Business Commons^™

Crafting An Innovation Ecosystem That Works For Working People, Amanda Ballantyne, Patrick Woodall, Katie Corrigan, Edward Wytkind

New England Journal of Public Policy

The rapid pace and expanding scope of technological change is reshaping work and the workplace. These innovations can benefit workers by improving safety, reducing physical or repetitive burdens, or creating new types of jobs. But automation and new technologies can also eliminate workers, deskill occupations, reduce autonomy and job satisfaction, and erode economic stability for working families that contribute to the rising economic and racial inequality. These technologies do not fall from the sky; they are incubated in an innovation ecosystem shaped by public policy and public-research funding that is driven largely by an oligopoly of Big Tech companies and …

Reshaping The Digitization Of Public Services, Christina J. Colclough

New England Journal of Public Policy

Across the world, public services are rapidly being digitized. However, because of poor public procurement supplier contracts, poor laws, and a lack of governance processes and bodies, and because of competency gaps from all parties involved, digitization is happening in a void. As a consequence, harms are caused and rights are violated, threatening the future of quality public services. From the vantage point of public services as a service as well as a workplace, this article discusses potential remedies to ensure that digitalization does not affect the quality of public services as services and as places of employment. It spells …

Collective Bargaining And Digitalization: A Global Survey Of Union Use Of Collective Bargaining To Increase Worker Control Over Digitalization, Eckhard Voss, Daniel Bertossa

New England Journal of Public Policy

This article outlines and collates exemplary clauses from collective bargaining agreements and similar sources, such as guidelines for union negotiators on digitalization in public and private services. Based on the evaluation of agreements and single clauses and their mapping along seven key dimensions of workers’ rights and protection as regards digital technology in the workplace, the research shows that collective bargaining provides clear added value in the absence of legal provisions and by complementing and tailoring existing regulation to sectoral and workplace specificities, new emerging risks, and other challenges. The research that will feed into an online database on the …

Introduction, Marcy Murninghan

New England Journal of Public Policy

America faces a reckoning, a crucible of what Reinhold Niebuhr observed more than eighty years ago. Our democratic principles and traditions are imperiled by the power of financial oligarchs and unfettered money flows, which have contributed to massive inequality that, in turn, has given rise to political unrest and a sense of cultural unmooring.

The articles presented here are both descriptive and normative, setting forth a complex social problem with seemingly bottomless proportions and then offering a design or set of remedial actions to alleviate them. Drawing on my professional experience going back to the mid-1970s, I wrote these pieces …

Improving Impact: Collaborative Multi-Party, Multi-Sector Engagement (2011), Marcy Murninghan

New England Journal of Public Policy

Most people do not realize the full implications of the fact that we live now in an era marked more by networks than hierarchies. Nowadays, power is distributed across boundaries and borders, rather than concentrated in one place—be it a physical setting, demographic group, industrial sector, or professional discipline. Thanks to systems thinking and the ubiquity of digital tools and platforms, there are many more opportunities for lawmakers, policymakers, and economic institutions to collaborate with concerned citizens on critical public issues, thereby breaking the grip of lobbyists, third-party intermediaries, and the power elite. On top of that are recent breakthroughs …

A Framework For Good Ownership And Good Governance (1999), Marcy Murninghan

New England Journal of Public Policy

This article encapsulates a more extensive analysis that was commissioned by The Boston Foundation’s board of trustees in December 1998 to investigate its investment practices and identify ways in which its asset management decisions might be brought into fuller alignment with its charitable purpose—without conceding earnings or undermining its philanthropic fiduciary responsibility. The undertaking was spurred by the leadership of Robert A. Glassman, co-founder and co-chair of Wainwright Bank and a trustee of The Boston Foundation (TBF) since 1985, who took the reins from David Rockefeller Jr. in 1995 as chair of TBF’s investment committee. The research project built on …

Common Sense And Civic Virtue: Institutional Investors, Responsible Ownership, And The Democratic Ideal, Marcy Murninghan

New England Journal of Public Policy

On matters of governance, the people’s good is the highest law, as Cicero said two millennia ago. Unfortunately, these days personal greed has trumped the people’s good, enflaming the current governance crisis affecting our public, nonprofit, and private spheres. The spate of corporate governance scandals over the past several years jeopardizes equity investments, harms beneficiaries, and weakens global capital markets. The remedy is not just more laws and regulation but revitalization of the system of corporate checks and balances that already exists. To get better corporate governance, corporate shareowners, especially institutional investors, need to assert their rights and responsibilities more …

We've Got The Power: Rise Of Women Entrepreneurs, Phyllis Swersky, Aileen Gorman, Jessica Reardon

New England Journal of Public Policy

The authors address women’s recent entrepreneurial successes in local, national, and international settings, offering, as a case study, one nonprofit organization whose mission is to support women entrepreneurs and help them grow: The Commonwealth Institute. In examining The Commonwealth Institute, the authors provide insight into the challenges facing some of the women entrepreneurs they work with in Massachusetts. They also offer some strategies to make sure women continue to make a significant contribution to New England’s economy.

Software And Internet Industry Workers: Implications For The Future Of Work In Massachusetts, Sarah Kuhn, Paula Raymann

New England Journal of Public Policy

Those at the leading edge of the new economy — workers in software and Internet workplaces — can tell us something about the future of work in our new world. The authors have conducted a National Science Foundation-funded study of women and men working in IT. They find that while pay and the opportunity to do interesting work are major attractions, challenges facing this workforce include stress, difficulties balancing work and family, and concerns about employment security. While women and men reported similar attitudes and experiences in many areas, in others there were still significant differences.

Common Sense And Civic Virtue: Institutional Investors, Responsible Ownership, And The Democratic Ideal, Marcy Murninghan

New England Journal of Public Policy

On matters of governance, the people’s good is the highest law, as Cicero said two millennia ago. Unfortunately, these days personal greed has trumped the people’s good, enflaming the current governance crisis affecting our public, nonprofit, and private spheres. The spate of corporate governance scandals over the past several years jeopardizes equity investments, harms beneficiaries, and weakens global capital markets. The remedy is not just more laws and regulation but revitalization of the system of corporate checks and balances that already exists. To get better corporate governance, corporate shareowners, especially institutional investors, need to assert their rights and responsibilities more …

Business Ownership Patterns Among Black, Latina, And Asian Women In Massachusetts, Russell E. Williams

Trotter Review

Using data from the most recently released Survey of Minority Businesses, this article explores the significance of businesses owned by minority women in Massachusetts. I describe the number of such businesses, the rates at which the number of such businesses are expanding, and the average sales and receipts of women-owned businesses — and I compare these statistics for White, Black, Latino and Asian businesses.

The Meaning Of Black Entrepreneurship In Constructing Community, Stacey Sutton

Trotter Review

The small business sector in the United States has traditionally been viewed as a strong source of economic growth and prosperity, as entrepreneurship epitomizes the quintessential American fantasy of rugged individualism. Given the myths about larger-than-life entrepreneurial heroes, business development has historically been touted as a viable trajectory toward economic and social mobility for immigrant groups and marginalized people. Stories about "great" American businessmen such as John D. Rockefeller, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs among others, often highlight rags-to-riches myths about innumerable possibilities within American capitalism given diligence, fierce competition, and an uncompromising work ethic. The work values of small business …

Comparable Worth: Pay Equity And Women Of Color, Elizabeth A. Sherman

Trotter Review

The relationship between women of color and community economic development is fundamentally a question of income. And, for women, questions of income more often than not become questions of pay equity - whether or not women and men are receiving equal pay for equal, or comparable work. Because the economy retains entrenched vestiges of sexual discrimination, the solutions to such problems lie within the political realm, where laws to ensure equality are created and enforced. In this regard, women themselves have a vital role to play as activists focusing on mitigating the barriers to opportunity that have depressed women's well …

Improving Education And Training For Economic Development, Joan Mcrae Stoia

New England Journal of Public Policy

This article explores the connections between workforce quality and economic prosperity, as well as the role of the Massachusetts education and training system, in developing and preserving that quality and supporting the state's key industries. It includes a review of the most recent employment trend and projection data available from the Massachusetts Department of Employment and Training, information about several business-based workplace education models, and a discussion of the specific education and training needs of workers across the age/skill continuum. For the purpose of this discussion, the education and training system are broadly defined to include existing public, private, and …

Recent Changes In The Structure And Value Of African-American Male Occupations, Jeremiah P. Cotton

Trotter Review

The occupational structure of black men has undergone major changes in recent years, shifting from largely blue-collar to white-collar and service occupations. At the same time there has been a decline in both the relative and absolute value of black male occupations. Moreover, it appears that labor-market discrimination still plays a significant role in the disparity between black and white male occupational earnings.