Labour Members Research Articles

Heterogeneous and interactive effects of payments for ecosystem services on household income across giant panda nature reserves

Numerous Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) programs have been implemented simultaneously around the world but their outcomes in the literature are not consistent and their interactive effects remain understudied. The Natural Forest Conservation Program (NFCP) and Grain to Green Program (GTGP) are two largest PES programs in the world, and many studies have evaluated their effects on household income. However, the identified effects often varied across different studies and the factors explaining this variation are poorly understood. This study used linear regression and geographic detector analysis, based on questionnaire survey data from 14 giant panda natural reserves (NRs) in southwestern China, to evaluate the effects of the NFCP and GTGP on household income and the factors which moderate these effects. The results revealed that the effects of two PES programs on household income were spatially heterogeneous and enhanced by each other and livelihood activities, suggesting a synergistic interaction between policies and livelihood activities, particularly tourism. This study also found that livelihoods activities (e.g., labor migration and tourism), household capital (i.e., house area and farmland area) and demographic factors (i.e., number of labor and non-labor members), exhibit spatial heterogeneity in their effects on household income across NRs. These findings underscore the importance of considering local socioeconomic conditions and the interaction between policy and socio-economic conditions in PES program design to achieve desired outcomes, providing insights for policymakers and practitioners worldwide.

Reflections on making public policy (1977–1996)

AbstractBrian Howe was elected to the federal Parliament in 1977 as the Labor Member for Batman (now Cooper). Following the election of the Hawke Government in 1983 until his retirement from politics in 1996, Howe held several key social policy portfolios in both the Hawke and Keating Labor Governments, and was Deputy Prime Minister from 1991 to 1995. As a politician, Howe held a strong commitment to policy development and implementation. During his career as a Government Minister, he oversaw some of the most significant changes in social policy in Australian history. This article sets out his reflections on policymaking over this period.

Why leaders can be bad: Linking rigor with relevance using machine learning analysis to test the transgression credit theory of leadership

Transgression credit is a form of deviance credit that occurs when people are more permissive towards transgressions by in-group leaders than by in-group nonleaders and out-group members and leaders. Despite rigorous experimental and simulation evidence for transgression credit, the ability to make such group processes research relevant to organizations and wider policy requires evidence with greater ecological validity. We examine transgression credit using spontaneously arising data from Twitter (now X) to test theoretically specified reactions to instances of transgressive leadership by the UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Studies 1a and 1b compared Conservative and Labour Members of Parliament’s (MPs’) tweets in response to Boris Johnson’s unlawful prorogation of Parliament (Study 1a) and his publication of an Internal Market Bill that would break international law (Study 1b) with tweets responding to a nonleader, Dominic Cummings, breaking coronavirus lockdown rules. Conservative, but not Labour, MPs were more permissive of Johnson’s, but not Cummings’, transgression. Study 2 examined the semantic themes occurring among supportive and unsupportive tweets posted by the UK general public in response to Boris Johnson’s unlawful prorogation of Parliament. Across studies, the evidence is consistent with propositions from deviance credit and social identity theories.

Developing and Evaluating a Novel Educational Intensive Care Unit Wall Map

Developing and Evaluating a Novel Educational Intensive Care Unit Wall Map

Technical efficiency and corn farming productivity: A stochastic frontier analysis of small-scale farmer in Indonesia

Corn is one of the strategic agricultural commodities in Indonesia. West Java is one of the corn production centres in Indonesia and the province with the highest corn productivity nationally. The high productivity of corn farming in West Java is interesting for further study. This paper examines factors affect corn production and how far is the level of efficiency in the use of input in corn production of small-scale farmers in West Java. The study employed a quantitative approach and a cross-sectional survey. The Cobb–Douglas production function and trans-log function were used in estimating the productivity of input, while the technical efficiency was analyse using Stochastic Production Frontier. The results show that land and seed were the most influential factors on corn production. The estimation result from Stochastic Frontier Model showed that variable of land, seed, hired labour and family member, statistically significant impact on technical efficiency of corn production. Moreover, the estimated average technical efficiency of corn farming was approximately 72% with more than 70% of corn farmer had efficiency above 60%.

Talking to Voters about the ‘Everyday Economy’

AbstractThe everyday economy approach has influenced key members of Labour's economic team, notably Rachel Reeves. One potential benefit of the everyday economy approach is that it advocates changing how voters perceive the economy by making it connect to social and environmental goals. Voters, many of whom feel alienated from the material economy measured by indicators like gross domestic product (GDP) that politicians tend to refer to, might find everyday economic language more appealing. However, analysis of qualitative research on how voters see the economy suggests Labour should be cautious about attempting to replace terms like ‘economy’ and ‘growth’ with everyday economy terms like ‘liveability’. Instead, the party should fight the Conservatives on economic competence using conventional economic terms.

Rain-fed agriculture risks and management strategies adopted by farmers in two agro_x0002_ecological zones in Al-Hasakeh province of Syria.

Based on survey data of 319 rain-fed farmers in Al-Hasakeh, Syria, this study analyses rain-fed farmers’ risk attitudes and farmers’ perceptions of risk and risk management. Furthermore, it analyzes, using multiple regression analysis, the relationship between socio-economic characteristics and farmers’ risk attitudes. The results demonstrate that precipitation shortage was the most important risk source that threaten farmers in both zones. Moreover, risks of diseases and pests and natural disasters were highly perceived by farmers in zone 1. Farmers in zone 2 were more concerned about fire damages and lack of government support. The financial strategy related to the producing at lowest possible cost is perceived as an important strategy to manage risk by farmers in both zones. Spraying for diseases and pests and liquidity are perceived as the most effective risk management strategies by farmers in zone 1, whereas farmers in zone 2 considered liquidity and choose good quality materials as an important strategy. The results also show that some farm and farmers’ characteristics (e.g. age, experience, education, household size, farm size, family labour, extension contact, off-farm work and Co-op Member) significantly impact the risk attitudes of the farmers in both zones.

Co-creating emotional value in a guided tour experience: the interplay among guide’s emotional labour and tourists’ emotional intelligence and participation

ABSTRACT The aim of this research is to delineate the co-creation of emotional value in a guided tour experience from a customer-dominant logic perspective by exploring the interactions among tour guides’ emotional labour, tourists’ emotional intelligence and emotional participation. Two theoretically plausible roles of tourists’ emotional intelligence are examined: (1) antecedent of emotional participation and (2) moderator of the relationship between guide’s emotional labour and tourists’ emotional participation. The structural models were tested on a sample of 270 tourists participating in a guided tour in Valencia, a city on the eastern Mediterranean coast of Spain. The results confirmed the expected emotional contagion effect between tour guide’s emotional labour and tour members’ emotional participation. The research also provided empirical evidence of the direct impact of tourists’ emotional intelligence on emotional participation, thus supporting the antecedent role of the construct and not its theorized moderating effect. The findings emphasize the dyadic nature of the emotional value creation in a guided tour experience and challenge the traditional view that its success is only dependent on the service provider’s (i.e. tour guide) emotional skills.

The Voter ID Debate: An Analysis of Political Elite Framing in the UK Parliament

Abstract In 2021, the Conservative UK government announced a proposal to introduce mandatory voter identification (ID) in elections, raising concerns around how these measures might disenfranchise already marginalised groups. Using computational content analysis techniques, this study analyses all parliamentary debates to date on voter ID to understand how political elites frame these requirements. Despite voter ID being justified as necessary to tackle voter fraud when the new Elections Bill was first announced, this study instead finds both Conservative and Labour Members of Parliament agree voter fraud numbers are small. Conservatives nevertheless significantly frame voter ID as necessary to strengthen public confidence in the electoral system, which contrasts Electoral Commission’s 2021 data instead finding 90% of the public consider voting to be safe from fraud at the polling station. Overall, this study sheds light to the ‘framing contest’ and polarisation present in parliamentary debates about voter ID, an increasingly contentious issue of the proposed Elections Bill.

FEATURES OF THE LEGAL REGULATION OF LABOR MIGRATION IN THE CIS STATES AT THE PRESENT STAGE OF SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT

The article discusses the legal framework for regulating labor migration in the Commonwealth of independent states (hereinafter referred to as the CIS). Particular attention is paid to the definition of ‘labor migration’ in the legal literature, international legislative documents and agreements about labor migration within the CIS. The author analyzes the UN Convention ‘On the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families’, the ILO Migration for Employment Convention No. 97 (Revised), 1949, and the Agreement between the CIS states ‘On the protection of labor migrants and members of their families’, as well as individual intergovernmental agreements between the CIS states, some legislative acts of the CIS states. He defines the essence and features of the legal regulation of labor migration in the CIS states at the present stage of social development. At the conclusion the author presents his opinion regarding the definition of the term ‘labor migration’ and the ways of legal regulation of labor migration within the CIS.

Labor migration in Russia during the coronavirus pandemic

The introduction of quarantine measures in connection with the coronavirus pandemic was accompanied by the blocking of cross-border communications and the restriction of the activities of enterprises in most sectors of the economy. Labor migrants and members of their families staying on the territory of Russia found themselves in a difficult situation. The decline in employment, primarily in those areas where migrants work, has made foreign citizens one of the most vulnerable social groups. The first layer of issues considered in the article is associated with an assessment of the situation in which migrants have found themselves in Russia. In what types of economic activity has the decline in employment become particularly painful for migrants? What is their financial situation? To what extent are they ready to leave Russia if transport communications are restored? What are their immediate and long-term plans related to work and life in Russia? The second focus of the study is on potential migrants who were unable to enter Russia after the severance of international transport links. What is their economic situation at home? How quickly are they going to leave for Russia if restrictions on international travel are lifted? What are their short-term and long-term plans related to their stay in Russia? This article is devoted to finding answers to these questions, based on an online survey of 2,695 foreign citizens (including 1,304 migrants located in Russia and 1,391 abroad), as well as a telephone survey of 300 labor migrants in the Moscow metropolis conducted in the first half of June 2020.

Introduction: Corbynism and its Aftermath

Introduction: Corbynism and its Aftermath

The Death of May’s Law: Intra- and Inter-Party Value Differences in Britain’s Labour and Conservative Parties

Party competition in Great Britain increasingly revolves around social or ‘cultural’ issues as much as it does around the economic issues that took centre stage when class was assumed to be dominant. We use data from surveys of members of parliament, party members and voters to explore how this shift has affected the internal coalitions of the Labour and Conservative Parties – and to provide a fresh test of ‘May’s Law’. We find a considerable disconnect between ‘neoliberal’ Conservative members of parliament and their more centrist voters on economic issues and similarly significant disagreement on cultural issues between socially liberal Labour members of parliament and their more authoritarian voters. We also find differences in both parties between parliamentarians and their grassroots members, albeit that these are much less pronounced. May’s Law, not for the first time, appears not to be borne out in reality.

932 Provider assessment of maternal risk on labor and delivery

Risk stratification systems are being developed to help providers prepare for and potentially mitigate adverse obstetric outcomes. Our objective was to understand how intrapartum care team members perceive risks and compare it to a validated obstetric risk scoring system. This was a quality improvement project performed within a single institution prior to implementation of a standardized risk scoring system for adverse maternal outcomes (Obstetric Comorbidity Index (OB CMI)). Over a 2-week interval, labor and delivery care team members (attendings, residents, nurses, and midwives) were surveyed individually when a patient was admitted. They were asked to characterize their patient’s level of risk (low, medium, or high) and list their patient’s strongest risk factor for an adverse maternal outcome. Responses were compared against the level of risk predicted OB CMI, which was assigned via chart review. There were 147 deliveries during the study period; 116 (79%) had a risk assessment survey completed by at least 1 care team member. 276 individual assessments were performed. Table 1 compares the provider assessments with the risk groupings per the OB CMI. There was 72% concordance between the perceived and OB CMI risk; 15/276 (5%) of the provider assessments underestimated risk compared to the OB CMI. 46.3% listed a risk factor not included in the OB CMI, of which the most common were related to gestational age and estimated fetal weight. 60.3% listed a risk factor that was not the strongest risk factor per the OB CMI component weights. In our institution, providers tended to perceive maternal risks similar to what would be predicted by a validated risk stratification tool. They listed multiple risk factors for adverse events that are not included in the OB CMI, suggesting this tool should be used in adjunct to provider assessment and potentially manually modified based on team consensus or additional factors. More data are needed to determine the optimal strategy to combine provider and chart information to more accurately predict adverse maternal events.

Compulsory preferential voting, social media and ‘come-from-behind’ electoral victories in Australia

ABSTRACT What is the relationship between Australia's system of compulsory preferential voting and the ideological stance of elected members? Utilising a unique dataset of social media communication from the 2013 federal election, we show how preference flows influence parliamentarians’ subsequent communications to voters. MPs who were behind on the first count but gained sufficient preferences to win a seat – whom we call ‘come-from-behind’ winners – adopted distinctively centrist communication strategies, occupying an ideological ‘cross-over zone’ between the most right-leaning Labor member and most left-leaning Coalition member. Most of these 'come-from-behind' winners today are Labor MPs, illustrating the changing partisan impact of compulsory preferential voting, from historically advantaging the conservative side of politics to now clearly benefitting Labor and, to a lesser extent, independent candidates.

Moral re-armament: toward a better understanding of the society-corporation relationship before the emergence of “corporate social responsibility”

PurposeThis study aims to introduce moral re-armament’s (MRA) role as a mediator in several labor/management disputes in industries primarily in the 1940s and 1950s. In this study, MRA was guided by a social responsibility framed in language that was a precursor to corporate social responsibility (CSR). This study features the case of the Miami-based airlines serving Latin America, who had experienced the longest airline labor strike to that date.Design/methodology/approachIn this study, both artifacts and literary interpretations are used to inform an institutional-theory-based approach to a broad social movement, one player in that movement and its impact on an industry. Actions at one time can be shown to relate to activity and behavior at another time (Wadhwani and Bucheli, 2014). Thus, this paper has combined these perspectives in the approach to historically examine a precursor phenomenon of CSR.FindingsMRA’s approach shared some methods, such as story-telling, with modern change management. This paper proposes that other methods that were important for that historical context played a significant role in MRA’s success. Today, these methods are no longer used. These include “intimacy” (MRA employees lived with members of labor and management while they were mediating), “theater” (they showed plays to all of those involved) and confessional sharing (their training was mostly a series of testimonies by those who previously were combative, but became collaborative when they accepted MRA’s principles).Originality/valueThis historical case may inspire those promoting CSR to expand their methods to have even greater success today.

‘Leaving the red Tories’: Ideology, leaders, and why party members quit

What little research exists on why party members quit has tended to find that exit is driven primarily by political and ideological concerns. This research note builds on this, framing this finding theoretically and arguing that such theory should allow for the role of negative triggers – events that cause people to quit. We focus on the example of changes of leadership. Using data from four Party Members Project surveys, we find that British party members seem to leave parties mainly for political and ideological reasons, and because of disillusionment or disagreement with their leaders. This disillusionment, in turn, is often based on perceived ideological differences. We illustrate this with tweets by Labour members cancelling (or considering cancelling) their membership in the immediate wake of the election of Keir Starmer as party leader in April 2020.

Income diversification for risk adaptation: the case of rural households in Vietnam

This study uses the data extracted from the Vietnam Access to Resources Household Survey 2008, 2010, 2012, 2014, 2016 on 2,107 rural households in Vietnam. Results from logit regressions show that: (1) natural disasters, plant or animal diseases, mean years of schooling of all labor members in the households, household size, levels of participation in associations and social organizations help to increase the ability of households to diversify when there is a risk; (2) On the contrary, the harmful impacts from pest of the previous year, mean years of schooling of household head, age, ethnicity, land area, attitude to risks exert a negative impact on the ability of income diversification. Thereby, the study offers some policy implications such as improving the educational level of the households, encouraging households to actively participate in training sessions, skills training and market access organized by the State and NGOs, disseminating knowledge on risk response measures through income diversification. The novel point of the study is the application of the microeconomic theory to measure the impact of attitude to risk on the decision to diversify income when risks occur. In addition, the study also examines the impact of each type of risk, and the severity of the risk on the choice of income diversification to cope with risks.

The pious dissidence in Turkey: Contesting religious neoliberal governmentality under the AKP

Turkey under the AKP governments constitutes an exemplary case for understanding how centralized religion, authoritarianism, and economic logic of neoliberalism interrelate. AKP uses state-guided religion to legitimize its neoliberal economic policies and create docile, economized citizens. This article specifically focuses on how pious Muslims resist AKP’s religious neoliberalism by focusing on actions and deliberations of Labor and Justice Platform members. Our discussion, which consists of face-to-face interviews with the members of this social movement, delineates the group’s justice-oriented, egalitarian, and pluralist orientation of Islam and depicts their dialogues with power – embodied in AKP’s domination of Islamic discourse in Turkey. We discuss how group members reinterpret religious concepts such as kader (fate), kısmet (destiny), and sabır (patience) that the AKP uses as micro-discursive mechanisms to create economically compliant citizens. We also discuss the specific frames of resistance they develop in order to break out from the resilience and adaptation that AKP has embedded in its narratives of economy and work. These frames include a sharp criticism of market Islam, a challenge to political Islam and dissent against state Islam. Theoretically, the article refers to neoliberal governmentality and explores its contestation – an understudied concept in Foucauldian studies.

Funding Panels as Declarative Bodies: Meritocracy and Paradoxes of Decision-Making in Modern Science

In the middle of the twentieth century, bureaucratic organizations that aimed to appear democratic began using expert groups as a kind of decision-making technology. I call these groups ‘declarative bodies’ and funding panels are one example. Declarative bodies are distinctive types of groups because they have the power to make things in the world through declaration: their words bring new objects into being. Building on philosophy of language, this article theorizes and explains the unusual structural constraints that members of funding panels labour within by virtue of being part of a declarative body. The article argues that these constraints stem from three democratic ideals: impersonality, objectivity and truth. When put to work through declarative bodies, these democratic ideals create paradoxes that have fundamentally shaped how funding panellists labour together. Further, I argue that organizations use funding panels formally and intentionally to create the appearance that decisions were made by a disembodied actor to sanctify the legitimacy of the organizations’ choices. Declarative bodies, such as funding panels, have actively altered the processes of knowledge-making, the contours of scientific communities and the products of knowledge itself. By the twenty-first century, it can be hard to imagine other acceptable methods of making decision in science, despite growing worries about the unintended, undemocratic outcomes they produce. This article encourages a critical curiosity to imagine new ways of making decisions, to declare new futures and to bring other worlds into being.