Le «travail soutenable» n’a pas de définition claire. Ses diverses dimensions ont jusqu’à présent été étudiées par des courants de la recherche différents, alors que les implications politiques des appels en faveur d’un «travail soutenable» ont suscité peu d’intérêt. Ce dossier spécial montre qu’il est nécessaire d’adopter une approche intégrant ces différents courants pour appréhender les conflits politiques inhérents au concept, ainsi que ses différentes dimensions et leur potentiel. Cette introduction présente l’éclairage que les divers contributeurs au dossier apportent sur ces dimensions et leur nature politique.
À partir de données de l’enquête longitudinale administrée auprès des ménages au Royaume-Uni, les auteurs utilisent des méthodes de panel et de régression quantile inconditionnelle pour étudier la pénalité à la maternité au Royaume-Uni. Les estimations issues des modèles de panel montrent qu’en moyenne la pénalité existe toujours. Toutefois, la régression quantile inconditionnelle révèle qu’elle est très variable selon le niveau de la distribution salariale: elle est plus élevée dans la moitié inférieure, demeurant statistiquement significative dans tous les quantiles jusqu’à la médiane. Au-delà, elle s’amenuise et se transforme même en prime au sommet de la distribution.
Purpose: This study investigated the nonlinear impact of three institutional–developmental indicators of e-government development, human development, and governance effectiveness on Iran’s GDP during the period 2010–2024. The main objective was to determine not only their individual effects but also their optimal combinations for enhancing sustainable economic growth.
Methodology: The research was quantitative and applied, relying on global secondary data. Response Surface Methodology (RSM) was employed to analyze linear, quadratic, and interactive effects among the variables. This approach allowed for the construction of second-order models and the identification of optimal policy points, which conventional linear econometric models often fail to capture.
Findings: The results show that e-government development exerts the strongest and most significant positive influence on GDP growth, highlighting its significant role in economic performance. Governance effectiveness also demonstrates a positive and accelerating relationship, confirming that improvements in institutional quality drive stronger economic expansion. By contrast, human development exerts a positive effect at lower levels but encounters diminishing returns beyond a threshold, indicating a “saturation effect” that may reduce efficiency in resource-constrained contexts.
Originality: For the first time in Iran, this study applies RSM to model nonlinear institutional effects on GDP, offering an innovative framework for data-driven policy analysis.
Recommendations: Policymakers should prioritize strengthening e-government and improving governance effectiveness. Moreover, organizations should design human development strategies with attention to marginal returns to ensure long-term productivity.
Economic growth, development, planning, Employee participation in management. Employee ownership. Industrial democracy. Works councils
Michele Azzone, Matteo Ghesini, Davide Stocco
et al.
Climate-related phenomena are increasingly affecting regions worldwide, manifesting as floods, water scarcity, and heat waves, significantly impairing companies' assets and productivity. It is essential for asset managers to quantify the exposure of their portfolios to such risk. To this aim, we develop a framework based on the Vasicek model for credit risk that introduces downward jumps due to climate phenomena in a company asset's dynamics. These negative shocks are designed to mirror the negative effect of extreme climate events. The model calibration relies on companies' asset intensity and geographical exposure. We apply the new multivariate firm value model with jumps to assess the impact of climate-related extreme events on expected and unexpected portfolio losses. Our findings indicate that expected losses increase over time, with pronounced differences in exposure observed across sectoral indices. From an environmental policy perspective, these results suggest the need for additional capital buffers to offset losses arising from physical climate risks, particularly in sectors with high asset intensity.
Anomaly detection plays a vital role in the inspection of industrial images. Most existing methods require separate models for each category, resulting in multiplied deployment costs. This highlights the challenge of developing a unified model for multi-class anomaly detection. However, the significant increase in inter-class interference leads to severe missed detections. Furthermore, the intra-class overlap between normal and abnormal samples, particularly in synthesis-based methods, cannot be ignored and may lead to over-detection. To tackle these issues, we propose a novel Center-aware Residual Anomaly Synthesis (CRAS) method for multi-class anomaly detection. CRAS leverages center-aware residual learning to couple samples from different categories into a unified center, mitigating the effects of inter-class interference. To further reduce intra-class overlap, CRAS introduces distance-guided anomaly synthesis that adaptively adjusts noise variance based on normal data distribution. Experimental results on diverse datasets and real-world industrial applications demonstrate the superior detection accuracy and competitive inference speed of CRAS. The source code and the newly constructed dataset are publicly available at https://github.com/cqylunlun/CRAS.
PurposeThis paper examines the relationship between employee involvement in decision-making (in particular codetermination) and corporate social responsibility, i.e. extra-financial or environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance.Design/methodology/approachLiterature review was done based on the following methodology: synthesis of existing knowledge, bringing together and summarising published work on the relationship between codetermination and CSR; identification of potential gaps in the literature, highlighting what has been little studied in the field; assessment of the quality, relevance and limitations of existing studies and following citation standards to acknowledge the work of other researchers.FindingsCodetermination has a rather positive impact on extra-financial performance. The special status of employee directors, who combine independence (from management) with knowledge of the company and its sector, may generate better strategic choices and enhanced oversight of management action, with positive consequences for ESG performance overall. Regarding, more specifically, governance, although codetermination inevitably upsets the internal balances of corporate boards, it does not seem to pose a major risk to their operation. The possibility of blocking decisions remains theoretical, and codetermination does not necessarily lead to oversized boards. On the social side, codetermination would have a positive impact on wage and employment management. Finally, regarding the environment, no strong consensus has emerged so far on whether codetermination improves or deteriorates corporate environmental performance.Originality/valueThe originality of our approach is to propose a review of the literature on the determinants and impact of employee participation in light of concerns and reflections on the nature and responsibility of firms, particularly about the ecological and environmental crisis that contributed to shifting the challenges to less operational and more strategic considerations. We thus question how the participation of employees in the decision-making process tends to delineate a democracy that is no longer merely liberal but also “social”. We examine, conceptually and empirically, the various forms that the participation of employees may take and their impact on firm performance.
PurposeAs this article reports, in recent years most legislative activities focused on start-ups, with as many as 12 European Union (EU) Member States having introduced tax incentives for employee share ownership (ESO) in this type of small and middle-sized enterprise (SME). But incentivising ESO in SMEs should be extended to all SMEs, the engine of the European economy, including those from the social economy, having shown their crucial function for the resilience of our societies during the COVID-19 pandemic.Design/methodology/approachAgainst the background of this recent and very dynamic development this article, it provides an overview of the start-up business segment in comparison to other types of companies, particularly focusing on differences with the SME sector; examines the legal regulations that hinder a broader adoption of ESO in European start-ups; presents best-practice examples to demonstrate the favourable conditions already established in some EU Member States and discussed whether these reforms and best practice examples could be extended and – as is already the case in some countries – applied to the whole SME population including social economy enterprises.FindingsSince the European Commission launched the 2011 Social Business Initiative (SBI) followed by the 2016 Start-up and Scale-up initiative, many actions to support social enterprises in view of their potential to address societal challenges and contribute to sustainable economic growth have followed. Most recently, the 2021 Social Economy Action Plan of the European Commission gave important impulses. The potential of employee buyouts offering a continuation perspective to SMEs owners looking for successors was highlighted in the 2022 EC report “Transition Pathway for Proximity and Social Economy,” calling for the implementation of Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs).Originality/valueThe situation of employee share ownership in start-ups has some parallels with that in traditional SMEs, but in many respects, they differ fundamentally. Although, on the other hand, social enterprises may also have to compete with large firms for qualified staff and face challenges when growing or scaling their activities, the reason why ESO in this enterprise segment is not widespread in the EU is altogether different. In the absence of a prescribed legal form of incorporation, social enterprises operate in various forms (be it for profit or non-profit), e.g. cooperatives, closely held limited liability companies, mutuals, associations, voluntary organisations or foundations. Therefore, this article looks into the extension of the incentives for ESO to social enterprises inasmuch as they are organised in legal forms allowing for share ownership, above all in the form of limited liability companies.
PurposeThis article presents a compelling case study of a workers’ cooperative in the cultural sector. It offers a unique opportunity to delve into the tensions between managerial and democratic control, particularly in the context of heightened artistic claims. The pivotal role of an accountant in management for nearly two decades sparks a thought-provoking question about the potential for cooperative degeneration.Design/methodology/approachOur research employs a rigorous qualitative method, utilizing semi-structured interviews of six key members and a comprehensive analysis of legal, accounting and other media documents.FindingsOur findings offer a significant perspective, refuting any indications of organizational degeneration. The decision-making processes continue to uphold democratic principles. While the manager and his administrative staff wield substantial authority, this is justified by their duty to preserve the collective. This duty is executed under democratic control, facilitated by information transparency. The low level of democratic participation poses a challenge, but the manager’s initiatives are aimed at addressing this. The effectiveness of this control, however, relies on the active participation of the members, which acts as a strong deterrent against organizational degeneration.Originality/valueThe originality of our contribution lies in our reference to Chester Barnard whose reflections on industrial democracy have been forgotten, reflections linked to his conception of managerial authority. We also highlight the importance of empowering individual members, which leads them to consider the consequences of their actions. As a result, the manager is not placed in a situation where he has to decide alone, as the scope of his unilateral powers is de facto delimited.
Mykhailo Koshil, Tilman Wegener, Detlef Mentrup
et al.
Visual inspection, or industrial anomaly detection, is one of the most common quality control types in manufacturing. The task is to identify the presence of an anomaly given an image, e.g., a missing component on an image of a circuit board, for subsequent manual inspection. While industrial anomaly detection has seen a surge in recent years, most anomaly detection methods still utilize knowledge only from normal samples, failing to leverage the information from the frequently available anomalous samples. Additionally, they heavily rely on very general feature extractors pre-trained on common image classification datasets. In this paper, we address these shortcomings and propose the new anomaly detection system AnomalousPatchCore~(APC) based on a feature extractor fine-tuned with normal and anomalous in-domain samples and a subsequent memory bank for identifying unusual features. To fine-tune the feature extractor in APC, we propose three auxiliary tasks that address the different aspects of anomaly detection~(classification vs. localization) and mitigate the effect of the imbalance between normal and anomalous samples. Our extensive evaluation on the MVTec dataset shows that APC outperforms state-of-the-art systems in detecting anomalies, which is especially important in industrial anomaly detection given the subsequent manual inspection. In detailed ablation studies, we further investigate the properties of our APC.
Marta Victoria, Zhe Zhang, Gorm B. Andresen
et al.
Energy communities are promoted in the European legislation as a strategy to enable citizen participation in the energy transition. Solar photovoltaic (PV) systems, due to their distributed nature, present an opportunity to create such communities. At Aarhus University (Denmark), we have established an energy community consisting of a 98-kW rooftop solar PV installation, crowdsourced by students and employees of the university. The participants can buy one or several shares of the installation (which is divided into 900 shares), the electricity is consumed by the university, and the shareowners receive some economic compensation every year. The road to establishing this energy community has been rough, and we have gathered many lessons. In this manuscript, we present the 10 largest challenges which might arise when setting up a university energy community and our particular approach to facing them. Sharing these learnings might pave the way for those willing to establish their own energy community. We also include policy recommendations at the European, national, and municipal levels to facilitate the deployment of energy communities
With the rapid growth of technology, especially the widespread application of artificial intelligence (AI) technology, the risk management level of commercial banks is constantly reaching new heights. In the current wave of digitalization, AI has become a key driving force for the strategic transformation of financial institutions, especially the banking industry. For commercial banks, the stability and safety of asset quality are crucial, which directly relates to the long-term stable growth of the bank. Among them, credit risk management is particularly core because it involves the flow of a large amount of funds and the accuracy of credit decisions. Therefore, establishing a scientific and effective credit risk decision-making mechanism is of great strategic significance for commercial banks. In this context, the innovative application of AI technology has brought revolutionary changes to bank credit risk management. Through deep learning and big data analysis, AI can accurately evaluate the credit status of borrowers, timely identify potential risks, and provide banks with more accurate and comprehensive credit decision support. At the same time, AI can also achieve realtime monitoring and early warning, helping banks intervene before risks occur and reduce losses.
Markus Voggenreiter, Florian Angermeir, Fabiola Moyón
et al.
In recent years, DevOps, the unification of development and operation workflows, has become a trend for the industrial software development lifecycle. Security activities turned into an essential field of application for DevOps principles as they are a fundamental part of secure software development in the industry. A common practice arising from this trend is the automation of security tests that analyze a software product from several perspectives. To effectively improve the security of the analyzed product, the identified security findings must be managed and looped back to the project team for stakeholders to take action. This management must cope with several challenges ranging from low data quality to a consistent prioritization of findings while following DevOps aims. To manage security findings with the same efficiency as other activities in DevOps projects, a methodology for the management of industrial security findings minding DevOps principles is essential. In this paper, we propose a methodology for the management of security findings in industrial DevOps projects, summarizing our research in this domain and presenting the resulting artifact. As an instance of the methodology, we developed the Security Flama, a semantic knowledge base for the automated management of security findings. To analyze the impact of our methodology on industrial practice, we performed a case study on two DevOps projects of a multinational industrial enterprise. The results emphasize the importance of using such an automated methodology in industrial DevOps projects, confirm our approach's usefulness and positive impact on the studied projects, and identify the communication strategy as a crucial factor for usability in practice.
PurposeThis viewpoint will present some statistical information about employee ownership in the US and interpret and analyze this information in order to address the barriers question using material from qualitative interviews that the authors have conducted over the last ten years with practitioners in the field. There have been few actual empirical studies that sort out the different barriers to employee ownership. The authors have chosen to focus on employee stock ownership plan (ESOP) in the US because this is the principal example from which people could learn from, and the high prevalence of ESOPs plays an important role in the US. This overview will present interpretations of these interviews with conceptual arguments that cannot always be supported with either overwhelming empirical studies or arguments that conclusively eliminate one or other explanation. This is an initial attempt to bring some comprehensive treatment and data to this incipient discussion. This is based on an interpretive analysis of qualitative interviews without quantification or social survey methods used for measurement. The advantage of this approach is that it lays out a completely different level of analysis of the barriers to employee ownership in the US that is “closer to the ground” and more based in the views of front-line practitioners who are actually implementing it.Design/methodology/approachAnalysis and interpretation of qualitative interviews.FindingsThe list of barriers that has been identified is not exhaustive. The preliminary conclusions are that (not necessarily in this order) limitations of investment banking models, poor supportive infrastructure, complexity and cost and regulatory issues, the lack of support by political parties and social movements, the sale of companies due to financial considerations and legal complexities and lack of clarity and resistance by Federal agencies are major barriers in the US. Various sectors of Wall Street has been amenable to employee ownership with the proper government and private sector support. What is needed now is a series of quantitative surveys and qualitative interviews of retiring business owners in closely held companies and of CEOs and CFOs in stock market companies in order to gauge the barriers that they believe are blocking their own action in the employee share ownership area. The Rutgers Institute for the Study of Employee Ownership and Profit Sharing is working on such a research agenda at this time. In addition, with the future size of the US employee ownership sector at stake, a more intensive one-year interview project would make sense in order to present these different explanations to key actors and practitioners and ask them to provide evidence to prove or disprove the relevance of the different barriers.Research limitations/implicationsEmpirical research which can resolve which barriers are more important than others is presented, when possible; however, studies that provide metrics to compare different barriers are not available and need to be carried out.Practical implicationsOther countries considering employee ownership policies can learn from the US experience. US policymakers and legislators can learn from an original, recent discussion of barriers.Social implicationsIf employee ownership sectors are to be developed, a careful discussion of barriers is most relevant.Originality/valueOriginal document by the authors based on original interviews.
PurposeThis article analyses how the MONDRAGON Group has overcome the barriers that the literature identifies in the creation of employee owned companies (Mygind and Poulsen, 2021), and how it has managed to grow over the last few decades.Design/methodology/approachTo this end, based on an analysis of the legislative framework and the internal documentation of the MONDRAGON Group and its cooperatives, the case of what is often considered the most successful and highly developed network of co-operative firms is studied.FindingsThe study leads us to conclude that MONDRAGON has had sufficient capacity to overcome the barriers faced by worker-owned companies and has known how to adapt to the economic and social demands of each moment, despite the fact that at certain times it has had to act flexibly in its principles.Research limitations/implicationsThe work is limited to the analysis of the Group's internal documentation. It would be interesting to complement this vision with the perceptions of MONDRAGON's partners.Practical implicationsThe MONDRAGON Group's study can show other cooperative experiences what the keys to success are.Originality/valueMONDRAGON has been analysed from different perspectives, but how it has overcome the specific barriers presented by employee-owned companies has not been specifically studied. This perspective makes it possible to identify some of the group's success factors.
Background & Purpose: Today, accidents in the oil and gas industry have increased all over the world, and therefore, paying attention to the health and safety of employees as well as improving ergonomic and human conditions in the workplace has become a necessity in the oil and gas industry. In the present article, a general question about the categories affecting human conditions and ergonomics in Iran's gas transmission industry was investigated.Methodology: In order to investigate the issue, an exploratory study was conducted and the data was collected using a qualitative research method based on unstructured interviews and three-stage coding process to determine categories that are effective in conditions and ergonomics and human were used and then the paradigm model of the research was explained.Findings: A number of 20 open coding extracted from the transcript of the interviews were obtained and then by classifying the concepts that had a common semantic load, 7 sub-categories and 4 main categories were assigned to the concept of the present research, and then the paradigm model was explained in 5 categories of causal, central, strategic, Mediation, and consequences.Conclusion: The realization of the mission and goals of Iran Gas Transmission Company depends on the existence of a safe work environment and improvement of human relations in the work environment, and in this regard, effective measures should be taken in the field of human resources management and improvement of the level of mental and physical health of employees and ergonomics of the work environment.
Employee participation in management. Employee ownership. Industrial democracy. Works councils
Alireza Gharaati, Mohammad Soltanifar, Simin Armaghan
et al.
Purpose: The purpose of this research was to identify the relationship between media diplomacy and dimensions of the tourism industry from the viewpoints of experts and media proprietors.
Methodology: To achieve the mentioned purpose, this research was conducted through quantitative approach using statistical regression tests. The statistical population included official experts and media proprietors. The sample size consisted of 250 individuals, and the sampling method was non-probability and purposive.
Findings: Based on the results, six indicators of the tourism industry including foreign investment, health tourism content creation, urban symbols branding, soft power, feeling of security and urban identity have been counted. The results of data analysis show that most dimensions of the media diplomacy influence the tourism industry.
Originality: This research develops the existing literature in the field of tourism by presenting a media diplomacy evaluation model based on the indicators of the tourism industry and helps to identify the characteristics of media diplomacy effectiveness.
Implications: Rrecommendations of the current research include the preparation of tourism re-education texts on the bases of media indicators, the establishment of a tourism university and related fields such as tourism journalism, and the development of tourism knowledge of tourism officials and planners based on media approaches.
Economic growth, development, planning, Employee participation in management. Employee ownership. Industrial democracy. Works councils
Purpose: The purpose of this research is to identify the factors affecting the successful merger of Iranian state (Ministry of Sport and Youths) organizations.
Methodology: The research method was applied according to the purpose, cross-sectional according to the time of data collection, and descriptive-survey according to the data collection method. The statistical population includes all the employees of the Ministry of Sports and Youth, and the participants of the research are human resources specialists and experts who worked in the Ministry of Sport and Youths before and after the merger, and university experts, including professors in the field of human resources who have taught and researched in this field for at least 10 years. give Thematic analysis approach was used to analyze the collected data.
Findings: Factors affecting successful merger in state organizations were identified in 6 main factors, including individual,organizational, legal, communication, strategic, managerial, and 21 sub-indices. Paying attention to these factors, on the one hand, will reduce organizational tensions after the merger and prevent the failure of the organization after the merger. And on the other hand, it facilitates the management after the merger and increases synergy, creates unity of organizational identity and increases knowledge and awareness in this field, and can be the basis for practical, effective and successful merger.
Originality: Many studies have been conducted on the factors influencing successful integration (internal and external backgrounds) that have only measured the impact of one variable in relation to the subject in question. In fact, there is no comprehensive framework regarding the factors influencing successful integration. The contribution of the present research is that in order to achieve a correct change, the correct integration (what strategies should be used, what factors should be paid attention to and to what extent). It should be insisted that until now, in previous researches, all the influencing factors on a successful integration have not been examined in a coherent framework and there is no theoretical record in the previous literature. In general, it can be said that the contribution of this research, Presenting a coherent framework that examines all the factors affecting successful integration with thematic analysis approach, and this research has tried to help fill this gap.
Economic growth, development, planning, Employee participation in management. Employee ownership. Industrial democracy. Works councils
Background & Purpose: The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of diversity-oriented leadership on employee’s knowledge sharing behavior and job engagement by considering the mediating role of transparent internal communication and satisfaction of internal needs (self-determination theory). The present study is one of the first experimental studies that shows the application of self-determination theory in critical conditions of Covid 19 virus.Methodology: This research is an applied research based on the purpose, and it is a survey correlation based on the research strategy. The statistical population of this study includes the staff of Mazandaran University of Medical Sciences and the sample size is 220 persons using sample power software and the sampling method is simple random. Analyzing the data was performed using structural equation method through Amos software.Findings: According to the findings of this study, the variables of “transparent communication” and “internal needs satisfaction” have a partial mediating role in the impact of diversified-oriented leadership on job engagement and knowledge sharing.Conclusion: To understand the effectiveness of internal critical communication, leadership behaviors as well as increasing the employees’ outcome and output, the basic psychological needs of employees must be put under consideration to the extent that they feel competent in their job, have control over their job scope, and communicate effectively with other colleagues at work.
Employee participation in management. Employee ownership. Industrial democracy. Works councils