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Political institutions and contemporary workplaces operate according to different rules. The seeming contradiction between these two spheres, one democratic and the other something else, presents an opportunity for productive speculation about the possibilities for reconciliation. The purpose of this paper is to provide a guide for future research investigation of this perennial topic.

The discussion of whether the workplace can catch up with the democratic achievements of political life requires an understanding of the status quo, the prevailing frames or metaphors that govern our understanding of organizational life. Four metaphors are put forward to describe the prevailing spectrum of thought. In addition to metaphors, analogies are introduced as an interpretive tool to help guide the imaginative transition between political and workplace domains.

Democratic political cultures are supported by structures and institutions which encourage the expression of individual and collective voice. Workplaces, comprised of the same citizens who participate in the governance of communities, do not, with some important exceptions, offer the same opportunities for democratic participation. If a general analogy between political and workplace sphere is found persuasive, it should be possible to import and adapt democratic traditions from the former to the latter.

Discussions of workplace democracy often suffer from a certain naiveté, a bias against structure and toward informal consensus. Insofar as democratic workplaces are by definition smaller scale than political communities, this bias is defensible. This paper concludes however by asserting certain minimal “acid test” challenges to those who would promote the goal of workplace democracy.

We study how different rules for allocating litigation costs impact on royalty negotiation when a non-practicing patent holder asserts its patent against a product developer.

A theoretical framework is proposed which distinguishes between three legal-cost allocation systems: the American system, where each party bears its own costs; the British system, where the loser incurs all costs; and the system favoring the defendant, where the defendant pays its own costs if it loses and nothing otherwise. The model considers both flat lawyer fees and contingency fees.

We first determine conditions under which, in the assumed contexts, the American system is preferable to the British one. Successively, we show that the less usual system favoring the defendant proves to be an interesting alternative.

In this way, in addition to extend the standard model of patent holdup, we furnish an analytical treatment of recent legislative proposals, such as the Saving High-Tech Innovators from Egregious Legal Disputes (SHIELD) Act of 2013.

Introduction: The liberalization tendency in the economic system of most countries in the world exists in the last years. Our last research proves that in most cases liberalism gives a positive effect on social-economic development (including pension system). However, constructive potential of economic liberalism is not everlasting, it means, first at some stages there is a certain end for the liberalization of the economy. Secondly, after a certain level (before the last level) liberalism may bring out an imminent shortage (the market sinister) in the free market in a destructive way. That is why one of the essential (and very difficult) duties of economic science is to define effective ranges of liberalism (accordingly, government regulation) for each certain country during a specific time frame. One of the differences of the pension system from other social protected chains is that this system is capable to liberalize. Is it possible to measure the degree of the government regulation of the pension system? Unfortunately, this chapter has revealed that there is no such methodology. The author has created a methodology for the first time that allows to measure the degree of government regulation in the pension system. This methodology is called the Index of Liberalism (Dirigisme) of Pension System (IL(D)PS). By calculating IL(D)PS, the author finds out that the regulation degree (interval) of the pension system. Measurement of the degree of government regulation in the pension system allows evaluating the social consequences of the implemented reforms. IL(D)PS has been calculated on the basis of four indicators: (i) ratio of the private pension assets (%GDP); (ii) ratio of the public pension expenditures (%GDP); (iii) social security tax rates for employers; and (iv) restrictions for investment of the pension funds. At the initial stage IL(D)PS has been calculated for 31 countries. Among 31 countries, there are developed, emerging, post-socialist countries and countries known for their revolutionary reforms in the pension system. According to IL(D)PS, the most dirigiste (leftness) countries are France (0.868), Greece (0.732), Italy (730) and Azerbaijan (0.704). According to the IL(D)PS, the most liberal (rightness) countries are Australia (0.208), Denmark (0.223), the Netherlands (0.231) and Canada (0.237). In Azerbaijan, pension provision is under governmental monopoly (extreme dirigiste system). The private pension system in Azerbaijan has not been formed yet. Azerbaijan has a certain degree of liberalization of the pension system. Aim: The author wants to measure the degree of the government regulation in the pension system. Method: The author have performed correlation, analytical-statistical and cross-country analyze. Findings: The degree of the government regulation in the pension system has been measured in 31 countries.

The chapter is aimed at comprehensive discovery of the basic legal tools to improve the quality of corporate governance from the standpoint of efficient revealing, preventing and shooting negative implications of internal corporate disputes. The subject of the study, in particular, is regulatory and non-regulatory enactments in this area. Within the study we employ basic approaches that allow to reveal the conditions ensuring efficient corporate governance, i.e., dialectical, historical, systemic, formal-logic, and comparative-law ones. Therewith, the main focus is on the application of system theory developments in terms of the methodological techniques to describe any system object.

Regarding the disputes between participants of the corporation, we substantiate the need of creating conditions for the highest account of opinions of all the participants in the development of collective will, as well as for restraint of major participants from potential abuses (through accumulative voting mechanism, implementing “two keys” principle, etc.). Special attention is paid to the issues of procedure and content of interest-collision transactions made by economic societies.

The authors point out definite guidelines to improve legislation in anti-conflict aspect (forms of holding general meetings of participants, exclusive and non-exclusive competence of governing bodies, the content of acts coordinating interested-party transactions, etc.).

Purpose – This chapter examines the interactions among wholesale betel nut traders within Papua New Guinea’s (PNG’s) flourishing, contemporary, and indigenous betel nut trade. It explores the nature of the “social embeddedness” of the trade and how particular “place-based” practices and ideas shape people’s engagements with markets.Methodology/approach – Multisited ethnographic research focused on betel nut traders.Findings – This chapter highlights how local ideas about sociality and exchange shape the copresent rivalry and companionship that characterize interactions among Mt. Hagen’s betel nut traders. Traders travel long distances and take great risks to buy betel nut. They travel together, share resources, and trade in the same places, and through this they become part of one another’s social networks. This creates the expectation that traders will cooperate, consider other traders in their actions, contribute to each other’s safe-keeping, and act collectively in their interactions with producers. This does not preclude competition, however. Traders compete for profits, but the competiveness of their interactions is also influenced by a concern for status. This copresence of companionship and rivalry, which pervades Hagen sociality more broadly, is central to shaping the trade as a whole.Originality/value of the chapter – Betel nut is the most important domestic cash crop in PNG, and selling betel nut is a prominent livelihood activity for rural and urban people. This chapter reports some of the findings of the first detailed study of the betel nut trade in PNG.

Over the past two decades, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has become an influential actor in the education sector. This has been accomplished, partly, by the administration of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) since 2000. Overall, PISA is intended to inform the public, parents, teachers, and those who run education systems of the status of education in their country. Research shows that policymakers draw on PISA results when they launch and design education reforms. To date, however, we know very little about whether PISA is successfully informing the general public, which is the main sponsor and benefactor of PISA. Using public opinion surveys from the United States and Israel, this chapter examines knowledge and perception of PISA. Recent reports suggest that both countries are in the middle ranks of all countries participating in PISA, with the United States being in the middle ranks of OECD countries and Israel being in the lower ranks of this group. Findings from public opinion surveys reveal three interesting patterns. First, in both countries, the public tend to underestimate how well 15-year olds perform on international standardized tests. Second, college graduates are more likely than those with less education to underestimate the performance of teens on international standardized tests. Third, although the public seems to be misinformed about PISA results, we find considerable public support for PISA and international standardized tests more generally. Implications of the findings for policy and future research in the field of international and comparative education are discussed.

Purpose – The chapter discusses the importance of remittances for the way rural people in Manus Province, Papua New Guinea, engage with capitalism in the form of development, wage labor, and the modern consumer economy.Methodology/approach – The chapter draws upon a combination of original ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2002 and 2008 and readings of previous anthropological research about Manus.Findings – The chapter shows how the remittances of goods and money are part of the maintenance of long-term exchange relationships between emigrants and their rural kin, and how remittances are regarded as crucial in fostering local development. The remittances comprise a large proportion of the flow of money into Manus. They also form social ties between migrants and villagers, and may facilitate the return of migrants to their home village. The moral conflicts and evaluations of status and leadership tied into the remittance practices and the strategies employed by returning migrants are explained as the articulation of different values rather than one system supplanting the other.Originality/value – The aspect of remittances related to return migration is particularly under-theorized in anthropology. In this way the chapter has value to both researchers specializing in remittance-economies or local-level politics and development planners and practitioners.

In this explorative study, the authors aim to contribute to the literature on socio-economic integration and migrant entrepreneurship by conducting an investigation into the migration journeys of Ukrainian migrants developing entrepreneurial activities in Krakow, Poland. The main research question for this study is as follows: how do migrant entrepreneurs establish their businesses in the new host country context? The authors have undertaken a qualitative comparative study, adopting an interpretivist paradigm involving 32 interviews with migrants of Ukrainian descent in Kraków and other cities, who are engaging in entrepreneurial activity. The findings reveal the critical importance of diaspora networks in business foundation and development, especially the linkages between the Ukrainians and other migrants from other former Soviet countries, a finding in line with Rodgers, Vershinina, Williams, and Theodorakopoulos’s (2019) findings from a study of migrants in the UK. The authors also demonstrate how as a result of the worsening economic and political climate in Ukraine, many businesses are being transferred to Poland.