Disability in the Workplace in China: Situation Assessment

A compelling argument can be made that employment of people with disabilities should be gaining recognition as an underutilized weapon in the talent wars of Asia. One has only to look at the proportion of people with disabilities that make up our communities, the continuing employment disparities that people with disabilities continue to face and the resulting high levels of poverty for this population – up against the talent shortages in fast-growth markets across the region. As China’s skewed demographic dynamics become increasingly apparent, resulting in a rapidly aging population and a diminishing supply of workforce entrants, an increasing share of the workforce will include older employees with disabilities, necessitating a fundamental change in workplace practices involving people with disabilities, as well as a greater need to look at persons with disabilities as a potential source of talent. Although China has created a broad legislative framework to protect the right to work for persons with disabilities, it lacks specificity and clear measures of enforcement, as evidenced in continued employment marginalization, poor educational outcomes, and thus higher poverty levels of persons with disabilities. To further understanding of workforce inclusion of persons with disabilities in China, and to identify practical ways forward for employers, The Conference Board China Center and the K. Lisa Yang and Hock E. Tan Institute on Employment and Disability (YTI) at Cornell University’s ILR School partnered to explore how companies can tap the talent pool of people with disabilities and improve their employment outcomes. The scope of the research encompassed a series of interviews with disability rights-focused NGOs in China, a detailed literature review, a comprehensive review of China’s regulatory framework supporting employment for persons with disabilities, and a detailed assessment of the demographics of disability and the status of people with disabilities in China such as prevalence rates, access to education, employment disparities and resulting poverty and household income rates. This report draws from the broader research findings and provides business practitioners with an overview of the current situation, challenges, and root causes of employment barriers for persons with disabilities in China. To complement this work, The China Center and YTI convened a practitioner roundtable in Beijing in September 2018. Participants explored in detail how the official, publicly available data on living and working conditions of persons with disabilities compare to actual experiences of employers in China, whether companies are actively recruiting disabled workers, what the internal and external obstacles are to recruitment, and what the impact of the government quota system is, for good or for bad. A separate report on this roundtable is also availabl

The American Academy of Health Behavior 2017 Annual Scientific Meeting: Health Behavior Research in the Age of Personalized Medicine

The American Academy of Health Behavior (AAHB) hosted its Annual Scientific Meeting at Loews Ventana Canyon in Tucson, AZ March 19-22, 2017. The theme of the meeting was “Health Behavior Research in the Age of Personalized Medicine.” This publication describes the meeting theme, podium presentations and workshop, and includes the refereed abstracts presented at the 2017 Annual Scientific Meeting

Leveling the Playing Field Executive Summary

Recession or boom, business leaders consider finding and keeping the right talent a constant challenge. Executives spend significant amounts of time and money recruiting, retaining, and promoting the employees they think have the talent to secure success. Leveling the Playing Field: Attracting, Engaging, and Advancing People with Disabilities, a report from The Conference Board that is based on a year’s worth of research by the Research Working Group for Improving Employment Outcomes for People with Disabilities, explores how people with disabilities, including recent veterans, can be part of the talent solution—both as a source of talent and a spur to make organizations better places to work. People with disabilities may even be a bellwether of changes in the workplace for all employees. As demonstrated in a case study about Walgreens in the full research report, employers who foster the employment of people with disabilities often see benefits for all employees and the organization as a whole. Employers may become more motivated to attract, engage, and advance people with disabilities in coming years. For one thing, the proportion of the workforce with disabilities will increase as the population ages. Improvements in technology and work design will also make access to work and the work itself easier for all employees, making it simpler to accommodate existing workers and hire people with disabilities. These employment strategies may even result in new opportunities for developing competitive advantage

Political Mediation and American Old-Age Security Exceptionalism

Debates over America’s heavy reliance on employer-provided private pensions have understated the profound role organized labor played after World War II. Archival evidence from prominent unions and business associations suggests that the shift in organized labor’s strategy after the New Deal toward electoral activity helps explain critical interventions by Northern Democrats into the system of private pensioning in the postwar period that laid the foundation for America’s old-age security system. Such a strategy was insufficient, however, to expand Social Security. This article offers a political mediation account of electoral activity as a source of labor influence on social policy that draws on political institutionalist and class power theories

Dedication - John Simpson Hastings

The Board of Editors dedicates this issue of the Indiana Law Journal to the memory of the honorable John Simpson Hastings. In a manner befitting the man, many of Judge Hastings\u27 friends and associates have provided their personal remarks regarding his achievements on the bench and as an active alumnus of Indiana University. We hope that these remarks will serve in some small way to preserve the memory of a truly great man

The Dark Side of Transfer Pricing: Its Role in Tax Avoidance and Wealth Retentiveness

In conventional accounting literature, ?transfer pricing? is portrayed as a technique for optimal allocation of costs and revenues amongst divisions, subsidiaries and joint ventures within a group of related entities. Such representations of transfer pricing simultaneously acknowledge and occlude how it is deeply implicated in processes of wealth retentiveness that enable companies to avoid taxes and facilitate the flight of capital. A purely technical conception of transfer pricing calculations abstracts them from the politico-economic contexts of their development and use. The context is the modern corporation in an era of globalized trade and its relationship to state tax authorities, shareholders and other possible stakeholders. Transfer pricing practices are responsive to opportunities for determining values in ways that are consequential for enhancing private gains, and thereby contributing to relative social impoverishment, by avoiding the payment of public taxes. Evidence is provided by examining some of the transfer prices practices used by corporations to avoid taxes in developing and developed economies

Getting embedded together: new partnerships for twentieth-century Catholic education

The educational landscape is undergoing a level of change unparalleled since the 1960s. The creation of ‘Free Schools’ and ‘multi-academy trusts’ (MATs), coupled with the changing demographic of urban populations and fiscal constraints, are requiring schools and dioceses to strategically address how to maintain and sustain a successful Catholic educational offer for future generations. In this chapter, we will argue that a cohesive approach between Catholic Higher Education Institutions (HEIs), schools and dioceses affords the best opportunity for delivering success and maintaining Catholic educational distinctiveness. Within a theological framework, we contend that this is realised through the paradigm of the sacramental perspective which interweaves the sacred and the secular and calls all to be ‘embedded together’

A Quasi-Experimental Evaluation of Tuition Reimbursement in Municipal Government

An evaluation of the tuition reimbursement program for a mid-sized mid-Atlantic city was undertaken using both surveys and quasi-experimental techniques. Contrary to recent criticisms of tuition reimbursement programs, the survey findings indicate generally perceived benefits of the program among participants, supervisors and non-participant co-workers. The quasi-experi mental phase of the research determined a 56% higher promotion rate among participants than among non-participants; moreover, program participants were much more likely to remain in city employment than were non-participants.Yeshttps://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/manuscript-submission-guideline