How do multinationals build social capital? Evidence from Mexico.

This paper looks at the self-reporting of social engagement by multinational firms in Mexico, mapping the configurations of declared engagement. Such social engagements are an important component of how these companies contribute to social capital in the communities within which they operate. We find high performance by some firms, with negligible performance by others. Strong performing sectors include pharmaceuticals & healthcare, other chemical products, and manufacturing. Two case studies - on Alcoa and Schlumberger - detailing different but successful approaches to social capital building are given.social capital, corporate responsibility, business ethics, Mexico, multinational companies

International vocational education and training - the migration and learning mix

International VET students have divergent, shifting and in some cases multiple purposes for undertaking their VET courses. Students\u27 motives may be instrumental and/or intrinsic and can include obtaining permanent residency, accumulating skills that can secure good employment, gaining a foothold that leads to higher education, and/or personal transformation. Moreover, students\u27 study purposes and imagining of acquired values are neither fixed nor unitary. They can be shaped and reshaped by their families and personal aspirations and by the social world and the learning environment with which they interact. We argue that, whatever a student\u27s study purpose, s/he needs to engage in a learning practice and should be provided with a high quality education. Indeed, we insist this remains the case even if students enroll only in order to gain the qualifications needed to migrate. The paper details the association between migration and learning, and argues that the four variations emerging from the empirical data of this study that centre on migration and skills\u27 accumulation better explain this association than does the \u27international VET students simply want to migrate\u27 perspective. We conclude with a discussion of why the stereotype that holds VET international students are mere \u27PR hunters\u27 is unjust and constitutes a threat to the international VET sector

Multinationals in Developing Communities: how EU Multinationals build Social Capital in Poland

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is usually an area that does not lend itself easily to inter-company or cross-country analysis. This paper is an attempt to provide some metrics of multinational CSR drawing on the recent literature on social capital. We look at the self-reporting of social engagement in Poland by European multinational firms with operations there, mapping the configurations of declared engagement. Such social engagements are an important component of how these companies contribute to social capital in the communities within which they operate. We find high performance by some firms, with stronger performance depending upon the multinational’s country of origin. Two case studies - on Bayer and Danone - detailing different but successful approaches to social capital building are given.Social Capital, Corporate Social Responsibility, Business Ethics, Poland, Multinational companies.

The effects of protective legislation on occupational segregation in the United States and Australia

Gender-specific protective labour laws are considered unacceptable by many analysts because it is presumed they must necessarily adversely affect employment opportunities for women. This paper reviews United States research which has sought to assess the validity of this assumption; and reports on the impact of these laws within Australia. The assumption that gender-specific labour laws adversely affect female employment opportunities is not supported by United States research or Australian data. It is concluded that a reform strategy centred on simple abolition may involve loss of employee protection without necessarily producing any compensating increase in opportunities for women

Urban social insurance and worker satisfaction in China: Implications for India

This paper draws on a unique survey of urban employees in Jiangsu that was designed to assist analysis of workers\u27 satisfaction with the urban social insurance scheme in China, and sheds light on whether workers in the urban non-state sector are satisfied with the level of social insurance coverage and whether their perceptions compare favourably with workers in the state-owned sector. It also discusses the globalisation and social protection debate in India and draws implications for the Indian experience from both our perception research and China\u27s experience with urban social insurance reform more generally

Science with an ngVLA - The Molecular High-z Universe on Large Scales: Low-surface-brightness CO and the strength of the ngVLA Core

The Next-Generation Very Large Array (ngVLA) will revolutionize our understanding of the Early Universe by tracing the coldest phase of molecular gas -the raw ingredient for star formation- in the most distant galaxies and galaxy-clusters. The km-scale core of the ngVLA will be densely packed with antennas, making it a prime instrument for imaging low-surface-brightness emission from large-scale molecular gas in the high-z circum- and inter-galactic medium (CGM/IGM). Recent studies indicate that large amounts of cold molecular gas are hiding in the 10s-100 kpc environments of distant galaxies, but that technical limitations on existing telescope arrays have prevented us from efficiently detecting these large molecular reservoirs. This may have led to a severely biased view of the molecular Universe. We present the science case for low-surface-brightness CO observations of the Early Universe, and how the core of the ngVLA will reveal the cold molecular Universe to limits and at scales not currently detectable by radio telescopes. As such, the ngVLA core will be a powerful instrument for studying the cold baryon cycle that drives the early evolution of galaxies and clusters.Comment: To be published in the ASP Monograph Series, "Science with a Next-Generation VLA", ed. E. J. Murphy (ASP, San Francisco, CA) - 8 pages, 4 figure