Identity, identity politics, and neoliberalism

With the intensification of neoliberalism, it is useful to examine how some individuals might cope with the irrationality of the system. Neoliberalism cloaks the execution of the corporate agenda behind rhetorical manipulation that advocates for limited government. The corollary absence of government involvement on behalf of the citizenry writ large disarms the means of social redress for the individual. Democracy funded and fueled by corporate power thereby disenfranchises the individual, provoking some to search for empowerment through identity politics. The argument set forth suggests that individuals construct, reinforce, or escalate allegiance to identities as a coping mechanism, some of which manifest in violent identity politics

Team Governance: Empowerment or Hierarchical Control

We investigate a team setting in which workers have different degrees of commitment to the outcome of their work. We show that if there are complementarities in production and if the team manager has some information about team members, interventions that the manager undertakes in order to assure certain efforts may have destructive effects: they can distort the way workers perceive their fellow workers and they may also lead to a reduction of effort by those workers that care most about output. Moreover, interventions may hinder the development of a cooperative organizational culture in which workers trust each other. Thus, our framework provides some first insights into the costs and benefits of interventions in teams. It identifies that team governance is driven by the importance of tasks that cannot be monitored. The more important these tasks, the more likely it is that teams are empowered.team work, incentives, informed principal, intrinsic motivation

Ethnicity and Empowerment: Implications for Psychological Training in the 1980s

Psychological services, as a part of the health-care system, have been embedded in specific configurations of cultural meanings and social relationships, [1] and the role of patients and healers cannot be understood apart from that context. This article explores the failure of psychology to effectively address the inhibiting impact of racism on human development, and it suggests a corrective agenda for the training of socially responsive and responsible psychologists, an agenda derived from the literacy education model of Paulo Freire

Acute poverty alleviation through women’s targeting by microfinance programs

The present paper aims to adduce succinctly the reasons and arguments sustaining female-targeting microfinance programs, predominantly because of their capacity of offering an effective and operational tool against poverty. The herewith paper basically follows a double-axis organization. The first axis (embracing the 3rd and 4th part of the corpus) focuses on the benefits of microfinance, through stressing its economical and social dimensions and consequences - while contributing to enhance the holistic character of poverty reduction. With regard to the second axis (composed by the 5th part of the corpus), it emphases the potential criticisms oriented towards microfinance - thus highlighting its weaknesses - and also offering potential answers (even if only embryonically designed) for palliating them. By offering this former bi-axed structure, this essay contributes to underline the positive corollary existing between the targeting of women by microfinance programs, on the one hand, and the consequent decrease of poverty, on the other hand, hence contributing to sustain the quasi exclusive femaleoriented character of microfinance.Women; microfinance; microcredit; poverty; development; alleviation; targeting; economic aspects; social aspects

Welfare, Dialectic, and Mediation in Corporate Law

Bill Klein extends an idealistic and progressive invitation with the Criteria for Good Laws of Business Association (the Criteria). The structure of our debates, he says, prevents us from joining the issue. The discourse will move forward if we can isolate core components on which we agree and disagree. The invitation, thus directed, is well-constructed. To facilitate engagement, each criterion is set out as pari passu with each other. And there is a good reason for the inclusion of each listed criterion. Each has an established place in public and private law jurisprudence. Each has influenced results, coming forth as salient in one or another area of law, in one or another regulation or case. We can, then, agree in the abstract to take each criterion seriously. Klein bids us then to cull, modify, and restate, so as to identify more clearly the goals we hold out for corporate law. The remainder of this essay takes up that invitation, taking our debates to the Criteria, taking the Criteria to our debates, and taking both to the law itself. It suggests that the criteria on which we can agree lie at a higher level of generality than the Criteria: corporate law makes us all welfare consequentialists who agree that good corporate law is about encouraging productivity. We differ over the means to that end in debates that have over time evolved away from the ideological and toward the functional. Absent an ex ante set of empirically verifiable formulas for productive business organization, we are left to our debates

Does female empowerment promote economic development ?

Empirical evidence suggests that money in the hands of mothers (as opposed to their husbands) benefits children. Does this observation imply that targeting transfers to women is good economic policy? The authors develop a series of noncooperative family bargaining models to understand what kind of frictions can give rise to the observed empirical relationships. Then they assess the policy implications of these models. The authors find that targeting transfers to women can have unintended consequences and may fail to make children better off. Moreover, different forms of empowering women may lead to opposite results. More research is needed to distinguish between alternative theoretical models.Economic Theory&Research,Gender and Law,Debt Markets,Inequality,Public Sector Economics

India Country Profile

[From Introduction] This country study for India is part of the ILO project \u27Employment of People with Disabilities – the Impact of Legislation\u27 which aims to enhance the capacity of national governments in selected countries of Asia and East Africa to implement effective legislation concerning the employment of people with disabilities. Starting with a systematic examination of laws in place to promote employment and training opportunities for people with disabilities in selected countries of Asia and the Pacific (Australia, Cambodia, China, Fiji, Japan, India, Mongolia, Sri Lanka and Thailand), the project sets out to examine the operation of such legislation, identify the implementation mechanisms in place and suggest improvements Technical assistance is provided to selected national governments in implementing necessary improvements. The country study outlines the main provisions of the laws in place in India concerning the employment of people with disabilities. A brief review of the implementation of the legislation is also provided, insofar as this was possible, based on a survey of documentary sources, a study by an in-country consultant and feedback from Indian delegates to a Project Consultation held in Bangkok, 17 January 2003. It may be read in conjunction with the regional overview prepared for this Consultation \u27Employment of People with Disabilities – the Impact of Legislation (Asia and the Pacific). Project Consultation Report, Bangkok 17 January\u27, ILO 2003

The reforming appeal of distributed leadership

With a systematic literature review, this article examines the significance of distributed leadership in healthcare, assessing the extent to which it reflects a consistent set of values, meanings, practices and outcomes. It identifies key mediating factors and their importance in enabling or constraining distributive leadership processes. The findings indicate that clinicians without formal leadership titles are inspiring change and driving improvements, although countervailing pressures are limiting this in practice. Distributed leadership is evident in the way that clinical teams function, and more could be made of this for the modernisation of healthcare. At present, this potential tends to be constrained, and subject to competing interpretations that reflect distinct occupational identities. Greater attention could be given to educational and developmental programmes that claim space for distributed influence among current and aspiring leaders, and for enabling arrangements that can help ‘ordinary leaders’ to feel less vulnerable and more confident about this aspect of their practice. Established approaches to leader development could be usefully refocused to prioritise collective processes and refine relational abilities, ideally with more inclusive, joint venture initiatives that bring formal and informal leaders together for mutual learning and effective engagement

Microfinance and Female Empowerment

In the informal economy of developing countries, female entrepreneurs face a comparative disadvantage for operating high-productivity activities, owing to the prevalence of patriarchal forms of business regulations. Yet, for microfinance institutions (MFIs) to succeed in enhancing female empowerment, increased access to credit must enable female entrepreneurs to tap into the range of high-productivity activities. So when the costs of legality are too high in developing countries, and the informal economy becomes the only affordable venue for operating a business venture, this paper shows that access to microfinancee services becomes only necessary, but not sufficient for female empowerment. Based upon a game-theoretic model of activity choices by ex ante homogeneous women, we argue that conditioning well-trained women's access to credit to the adoption of high-productivity activities may enable MFIs to induce the emergence of networks of female entrepreneurs large enough to mitigate patriarchal practices that raise the costs of operating such activities in the informal economy.Microfinance, female entrepreneurship, supermodular games