Business Commons^™

Decision Models For Foreclosed Housing Acquisition And Redevelopment: A University Of Massachusetts Multi-Campus Collaborative Project - Processes And Findings To Date, Michael P. Johnson Jr., Jeffrey Keisler, Senay Solak, David Turcotte, Rachel B. Drew, Armagan Bayram, Emily Vidrine

Jeffrey Keisler

The recent housing foreclosure crisis has had devastating impacts on individuals, communities, organizations and government. In response, several community development corporations (CDCs) have sought new ways to assist neighborhoods suffering from the myriad effects of high foreclosures, including neighborhood instability, increased vandalism and crime, lower property values, and economic disinvestment. This research project focuses on activities of community-based organizations that acquire and redevelop foreclosed properties to support neighborhood stabilization and revitalization. However, the costs of pursuing this strategy far exceed the resources available to typical CDCs. Thus, our project seeks to solve the following decision problem: What subset of a …

The Value Of Government Mandated Location-Based Services In Emergencies In Australia, Anas Aloudat, Katina Michael, Roba Abbas, Mutaz M. Al-Debei

Dr. Mutaz M. Al-Debei

The adoption of mobile technologies for emergency management has the capacity to save lives. In Australia in February 2009, the Victorian Bushfires claimed 173 lives, the worst peace-time disaster in the nation’s history. The Australian government responded swiftly to the tragedy by going to tender for mobile applications that could be used during emergencies, such as mobile alerts and location services. These applications, which are becoming increasingly accurate with the evolution of positioning techniques, have the ability to deliver personalized information direct to the citizen during crises, complementing traditional broadcasting mediums like television and radio. Indeed governments have a responsibility …

The Social And Behavioral Implications Of Location-Based Services, Katina Michael, M.G. Michael

Associate Professor Katina Michael

The social and behavioral implications of location-based services (LBS) are only now beginning to come to light in advanced markets where the services have been adopted by just a little over half the market (Microsoft 2011). Depending on one’s definition of what constitutes location-based services, statistics on the level of adoption differ considerably. While it is helpful to provide as broad a list of applications as possible in what constitutes LBS (e.g. everything from in-vehicle navigation systems to downloading a map using a computer), it can also cloud the real picture forming behind this emerging technology. Emerging not in the …

Poverty Measures And Anti-Poverty Policy, Francois Bourguignon, Gary S. Fields

Gary S Fields

[Excerpt] Amartya Sen has made fundamental contributions to the study of distributional aspects of economic growth and decline. Among his pathbreaking works are his lectures on the economics of inequality (Sen, 1973), his article on the axiomatics of poverty measurement (Sen, 1976), and his book on anti-poverty policy in the context of famines (Sen, 1981). This paper is concerned with one of these areas, namely, the measurement of poverty and the implications for anti-poverty policy. In the 1960's and 1970's those who were working in the poverty field held a number of somewhat incompletely articulated views as to the extent …

Estimating The Effects Of Changing Social Security Benefit Formulas, Gary S. Fields, Olivia S. Mitchell

Gary S Fields

[Excerpt] The U.S. Social Security system faces serious financial difficulties in both the short and the long run. The short-run problem is that the system has very meager financial reserves. In the long run—after the year 2010, when the post-World-War-II baby-boom generation reaches retirement age—the financial problems of Social Security will intensify because of population aging and the consequent decline in the ratio of workers to retirees.

These problems have led to proposed reforms aimed at assuring the financial stability of the system. The question addressed here is: what effects would these reforms have on three variables—retirement ages, retirement incomes, …

Recommendations For Australia’S Implementation Of The National Emergency Warning System Using Location-Based Services, Anas Aloudat, Katina Michael, Roba Abbas

Professor Katina Michael

Mobile alerts, notifications and location-based emergency warning systems are now an established part of mobile government strategies in an increasing number of countries worldwide. In Australia the national emergency warning system (NEWS) was instituted after the tragic Black Saturday Victorian Bushfires of February 2009. In the first phase, NEWS has enabled the provision of public information from the government to the citizen during emergencies anywhere and any time. Moving on from traditional short message service (SMS) notifications and cell broadcasting to more advanced location-based services, this paper provides executive-level recommendations about the viability of location-based mobile phone services in NEWS …

The Impact Of Government Policies On Urban Employment In Small Economies, Gary S. Fields

Gary S Fields

[Excerpt] Most of the policies intended to affect urban employment are not specifically employment policies nor are they specifically urban. Rather, the amount of urban employment, the composition of that employment, and the returns from it are determined by a whole host of policies. To review them all in a short paper is an impossible undertaking. The criterion by which I decided which policies to consider is policy-relevance, asking which set of policies is apt to have the largest impact on employment.

Ownership Unbundling In European Energy Market & Legal Problems Under Eu Law, Michael Diathesopoulos

Michael Diathesopoulos

In this paper we will examine the issue of ownership unbundling and forced divestiture remedies imposed in a series of recent competition law cases of the energy market - examined in other papers - in relation to the possible existence of a series of legal obstacles. These energy market decisions belong to a group of antitrust cases in which a structural divestiture remedy has been imposed under the provisions of Article 9 of Regulation 1/2003. This divestiture refers to transmission networks and to generation capacity and is meant to lead to severe structural changes, which are compatible with the findings …

The Fall-Out From Emerging Technologies: On Matters Of Surveillance, Social Networks And Suicide, M.G. Michael, Katina Michael

M. G. Michael

No abstract provided.

The Fall-Out From Emerging Technologies: On Matters Of Surveillance, Social Networks And Suicide, M.G. Michael, Katina Michael

Professor Katina Michael

No abstract provided.

Waldo In The Light Of Austerity And Federal Debt Crisis, Part 2, Jan Kallberg

Jan Kallberg

Waldo’s predictions about the future for public administration describe five areas that would be problematic in the future: legitimacy, authority, knowledge, control, and confidence. Legitimacy includes not only that the government is legally legitimized but capable and focused on an intention to deliver the “good society.” Authority, according to Waldo, is the ability to implement policy with the acceptance of the people based on rationalism, expectations of public good, ethics, superior knowledge, and institutional contexts. Knowledge is institutional knowledge, the ability to arrange and utilize knowledge within the bureaucracy since coordination is the major challenge in knowledge management. Government has …

Waldo In The Light Of Austerity And Federal Debt Crisis, Part 1, Jan Kallberg

Jan Kallberg

Dwight Waldo wrote The Enterprise of Public Administration in 1979 looking back on a long and fruitful academic career, but also as a reflection about the future for public administration. Can a 30 year old book still be relevant? You bet. Today, the public sector is increasingly facing fiscal challenges. Federal, state, and local governments throughout the country have major budget deficits followed by austerity measures that undermine the ability to deliver the good life of the future. In this day and age rereading Dwight Waldo’s The Enterprise of Public Administration is an intellectual exercise worth pursuing. Several of Dwight …

Making A Difference: Enhancing The Impact Of Partnerships For The Social Good, Maria May Seitanidi

Maria May Seitanidi

Call for Abstracts and Posters 3rd International Symposium on Cross Sector Social Interactions 24-25 May 2012, University of Erasmus, Rotterdam, The Netherlands info@partnershipsresourcecentre.org Organised by: The Partnerships Resource Centre in Collaboration with Hull University Business School This is the full version of the CFP. NEW DEADLINE FOR ABSTRACTS: 30 November 2011

Annual Review Of Social Partnerships Issue 6, Maria May Seitanidi

Maria May Seitanidi

This is the 6th Issue of the Annual Review of Social Partnerships previously known as the NPO-BUS Partnerships Bulletin.

Competition Law And Sector Regulation In The European Energy Market After The Third Energy Package: Hierarchy And Efficiency, Michael Diathesopoulos

Michael Diathesopoulos

The aim of this research is to provide the basic parameters for a model for the definition of the relation between the general competition and sector specific frameworks and rules regarding the regulation of the Internal Energy Market, especially after the Third Energy Package. The research considers the recent sector specific framework in relation to a series of recent competition law cases of the Energy Market where structural remedies were applied under the commitments procedure. Essential facilities doctrine and generally competition law tools do not seem to provide a suitable framework for effectively addressing the dynamic competition concept, treating the …

Policies Towards Highly Skilled Immigrants: Comparative Analysis Of Canada, Usa And Eu, Hristina Petrova

Hristina Petrova

Master's thesis summary and conclusions in English

Collective Choice, Justin Schwartz

Justin Schwartz

This short nontechnical article reviews the Arrow Impossibility Theorem and its implications for rational democratic decisionmaking. In the 1950s, economist Kenneth J. Arrow proved that no method for producing a unique social choice involving at least three choices and three actors could satisfy four seemingly obvious constraints that are practically constitutive of democratic decisionmaking. Any such method must violate such a constraint and risks leading to disturbingly irrational results such and Condorcet cycling. I explain the theorem in plain, nonmathematical language, and discuss the history, range, and prospects of avoiding what seems like a fundamental theoretical challenge to the possibility …

The Use Of Environmental Health And Safety Research In Nanotechnology Research, Jan Youtie, Alan L. Porter, Philip Shapira, Li Tang, Troy Benn

Philip Shapira

Environmental, health, and safety (EHS) concerns are receiving considerable attention in the development of nanoscience and nanotechnology (nano) R&D, underscored by the perspective that EHS work should be developed alongside the scientific research rather than subsequent to applications. This positioning of nano EHS suggests the importance of early understanding and measurement of the diffusion of nano EHS science. This research examines the diffusion of nano EHS publications, defined through a set of search terms, into a global nanotechnology R&D database developed at Georgia Tech. The results indicate that nano EHS research is growing rapidly although it is orders of magnitude …

Beyond Competing Theories Of The Hidden Economy, Colin C. Williams

Colin C Williams

Purpose – This paper aims to evaluate critically the validity of rival theorisations of the hidden economy that variously read this sphere as a leftover from a previous era, a by-product of a new emergent form of capitalism, a complement to formal employment or an alternative to the formal economy. Until now, the common tendency among economic theorists has been to either universally privilege one theorisation over others, or to represent each theory as valid in different places. Design/methodology/approach – To evaluate their validity to the city of Moscow, a survey is reported involving 313 face-to-face interviews with inhabitants conducted …

Evaluating The Nature Of The Relationship Between Informal Entrepreneurship And The Formal Economy In Rural Communities, Colin C. Williams

Colin C Williams

This paper evaluates critically the different theorizations of the nature of the relationship between informal entrepreneurship and the formal economy, which variously depict informal entrepreneurship as a leftover from a previous era, a survival practice for those excluded from the formal economy, and a complement or an alternative to participation in the formal economy. Reporting evidence from 350 face-to-face interviews in English rural communities, no single theorization is found to be universally applicable. Instead, all are shown to be valid in relation to different forms of informal entrepreneurship, and only by combining them is it feasible to achieve a finer-grained, …

The Illusion Of Capitalism In Contemporary Sub-Saharan Africa: A Case Study Of The Gambia, Colin C. Williams

Colin C Williams

Purpose – This paper aims to evaluate critically the meta-narrative that there is no alternative to capitalism. Building upon an emerging body of post-structuralist thought that has begun deconstructing this discourse in relation to western economies and post-Soviet societies, this paper further extends this critique to Sub-Saharan Africa by investigating the degree to which people in the Gambia rely on the capitalist market economy for their livelihood. Reporting the results of 80 household face-to-face interviews (involving over 500 people), the finding is that only a small minority of households in contemporary Gambian society rely on the formal market economy alone …

Rethinking The Nature Of Community Economies: Some Lessons From Post-Soviet Ukraine, Colin C. Williams

Colin C Williams

This paper contributes to a small but growing body of thought that has questioned the hegemony of capitalism by revealing the persistence of multifarious economic practices in everyday community economies. To further advance this school of thought, first, a conceptual framework is developed to map the diverse economic practices used by communities and second, this is applied through a survey of 600 households in Ukraine. The outcome is to reveal that just as multifarious economic practices prevailed under state socialism, the same applies in societies in transition to capitalism, suggesting that there are alternative futures for community economies beyond market …

Women Entrepreneurs In The Indian Informal Sector, Colin C. Williams

Colin C Williams

Purpose – Studies on women entrepreneurs either view women through a structuralist lens, as marginalised populations engaged in low-quality work, or through a neo-liberal lens, as engaged in relatively higher quality endeavour more as a rational choice. The aim of this paper is to evaluate critically these explanations in relation to women entrepreneurs in the informal sector in India. Design/methodology/approach – To evaluate the contrasting explanations of structuralist and new liberal approaches, questionnaire surveys were conducted in two phases, namely 2007 and 2010, over a period of several months. The sample design was stratified random and the sample was taken …

On Equality: The Anti-Interference Principle, Donald J. Kochan

Donald J. Kochan

This Essay introduces the “Anti-Interference Principle” – a new term on the meaning of equality, or at least one not yet so-named in the equality lexicon – as a necessary foundation for achieving the goal of true equality. Equality has a long-standing place in the discussion of politics and jurisprudence and remains a struggle of definition today. Rather than rehash the mass of scholarship, this Essay seeks to summarize the general equality concept, and propose that the legal discourse on equality center on a requirement that governmental power must protect and respect equal treatment and opportunity, unconstrained, not equal outcomes. …