Microenterprise development, industrial labour, and the seductions of precarity

Microenterprise development is underpinned by an ideology that the solution to poverty is the integration of the poor into market relations. This article addresses the paradox that its ‘beneficiaries’ may be dispossessed industrial workers who already have a long history of participation in the capitalist economy. Exploring the transformation of garment workers in Trinidad from factory employees to home-based ‘micro-entrepreneurs’, I argue that working conditions and labour rights have deteriorated under the protective cover of seemingly laudable policies to promote economic empowerment via self-employment. Showing how microenterprise initiatives contribute to women workers’ ‘adverse incorporation’ (Phillips, 2011) into global production networks, this article calls for renewed attention to the labour politics of microenterprise development

The Global Governance of Paid Domestic Work: Comparing the Impact of ILO Convention No. 189 in Ecuador and India

This article looks at the gradual development of a ‘global governance of paid domestic work’ by assessing the impact of the ILO Convention n. 189 on campaigns for domestic workers’ rights in different countries. Here I compare the case of Ecuador and India as two contrasting examples of the ways in which state and non-state organizations have positioned themselves around the issue, revealing how the context-dependent character of domestic workers’ rights can ultimately condition the mobilisation of different actors in each context. On the basis of the theory of ‘strategic fields of action’, I also define the promulgation of C189 as an ‘exogenous change’ that has differing impacts on the relevant social actors in two countries. As I will show, these national differences give shape to a very different modality in campaigns for domestic workers’ rights, resulting in different roles, purposes and scope of action for key social actors

The family factor: How collaborative dialogue between owner managers and the owner family shapes firm-level outcomes

The influence of the owner family on managerial decision-making in family firms is undisputed. However, we know relatively little about how this influence is exerted. Based on upper echelon theory, and in the context of innovation management, we explore the owner family’s influence via collaborative dialogue. Quantitative analyses based on 116 family firms, substantiated by 12 qualitative interviews within seven family firms, show that an owner family’s collaborative dialogue minimizes the influence of an owner manager’s attitude toward risk on TMT innovativeness. On the other hand, the collaborative dialogue strengthens the impact TMT innovativeness has on firm-level innovative capacity

Leveraging Digital Health Platforms in Developing Countries: The Role of Boundary Resources

Part 1: Communities, ICT-Enabled Networks, and DevelopmentInternational audienceThe pervasiveness of digital platforms has resulted in the emergence of digital health platforms addressing various health care needs globally. Digital platforms, typically, bring about an international division of labor between platform owners in developed countries where they are usually developed and platform consumers in developing countries leveraging them. In this relationship, boundary resources, such as documentation and application programming interfaces, are critical elements in the efforts to leverage digital health platforms in developing countries. This paper uses the case of the digital health platform DHIS2 in Malawi to elucidate and discuss the enabling and restricting roles played by boundary resources towards efforts leveraging digital health platforms in developing countries