Making Work Pay: U.S. American models for a German context?

This paper examines efforts to make work pay, concentrating on U.S. American and German policies and experiments. We are specifically interested in fleshing out the relevance of U.S. American models for a German context as well as the special characteristics of the German situation which do not allow a mere „copying“ of the models. There is no established negative income tax in Germany, but current experiments are being conducted, in order to assess how successful incentives could be in lowering the high levels of welfare caseloads and easing the transition from welfare to work. High unemployment rates and guaranteed social assistance (and unemployment insurance) have caused a German version of the poverty trap, where few incentives exist for people to find work. This paper examines the normative, political and economic situation of each country with specific experiments and studies of tax credits. The U.S. American early negative income tax (NIT) experiments in the 1970s, the present day Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), and two recent experiments to make work pay are discussed. The historical, political and economic context of Germany is evaluated for a possible earned income tax credit, and fledgling tax credit experiments that are currently being conducted in Germany are discussed. A negative income tax is defined in this paper as a cash payment to individuals and families from respective governments that acts to subsidize personal income up to a predetermined level. There is a minimum benefit level, a marginal tax rate and a break-even point. The higher the benefit level and the break-even point, the more a negative income tax will cost the government (Zimmerman 1995). Before describing specific tax programs, we first outline the country's welfare state developments with respect to financial incentives for work. The following is a closer consideration of the U.S.-American and German public assistance and tax systems. The U.S. and Germany have very different welfare regimes and negative income taxes should inevitably fit into the respective welfare structures in different ways, fulfilling different goals.

A Capability Approach for Official German Poverty and Wealth Reports: Conceptual Background and First Empirical Results

The majority of the literature related to Amartya Sen´s Capability Approach (CA) has been devoted to questions of development and developing countries. In this paper, however, with a theoretical concept and first empirical results at hand, we shed some light on Sen´s argument that the CA is also relevant to wealthy countries (Sen, 1999, p. 6). First, we discuss the political background of CA applications in the case of Germany. Second, we sketch out a new analytical framework for the assessment of poverty and wealth in affluent countries in general from a CA perspective. Third, we show how this framework can be based on a corresponding set of feasible indicators and up-to-date representative information in the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (GSOEP). Finally, three selected empirical examples underline the resulting possibilities for analyses of gender inequalities, the unequal distribution of political participation and interdependencies between financial and nonfinancial issues of poverty and wealth within this integrative framework.poverty, wealth, capabilities, Amartya Sen, affluent countries, poverty determinants.

CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY IMPACTS ON SUSTAINABLE HUMAN DEVELOPMENT

The goal of this article is to critically analyze the findings of the first, recently published, studies about Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) impacts on Sustainable Human Development (SHD). We aim at deriving conclusions for effective CSR strategies and at identifying consequences for management and research. As CSR claims to create value for corporations and for society, we argue that the people-centered Capability Approach (CA) is promising to provide neglected and much needed insights how corporate activities affect individuals and communities. Based on a survey of recent literature addressing CSR impacts on SHD, we highlight CSR potentials to improve average well-being in multiple dimensions of SHD. Moreover, we critically assess challenges and limitations of CSR as a strategy to preserve and foster SHD. For instance, studies have shown that, despite CSR-driven well-being increases, social capital, relational capabilities and collective agency may become challenged by corporate strategies. Moreover, corporate environmental impacts have been found to be less often addressed by both, companies and SHD researchers. Resulting inequality and fairness issues have been identified as causes of violence against corporations even in the presence of total well-being improvements. We conclude that companies should strategically take into account a comprehensive range of factors driving and hampering SHD to account for their whole portfolio of corporate opportunities and risks. This requires evaluating CSR impacts instead of only focusing on CSR inputs and outputs. Thereby, corporations can mitigate their risks, improve their stakeholder trust and strengthen their competitiveness.</p

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) und Netzwerkgovernance

Gegenstand der Forschungsinitiative ist die Frage, welchen Beitrag Unternehmen der Wirtschaft bei der Lösung gesellschaftlicher Aufgaben, die auf der Schnittstelle von Politik und Wirtschaft angesiedelt sind, leisten können und sollen. Dabei wird insbesondere ihre Rolle in interorganisationalen Netzwerken analysiert. Konzeptionelle Basis wird die Entwicklung einer „Stakeholder-Governance-Theorie (SGT)“ sein. Empirisch substanziiert wird dieses Forschungskonzept im Kontext des Human Development, insbesondere im Hinblick auf den Umgang mit knappen und moralisch sensiblen Wasserressourcen, und auf die Managementstandards für die Wahrnehmung gesellschaftlicher Verantwortung. Hierbei werden die besonderen Chancen und Herausforderungen für kleine und mittlere Unternehmen (KMU) von forschungsleitendem Interesse sein

Sustainable human development: corporate challenges and potentials: the case of Bayer CropScience's cotton seed production in rural Karnataka (India)

This paper aims to explore concepts, methods and empirical results of potential impacts of Transnational Corporations (TNC) on Sustainable Human Development (SHD) in emerging market countries. In doing so, a further major goal is to explain, illustrate and discuss how the theoretical CA framework used in the GeNECA project2 can be applied to corporate SHD impacts. Our findings are based on the case of Bayer CropScience’s Model Village Project in rural Karnataka, India. To achieve our goals, we first establish a theoretical framework for assessing corporate impacts on SHD to capture SHD effects. Thereafter, we introduce the case of Bayer CropScience’s seed production in rural India, for which a “Model Village Project (MVP)” has been established to explore ways, potentials and challenges of promoting SHD of the villagers and corporate goals in a win-win-strategy. Afterwards, we explain methodological requirements, our representative database for the quantitative analyses, and the qualitative methods that we use for project evaluation. Based on findings of the authors’ external evaluation of the MVP, we discuss the baseline situation in the model villages with respect to corporate potentials, challenges and limitations to foster SHD impacts. Methodologically, we find the combination of quantitative representative methods and qualitative assessments to be most effective to capture corporate potentials and risks. Furthermore it turns out to be promising to extend the analyses beyond standardized benchmarks like the MDGs. We show that major determinants of SHD established in the paper result in a portfolio of corporate opportunities and risks. For instance, the reality of underemployment in the model villages provides specific corporate opportunities like an abundant pool of labor supply. However, it also produces corporate risks, e.g. lack of capital available for necessary investment by suppliers who frequently suffer from poverty, risk of over-indebtedness and a resulting inability to accumulate enough capital and to raise productivity. In the comprehensive opportunity and riskportfolio of this Bayer CropScience case, we find abundant potential business cases which we discuss further in the text. We conclude that corporate potentials as well as risks of corporate neglect and violations of people-centered SHD also depend on how much the villagers are enabled and empowered to make most of their agency as individuals and as groups. Furthermore, it depends on trust building as a prerequisite of awareness raising of the villagers themselves, so that they are willing and able to participate successfully in the undertaken procedures

Bayer CropScience model village project: Contributions to agricultural suppliers’ competitiveness and human development

Bayer CropScience is carrying out a Model Village Project (MVP) in rural India as part of their supply chain management and their corporate social responsibility activities. The MVP includes actions related to future business cases and higher competitiveness as well as philanthropic activities. The preparation of future business case actions aims at creating prerequisites for win-win-situations. In the long run, these prerequisites, such as long-term business relations with suppliers based on trust from both sides, can lead to a higher competitiveness of the whole supply chain and simultaneously improve human development. The impacts on the latter are evaluated using the capability approach (CA) developed by Amartya Sen (2000, c1999). The case of the MVP indicates the potential of companies to contribute to human development on a strategic win-win basis. Actions have to be distinguished based on the living and financial conditions different supplier groups face. In the future, the MVP aims at assessing whether and how MNCs may be able to combine competitive enhancement with human development, provided that potential corporate risks for the villagers’ human development are also taken into account

Möglichkeiten und Grenzen der politischen Realisierbarkeit intra- und intergenerativer Gerechtigkeit

Ziel dieses GeNECA-Diskussionspapiers ist eine Analyse der Realisierbarkeit intra- und intergenerativer Gerechtigkeit aus ökonomischer Perspektive sowie hierauf aufbauender inhaltlicher und methodischer Schlussfolgerungen

Nicht nur über, auch mit Geflüchteten reden. Verwirklichungschancen, Einschränkungen und Integration aus der Sicht Geflüchteter

Der Band dokumentiert konzeptionelle Grundlagen, Ergebnisse und Erfahrungen eines Projekts forschenden Lernens zu Lebenssituation und Perspektiven Geflüchteter in Deutschland. Aufbauend auf Amartya Sens Capability-Ansatz wurde mit insgesamt 76 Geflüchteten in qualitativen Interviews erörtert, was ihnen für ihr Leben wichtig ist, was sie davon erreichen können und mit welchen Einschränkungen sie sich konfrontiert sehen. Hierauf aufbauend lassen sich Rückschlüsse auf Verwirklichungschancen (Capabilities) und Handlungsfähigkeit Geflüchteter, aber auch auf integrationspolitischen Handlungsbedarf ziehen. Zudem werden der Einsatz des Capability-Ansatzes als Analyserahmen für Fluchtmigration erörtert und die Ergebnisse aus migrationsethischer und methodischer Perspektive diskutiert. Nicht zuletzt werden die Erfahrungen der am Projekt beteiligten Studierenden sowie der Kultur- und Sprachmittler/innen aufgezeigt