Can Better Working Conditions Improve the Performance of SMEs? An International Literature Review

[Excerpt] It is widely recognized that competitive private enterprise is the principal source of economic growth and wealth globally and makes a substantial contribution to poverty reduction. Although large and multinational enterprises have the higher public profile, the majority of businesses are small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). They are estimated to be responsible for over 50 per cent of the new jobs created globally and, in most developing and emerging countries, they also employ more people than do large enterprises. Given their importance as employers, SMEs clearly have the potential to contribute to the social and economic progress for workers and their communities. However, many SMEs – particularly those in developing and emerging countries – are not achieving this potential. Frequently, their employment is in low-quality and low-skilled jobs that offer low wages under poor and unsafe working conditions. In addition, SMEs often fall short in terms of productivity, competitiveness and market share. The ILO has long been convinced that, by improving working conditions, safety and skills in SMES, productivity and profitability can also be improved: a win-win scenario that is good for workers, enterprise owner, communities and economies. In June 2012, specialists from four ILO departments came together to implement a joint programme of work to explore how to help and encourage SMEs to achieve this. This independent research review was commissioned by ILO in order to contribute to establishing a solid empirical basis for future research and interventions. It reviews the empirical relevance of the assumption that a win-win scenario exists in SMEs, especially in the context of developing economies. It also seeks to identify the factors or conditions that influence its emergence. More broadly, the report builds upon a thorough review of international literature to present responses to a range of enquiries relating to the links between working conditions, safety and health, skills and productivity. Not surprisingly, the answers contained in this report are often conditional and are far from categorical. Although the report suggests that a win−win scenario may exist, in certain circumstances, it also underlines that more empirical research is needed, particularly in developing and emerging economies

"Antigone" in Ancient Greece and Modern Georgia

N/

A Portmanteau Theseus in Euripides’ Supplices?

The title of the conference to which this paper formed a contribution was Topical Issues of Ancient Culture and Its Heritage. The issues raised here have, however, been side-lined by most modern scholars, and thus might be said to be no longer as topical as they once were. It is with a view to reviving the once widely held view that writers for the Athenian stage might choose plots that shed light on current events, rather than engaging in escapist drama, that this paper has been written. The dramatic stage was very much part of Athenian political life, and once we recall with Simon Goldhill (Goldhill 1987) that a dramatic festival was the occasion for the pouring of libations by the generals, for the display of the annual tribute, for the praise of civic benefactors, and the parade in armour of war orphans, then we can understand how plays might have a political resonance, and how the stage — whether tragic or comic — might be the place where things could be said that were impossible to say in other contexts

Euripides’ 'Bacchae', Critias and Alcibiades

N/

Hawking's singularity theorem for C1,1C^{1,1}-metrics

We provide a detailed proof of Hawking's singularity theorem in the regularity class $C^{1,1}$, i.e., for spacetime metrics possessing locally Lipschitz continuous first derivatives. The proof uses recent results in $C^{1,1}$-causality theory and is based on regularisation techniques adapted to the causal structure.Comment: 19 pages, LaTeX; v2: corrected Lemma 4.2; v3: typos corrected, final versio

Global Gronwall Estimates for Integral Curves on Riemannian Manifolds

We prove Gronwall-type estimates for the distance of integral curves of smooth vector fields on a Riemannian manifold. Such estimates are of central importance for all methods of solving ODEs in a verified way, i.e., with full control of roundoff errors. Our results may therefore be seen as a prerequisite for the generalization of such methods to the setting of Riemannian manifolds.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figure, correction of some misprint

Rebounding case notifications of chlamydia : an epidemiological game of 'Clue'?

The genus Chlamydiae encompasses a unique class of obligate intracellular bacteria that can cause disease in a wide range of animals. In humans, Chlamydia trachomatis infections are common and are frequently observed in diseases of the eye, genital and respiratory tracts. Prevalent worldwide, Chlamydia infections can progress to chronic inflammatory sequellae and are the leading cause of curable sexually transmitted disease and preventable blindness. After falling in the face of intensified control efforts, case notifications of sexually transmitted Chlamydia in many countries are rising. In many jurisdictions, this unprecedented rise of Chlamydia case notifications has occurred after the introduction of wide spread control programs, and has been discussed to be a result of either increased testing volume, improvements to testing technologies, changes in sexual behaviour, or increased reinfection rates brought about by deleterious effects of treatment on acquired immunity. This thesis seeks to answer the question of why observed Chlamydia case notifications have rebounded? I have attempted to answer this question using simple dynamical models of Chlamydia transmission framed from immunological and epidemiological perspectives. Model structures are drawn from frameworks previously used for studying sexually transmitted infections, and represent a combination of theoretical and data-oriented formulations, as well as different (hierarchical) ecological scales. The results of this thesis highlight that increased testing volumes, rather than changes in the sensitivity and specificity of testing technologies, sexual behaviour, or truncated immunological responses brought about by treatment can explain the increase in observed chlamydia case notifications, and that simple explanations for these observed rates appear to have been dismissed in favor of an increase to the underlying prevalence. In addition to providing insights into current epidemiological trends, this thesis has also been able to produce significant insights into the natural history of chlamydial infection. In particular, the phenotype of an individual's immunobiology that results from multiple chlamydial infections suggests that longer periods between initial and repeat infection may increase an individual's chlamydial load, their duration of infection, as well as non-intuitively the formation of protective immunity, persistent infection, and the potential for immunopathogenesis. Additional population-scale analyses in this thesis also suggest the existence of a period of immunity that is, on average, much longer lasting than currently discussed in contemporary literature. The results of this research outline a potential way forward through filling several gaps in the immunological and epidemiological understanding of Chlamydia infections that involves both reviewing existing data as well as continued research using "systems science" approaches