Ethics at the workplace in the fourth industrial revolution: A Catholic social teaching perspective

While many studies on the Fourth Industrial Revolution (FIR) focus on efficiency, productivity and economic progress, only a few have considered its ethical aspects. This article tries to contribute to filling this vacuum by providing a comprehensive approach to ethical risks at the workplace. Drawing upon Catholic social teaching (CST)—addressed to all people of good will—it analyzes ethical aspects at the workplace posited by the FIR, and more particularly by Industry 4.0, which is at the core of this revolution. CST emphasizes the dignity of the worker and the necessity to flourish at the workplace. While robots, artificial intelligence, and interconnected technologies are only instrumental, the real subject of work is the worker. This casts specific light on the ethical issues analyzed, including effects on employment, wages and inequality, human quality treatment, relational aspects, safety and health, surveillance on employees, and meaningful work.     

The role of the entrepreneurial encounter in the emergence of opportunities: Vallée’s Dallas Buyers Club

ABSTRACT

This paper aims to explore the conceptual potential of the Deleuzian notion of the encounter in order to better understand the genealogy of opportunities. We adopt a processual perspective of opportunities. In order to translate this notion to the domain of entrepreneurship, we analysed and interpreted Jean-Marc Vallée’s Dallas Buyers Club. This film follows the creation of the first club in the United States that illegally allowed HIV-positive people to supply themselves with foreign antiretroviral drugs from Mexico or Japan. The article highlights encounters in this process that disturb the entrepreneur’s belief systems and allow him or her to be open to potential opportunity. It finally explores how the encounter may improve our understanding of the political becoming of opportunities within the entrepreneurial process.     

The equity impacts of bus rapid transit: A review of the evidence and implications for sustainable transport

The paper offers an analysis of empirical evidence on the equity impacts of operational Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) systems in the Global South. The focus is on vertical equity, i.e. whether BRT systems achieve progressive benefits for poorer segments of the population. Findings from Africa, Asia, and Latin America all suggest that BRT does offer significant benefits to low-income groups, in terms of travel time and cost savings, access enhancement, and safety and health benefits. However benefits are often skewed toward medium-income users and thus less progressive than they might be. Two primary reasons for this are insufficient spatial coverage and inappropriate fare policies. While many features of BRT potentially allow it to deliver pro-poor outcomes, such outcomes only materialize if BRT implementers pay specific and sustained attention to equity. The paper identifies key issues that need to be addressed to steer BRT implementation toward more socially sustainable outcomes—including better integration with other transit, paratransit, and nonmotorized transport services, and with the housing sector.     

Condorcet efficiency of positional voting rules with single-peaked preferences

Consider a three-alternative election with n voters and assume that preferences are single-peaked. LetC(λ,n) be the Condorcet efficiency of the rule that assigns 1,λ and 0 points (respectively) to each first, second and third place vote. An exact representation is obtained forC(λ,∞). This relation shows that Borda rule (λ=1/2) is not the most efficient rule. In addition to this result, exact closed form relations are provided forC(0,n),C(1/2,n) andC(1,n). All these relations are obtained by assuming that every admissible configuration of preferences is equally likely to occur. This research was supported in part by the Swedish Insitute     

The economic effects of reducing and reorganizing working time

This article goes beyond the often ideological debate for and against a reduction in working time and analyses the effects of shorter working time at company and country levels. Logic and experience dictate that such reductions must be accompanied by a process of work reorganization and include financial compensation for those working shorter hours. However, while these three ingredients are indissoluble, not all firms can proceed at the same pace and in the same ways. Nevertheless, the article shows that, as long as implementation proceeds in a decentralized and selective manner and is accompanied by a judicious reorganization of these hours, it could be extremely beneficial to all parties—companies, the state and individuals, both workers and producers.