This article explores how and why high levels of income inequality result from configurations of different types of entrepreneurial activities and elements of the institutional context in a multicountry sample. A configurational approach is used to unpack the complexities associated with how income inequality arises from different types of entrepreneurial activities embedded in different institutional contexts associated with Whitley’s national business systems dimensions. The findings from fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis reveal that high levels of both high-growth and necessity entrepreneurial activity (...) are associated with income inequality in certain contexts that are characterized by distinct institutional complementarities. (shrink)

Research on economic inequality has largely focused on understanding the relationship between organizations and inequality but has paid limited attention to the role of institutions in the creation and maintenance of inequality. In this article, we use insights from the caste system—an institution that perpetuates socio-economic inequalities and limits human functions—to elaborate on three elements of economic inequality: uneven dispersions in resource endowments, uneven access to productive resources and opportunities, and uneven rewards to resource contributions. We argue that economic inequalities (...) persist because these three different elements of inequality feed from and reinforce each other. Our study underscores the potential of the caste lens to inform research on economic inequality as well as organizational theory and practice. (shrink)

Income inequality in the US has now reached levels not seen since the 1920s. Management, as a field of scholarly inquiry, has the potential to contribute in significant ways to our understanding of recent inequality trends. We review and assess recent research, both in the management literature and in other fields. We then delineate a conceptual framework that highlights the mechanisms through which business practice may be linked to income inequality. We then outline four general areas in which management scholars (...) are uniquely positioned to contribute to ongoing research: data and description, organizational dynamics, collective action, and value flows and tradeoffs. To stimulate future research, we highlight a number of relevant research questions and link these questions to existing management research streams that could be leveraged to address them. (shrink)

Using an ethical approach to the study of employability, we question the mainstream approach to career self-direction. We focus on a specific category of employees that has been neglected in past research, namely vulnerable workers who have been unemployed for several years and who have faced multiple psychosocial problems. Building on the Ability-Motivation-Opportunity model, we examine how establishing clear expectations, developmental inducements, and social organizational goals can foster employability competences of vulnerable workers. Our study took place in the particularly relevant (...) context of social enterprises, which have a primary goal to enhance the employability competences of vulnerable workers. Multilevel analysis of data from 38 CEOs of social enterprises, 121 leaders and 594 workers, demonstrated that establishing clear expectations and developmental inducements enable vulnerable workers to anticipate and optimize their employability competences. Furthermore, a positive association was found between establishing clear expectations and the balance dimension of employability, yet only in social enterprises that prioritize social organizational goals, suggesting the need to recognize the extent organizational goals shape opportunities for vulnerable workers. Establishing clear expectations and developmental inducements can therefore enhance vulnerable workers’ employability competences in supportive contexts; however, there may be detrimental side effects to drifting away from social organizational goals. (shrink)

We examine the extent to which host country income inequality influences multinational enterprises’ (MNE) expansion strategy for foreign production investment, depending on their specific strategic objectives. Applying a transaction cost framework, we predict that national income inequality has an inverted U-shaped relationship with foreign production investment. As inequality increases, MNEs accrue lower transaction costs arising from interactions with various local actors, leading to higher probability of investment. As income inequality increases further, its effect on location attractiveness will become negative, as (...) its attraction effect is increasingly offset by additional monitoring, bargaining, and security costs owing to the more fractious nature of high inequality societies. In addition, we suggest that the impact of income inequality is contingent on investment objectives: The inverted U-shaped relationship is stronger for efficiency-seeking investment but weaker for market-seeking and competence-enhancing investments. We find substantial support for our hypotheses through an analysis of 27 years (1986-2012) of data on Japanese MNEs’ overseas production entries. (shrink)

Problem setting. Studying the factors that determine health shows that medicine is important along with biogenetic and environmental factors. However, the leading factors of health in modern conditions are the level and quality of life of people, the level of their health culture and lifestyle. This increases the role of researches on social and cultural conditions and determinants of health in the framework of not only medical sciences, but also the sociology of medicine, health and disease, wellness studies. Recent research (...) and publications analysis. Development of the sociology of medicine and health has received significant support after the report of the Minister of Health of Canada M. Lalonde, “A new perspective on the health of Canadians”, in which new strategies of forming a culture of public health and improving the quality of life and people’s well-being were proposed. Sociological analysis of the problems of health and the development of healthcare has been significantly developed in the works of such researchers in Western Europe and North America, as R. Dubo, Т. MacKeown, V. Navarro, I. Illich, E. Friedson, I. Zola, S. Szreter, A. Williams, R. Stevens, K. Winter, A. Titmonas, N. Gail, C. Lafontaine, E. Annandale, D. Mechanic, G. Weiss, K. White, S. Blum, D. Black, H. Freeman, S. Levine, F. Wolinsky, J. Gable, M. Elston, N. Hart, J. Travis and others. Such Russian and Ukrainian scientists have contributed to the development of the sociology of medicine and health, as V. Lupandin, A. Izutkin, A. Sahno, J. Lisicin, N. Vinogradov, V. Dil’man, I. Brehman, G. Caregorodcev, V. Dimov, V. Kochenov, I. Zhuravleva, N. Grigor’eva, K. Habibulin, A. Reshetnikov, E. Dmitrieva, N. Antonova, G. Apanasenko, V. Petlenko, L. Sushhenko, I. Gorbas’, G. Slabkij, V. Moskalenko, T. Gruzeva, O. Cimbrovskij, N. Panina, Y. Golovaha, O. Balakireva, N. Ringach, R. Levin, I. Venirchuk, N. Soboleva, G. Chepurko and others. Paper objective. Consideration of the main problems of modern sociology of health and healthcare as the objects of sociological research. Paper main body. Problem field of the sociology of health and medicine has a wide range of different aspects of the study of values, knowledge, ideas, norms, as well as indicators, conditions and factors of health, its pathologies at the individual, group, national and global levels. Sociology studies the development of healthcare system and medical services from an institutional point of view, considering it as a modern complex institutional phenomenon. An important aspect of sociological analysis of this institution are the manifestations of socio-economic, territorial, gender, ethnic inequality in access to medical care, health improvement and health culture. The manifestations of subnational and global gaps in access to medical care and health improvement are considered by experts as the most acute problems of modern health care. Sociological approach involves understanding the inter-institutional relations of the development of medical and healthcare through the study of their economic, political, legal, cultural, vocational, scientific, technical, information and communicative manifestations. In Ukraine, the sociology of medicine and health shows achievements in the empirical field of research and is progressively developing within the framework of academic science and universities in the medical and sports fields. Actual problems of sociological analysis of the state of health and its preservation are studies of causes of high morbidity and mortality, low birth rates, gender analysis of health and causes of morbidity, issues of the quality and accessibility of medical services, the effectiveness of health care reform, prospects for the development of insurance medicine in Ukraine, ways to increase public health culture. Conclusions of the research. Modern sociology makes an important contribution to health management as a comprehensive area of modern science about problems of public and individual health, institutional foundations of healthcare, trends and prospects for the transformation of medicine and health culture in the context of globalization and internetization of society and implementation of sustainable development strategies. The development of sociology of medicine and health is an important element in the scientific, informational and analytical support of effective policies in the field of maintaining health, improving the welfare of society and people’s happiness. (shrink)

Significant inequalities in health between and within countries have been measured over the past decades. Although these inequalities, as well as attempts to improve sub-standard health, raise profound issues of social justice and the right to health, those working in the field of bioethics have historically tended to devote greater attention to ethical issues raised by new, cutting-edge biotechnologies such as life-support cessation, genomics, stem cell research or face transplantation. This suggests that bioethics research and scholarship may revolve around issues (...) that, while fascinating and important, currently affect only a small minority of the world's population. In this article, we examine the accusation that bioethics is largely dominated by Anglophone and industrialized world interests, and explore what kinds of positive contributions a 'bioethics from below' (as Paul Farmer calls it) can make to the field of bioethics in general. As our guide in this exploration, we make use of some experiences and lessons learned in our collaborative bioethics project in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Building Bioethics Capacity and Justice in Health. We conclude that while there is some evidence of increased attention to bioethical challenges in developing countries, this development should be further cultivated, because it could help expand the horizons of the field and enhance its social relevance wherever it is practiced. (shrink)