Kirjahaku

This essential book explores in depth the topic of income as a key driver of sustainable development. Revisiting his innovative Fair Wage approach, Daniel Vaughan-Whitehead examines the critical dimensions that define equitable wages and showcases fair wage achievements in brand supply chains. Thousands of companies have already implemented this approach, benefitting more than four million workers around the world.Vaughan-Whitehead shows how the Fair Wage concept has become a recognized methodology for improving company wage practices, leading to stakeholder-recognized international certification. He outlines the substantial wage advancements that have thus been attained in corporate supply chains, including by Unilever, Ikea, Puma and L’Oreal. Chapters investigate how reforms in pay systems, wage adjustment mechanisms and social dialogue can achieve vital living wage and income milestones. The book also illustrates how changing purchasing practices can enable sustainable wages and enhance working conditions globally. On a larger scale, it demonstrates how the Fair Wage approach can aid progress towards the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, especially with regard to inequalities, poverty, vulnerability and exclusion.This enlightening book provides a clear and practical roadmap for students and scholars of employment relations, labour policy and economics, sustainability and global supply chains. Fair Wages also brings practical insights and strategies for managers and investors to effectively implement sustainable development in their businesses. Finally, it is a crucial resource for practitioners and policymakers in economic and social institutions currently working to strengthen the global sustainability agenda.

At the beginning of the 1990's the first encouraging results on GDP growth combined with the fulfilment of international requirements led many to believe that Albania was a 'shining star' in Central and Eastern Europe. But in 1997 this progress was reversed by unprecedented institutional, political and social turmoil leading to a spiral of violence and chaos.This book presents, for the first time, a comprehensive analysis of the different factors behind the 1997 political, economic and social upheaval in Albania. It shows that the crisis was both predictable and complex, and not simply a matter of a disgruntled population attempting to regain their money. Using extensive and detailed evidence Daniel Vaughan-Whitehead identifies the major reasons for the growing discontent and final explosion: - the increase in unemployment, collapse of industrial production, inefficiency of the banking system, limitations and drawbacks of foreign investment, failure of mass privatization, falling living standards, and rising poverty. He examines the consequences of the crisis at the enterprise level, by region, sector, industry and property form using a unique survey of over 1,000 enterprises. In conclusion he offers a series of policy recommendations with a view to regenerating production whilst avoiding a new social explosion in a destroyed economy, weakened by political instability and the conflict in Kosovo.This unique book will be essential reading for all academics working in the area of transition as well as policymakers from international organizations involved in transition economies.

The decision to enlarge the European Union by ten (eventually thirteen) countries has surprisingly not been accompanied by much discussion of the implications for Social Europe. This has led to criticisms that enlargement is a purely economic process that will sweep aside important social considerations:Will the much lower labour costs and social standards in the applicant countries - especially those from Central and Eastern Europe - lead to 'unfair' competition or 'social dumping'?Will this process in turn encourage current EU member-states to run-down their own social provisions in order to be able to compete with the newcomers?Do the specific features of this new accession wave - the largest enlargement so far and including markedly less-developed countries - threaten the global survival of the so-called 'European Social Model'?What policies should be implemented in order to avoid a weakening of current European social standards?These are the main questions this book attempts to answer, on the basis of a comprehensive assessment of the social policy areas most relevant to EU enlargement - wages, working conditions, social protection, employment, industrial relations - while also addressing its most sensitive 'social dumping' aspects: capital relocation, labour migration, and redirection of trade.EU enlargement is higher than ever on the policy agenda and scholars and researchers of European Studies and social policy will find this book an invaluable reference.

Over the past decade the emergence of corporate social responsibility (CSR) has helped to improve corporate governance by tackling such burning issues as child labour and human rights violations. However, as the author argues in this important new book, the time has now come to incorporate wage issues into CSR. Daniel Vaughan-Whitehead proposes a new methodology, the `Fair Wage' approach, providing CSR actors with a coherent and comprehensive set of fair wage dimensions and indicators. Application of this new approach in a large-scale auditing exercise on wages in Asia and a number of qualitative case studies in China provides unique, first-hand information on wage practices among suppliers. The results confirm the need to address wage issues using a broad spectrum of wage dimensions, including living wages, minimum wages, social dialogue, payment of working hours and wage development in accordance with prices, enterprise performance and changes in technology and human capital. The `Fair Wage' approach advocated in this book is a first, serious and concerted effort to address the issue of wages, which are increasingly being used as the adjustment variable at the end of the supply chain.Adverse wage developments clearly highlight the limitations of government action in regulating this aspect of the global economy. The ‘Fair Wage’ approach advocated in this book is a first, serious and concerted effort to address this critical issue. It will be required reading for practitioners and scholars of labour economics, development studies and CSR.

Over the past decade the emergence of corporate social responsibility (CSR) has helped to improve corporate governance by tackling such burning issues as child labour and human rights violations. However, as the author argues in this important new book, the time has now come to incorporate wage issues into CSR. Daniel Vaughan-Whitehead proposes a new methodology, the `Fair Wage' approach, providing CSR actors with a coherent and comprehensive set of fair wage dimensions and indicators. Application of this new approach in a large-scale auditing exercise on wages in Asia and a number of qualitative case studies in China provides unique, first-hand information on wage practices among suppliers. The results confirm the need to address wage issues using a broad spectrum of wage dimensions, including living wages, minimum wages, social dialogue, payment of working hours and wage development in accordance with prices, enterprise performance and changes in technology and human capital. The `Fair Wage' approach advocated in this book is a first, serious and concerted effort to address the issue of wages, which are increasingly being used as the adjustment variable at the end of the supply chain.Adverse wage developments clearly highlight the limitations of government action in regulating this aspect of the global economy. The ‘Fair Wage’ approach advocated in this book is a first, serious and concerted effort to address this critical issue. It will be required reading for practitioners and scholars of labour economics, development studies and CSR.