriptive results illustrate the main relationships. The multivariate models check whether these patterns remain significant after controlling for many other factors associated with growth, including geography, economic conditions, social structural variables, cultural legacies, and global trends. The evidence supports the equilibrium thesis suggesting that regimes combining both liberal democracy and bureaucratic governance are most likely to generate growth, while by contrast patronage autocracies display the worst economic performance. The conclusion considers the implications.

Power in the Design of Constitutional Rules

This paper examines different ways of measuring power and the use of these measures in the context of the European Union. The paper deals with classical power indices of co-operative games and more recent non-cooperative a priori measures. Special emphasis of the paper is in inter-institutional balance of power, Nice reforms and eastern enlargement.

(WP 2010-01) The Role of Primary Commodities in Economic Development: Sub-Saharan Africa versus Rest of the World

We study the nexus between natural resources and growth in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) and find that SSA is indeed special: resources dependence retards growth in SSA, but not elsewhere. The natural resources curse is thus specific to SSA. We then show that this specificity does not depend on the type of primary commodities on which SSA specializes. Instead, the SSA specificity appears to arise from the interaction between institutions and natural resources