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This paper analyzes the age pay gap in Italy (22%), particularly as it is of interest in an aging society and as it may affect social cohesion. Instead of the traditional approach for model selection, we use a machine-learning approach (post double robust Least Absolute Shrinkage Operator [LASSO]). This approach allows us to reduce Omitted Variable Bias (OVB), given data restrictions, and to obtain a robust estimate of the conditional age pay gap. We then decompose the conditional gap and analyze the impact of four further potential sources of heterogeneity (workers', sectors', and occupations' permanent heterogeneity as well as sample selection bias). The results suggest that age discrimination in pay is only perceived but not real in Italy for both men and women.

Identification of dominant approaches and applied practices in the field of diversity and diversity management (DM) in Polish companies in the context of trends on labor market. Although there is not much diversity in Poland now, it is expected that there will be more age related and ethnic diversity in future.

Semi-structured interviews with HR specialist in 50 innovative companies (medium and large companies) were conducted. A synthesis of the current achievements of Polish research in this area was also carried out.

The concept of DM is not popular yet in Polish organizations. There are mostly observed declarative activities concentrating on image-related benefits and focusing on the equal employment opportunity. Findings are consistent with the results of other authors.

The study was limited by research methodology which presented one-sided, HR managers, view of the problem. Further studies examining other perspectives are required.

Observed trends on labor market require changes in attitudes toward diversity on organizations. A major challenge is to overcome the traditional approach. Potential benefits and threats ought to be documented, legal regulations adjusted to changes on labor market developed. The regulations ought to take the growing number of immigrants and problems associated with retirement age being lowered into consideration. Further studies are required.

The assessment of the state of DM implementation in Polish organizations in the context of labor market changes and associated challenges constitutes an original character of the present study.

Since the advent of digital activism, a lot of scholarly attention has been paid to the use of the internet, especially in Africa, for effecting changes in authoritarian rule. This chapter extends the work done by such scholars focusing on the work of African digital feminist activists, thus adding to the growing body of work on digital feminist activism. Drawing on interviews and analyses of digital material produced by four different feminist groups in Ghana, this chapter explores the variety of ideas that such digital feminists express, and the manner in which such ideas are received by the larger Ghanaian society. It argues that, indeed, digital feminists are making a positive impact on the larger Ghanaian society. While these digital feminists are subjected to cyberbullying, there are also many ways in which other individuals, both Ghanaian and otherwise are showing support for these women and their ideas. Increasingly, with particular reference to the newest of these groups, it is clear that they have institutional support for their views as evident in public and private organizations sanctioning employees or associates whose digital language they have critiqued. As with activism targeted at authoritarianism, digital activism targeted at patriarchy gets results, changing mindsets and penalizing sexist behaviors.

This chapter summarizes public perceptions and expert evaluations concerning elected officials' levels of corruption, focusing on comparisons between the United States and 29 European Union “plus” (EU+) countries (28 EU Member States in 2018 plus Switzerland). While surveys of corruption have become more widely available in recent years, there is still a lack of comparable data focusing on specific government institutions, rather than general perceptions of corruption by elected or public officials. Thus, this study takes advantage of four major sources of citizens' perceptions of corruption to develop an average score and ranking for a total of 30 countries: the 2017 Global Corruption Barometer, the 2017 Eurobarometer subtitled “Integration of Immigrants in the European Union and Corruption,” the 2016 International Social Survey Program's (ISSP) Module on the “Role of Government V,” and the Pew Research Center's 2018 “Global Attitudes & Trends Survey.” Three expert assessments of levels of corruption supplement these surveys: the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Project's measure of legislative corruption, Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) 2016, and the World Bank's 2016 Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) assessment of the “Control of Corruption.” Finally, the chapter tests several hypotheses derived from the literature using the various corruption measures as the dependent variable and finds that choosing a measure of corruption based on citizens' perceptions or expert evaluations is substantively important. Thus, one must exercise caution when selecting one type of measure over the other.

Recent academic studies, as well as media reporting, have devoted substantial attention to the ongoing “crisis of democracy.” Democratic “backsliding” of Central and Eastern Europe – sometimes referred to as an effort to establish a new system of “illiberal democracy” – is one of the most visible symptoms of this crisis. This narrative is supported by the quantitative metrics of democratic quality, reflecting professional community views on the appropriate criteria to define and assess democracy. However, once general public views expressed in the survey item of “satisfaction with democracy” are taken into account, the picture changes markedly. This chapter analyzes quantitative metrics reflecting expert community consensus and the general public assessment of the quality of democracy in the 27 EU members over the period 2010–2019. It documents substantial divergence between the perspectives of the experts and the general public – while expert-based indexes portray Central and Eastern European backsliding as the most significant trend in the EU democratic landscape, public opinion identifies a very different set of democracy's successes and failures. As experts and the general public fail to arrive at mutually accepted criteria of democratic performance evaluation, public debate has become futile. Meaningful discussion and systemic corrections have become unlikely, creating conditions easily exploitable by the populists, eager to frame it as an example of “elite” detachment from the “ordinary people”.

Many corporations engage in corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities voluntarily, but there is an ongoing debate about whether the government should intervene in CSR, particularly in countries with challenging institutional contexts. While some have argued that CSR should remain a discretionary exercise, as any attempt to make CSR mandatory through any form of state intervention will negate the meaning and objectives of CSR. However, drawing on the institutional theory, this chapter argues for the need to have some form of legislated CSR for banks operating in countries with challenging institutional contexts. The chapter further acknowledges that a universal CSR framework would be difficult to achieve due to differences in institutional contexts between countries; consequently, the nature, scope, and application of CSR legislation would vary significantly amongst countries as CSR is context dependent. Nonetheless, given the crucial role banks plays in society besides acting as the country's payment system, banks also transform illiquid liabilities into liquid assets, therefore making the banks the drivers of national economic developments globally. Governments in developing and emerging markets (DEMs) should ensure that banks' CSR initiatives are not only meaningful but also impactful by implementing a limited legislated CSR framework. This framework would require banks to establish a CSR committee of the board, make mandatory non-financial disclosures on their CSR activities in their Annual Reports, provide mandatory CSR continuous professional development (CPD) training for bankers, and mandate banks to contribute a certain percentage of their yearly profits before tax to agreed CSR initiatives, among other requirements.

This chapter reconstructs and critically examines the recent history of strip searches in Belgium. About 10 years ago the Belgian parliament adopted its first law on prisoners’ rights. A major part of the Prison Act of 12 January 2005 deals with disciplinary and control measures. Article 108, in particular, has provoked quite some controversy. It introduced a clear distinction between the (more superficial) search of an inmates’ clothes on the one hand, and the (substantially more intrusive) measure of strip searching on the other hand. The main difference between these two measures is that the latter involves forcing prisoners to strip naked. Because of their intrinsic intrusiveness, such strip searches were meant to be exceptional measures: they should only take place following an individual assessment and decision by the prison governor. In practice, however, the prison administration tended to interpret Article 108 somewhat differently and the line between searching an inmate’s clothes on the one hand and strip searching on the other became blurred.

I first discuss the problem of order in prisons and explore how strip searches have been regulated in Europe. I then reconstruct the recent history of the regulation of strip searches in Belgium. In order to make sense of this history, I mobilize some of the ideas of Stanley Cohen’s sociology of denial, in particular, his distinction between literal, implicatory and interpretive denial, and apply these to the history of strip searches in Belgium.

A consistent finding from this chapter is that the Belgian prison administration has – through creative manoeuvres of interpretive denial – been able to circumvent the new barriers that were erected by the Prison Act of 12 January 2005 and, in doing so, it has been able to continue stripping detainees naked without an individualized decision from the prison governor. The approach that I develop throughout this chapter helps us better appreciate the limits of legal reform and top-down (European) regulation of strip searches.

The chapter demonstrates that Stanley Cohen’s work on denial is not only useful for scholars who do research on gross human rights violations but also for interpreting more down-to-earth aspects of criminal justice systems across the globe.

This study updates the discussion on demand-pull attention as a source of radical product innovation. Demand-pull attention shows an ex ante alignment with market characteristics and needs as opposed to pushing resources toward markets. The authors suggest a holistic framework and specify three dimensions of demand-pull attention: anticipated or revealed market demand, market environment, and external economic environment. Based on a large German longitudinal panel consisting of 941 firm-year observations from 2003 to 2013, the authors conceptualized the measurement of demand-pull dimensions’ attention and radical product innovation using computer-aided text analysis of annual reports. The authors analyzed the relationship between the attention that a firm pays to different demand-pull dimensions and the firm’s strategic intention to radically innovate; thus, the authors actually focused on the cognitive sources of radical product innovations. This chapter suggests that radical product innovation activities are positively driven by attention toward the market environment and market demand orientation. However, the hypothesis, which assumed a negative relationship between attention toward the external economic environment and radical innovation, could not be significantly confirmed. This demands a closer look into the underlying decision processes of firms when deciding on radical product innovations. With the theoretical grounding on the attention-based view of the firm, the authors contribute to a better understanding of the role that organizational cognition plays in innovation processes.