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The purpose of this paper is to address the following question: In times of permanent connectivity, what forms of freedom need to be considered to prevent permanent availability as an unintended consequence? By using the Hegelian perspective on freedom, the paper categorizes three forms of freedom to transfer them to a common, contemporary understanding of freedom relating it to freedom through human-to-human digital communication. The aim is to show that freedom is not only about independence and realizing choices but also about embedding and committing oneself.

This mainly conceptual paper derives implications based on the Hegelian theory. This is supplemented by an interdisciplinary approach, whereby categories of other philosophers, ethicists, economists and sociologists are applied. The analysis of the contemporary perspective on freedom is enriched by referencing empirical studies.

Digital communication offers new freedom such as working with fewer restrictions from time and space, especially for knowledge workers. It is theoretically possible to work 24 h per day from anywhere (independence), as well as to decide on the final location and timing of one’s work (realizing choices). When solely focusing on these – seemingly advantageous – forms of freedom in times of permanent connectivity, unintended consequences such as the expectation of permanent availability develop. The key message of the paper is that considering one’s temporal and social dependencies (embeddedness) is an indispensable part of actual freedom to avoid unintended consequences.

Organizations need to invest in moral discernment to understand unintended consequences, as well as to cope with them.

Applying the Hegelian theory on freedom based on digital communication to better understand social dynamics of digital communication is a largely unexplored avenue in the existing scientific literature. The decision to undertake this venture resulted from the identified necessity of understanding freedom better. It is often not clear what is meant by freedom through digital communication. Although freedom is a complex construct, it is often reduced to independence/having a choice and realizing choices. When solely focusing on independence and realizing choices, unintended consequences such as permanent availability often go unnoticed. It is exactly because of these issues that this paper endeavors to examine the (deep) meaning of the powerful, yet complex, term of freedom.

This paper seeks to use a multi‐disciplinary approach to analyze past and present economic and social explanations for development phenomena. A number of key factors may be missing from the current paradigm.

Comparative country surveys of corruption, ownership, freedom, and individualism are analyzed and discussed. Measurements on nine separate indices are evaluated for 97 nations. These interact to form a model labeled the Triad of Strains with three composite axes: ownership‐responsibility, freedom‐actualization, and control‐corruption.

Three theses are suggested from the comparative analyses: without ownership there can be no responsibility, freedom and responsibility go hand‐in‐hand, and unwise use of political control severely undermines economic development.

Limitations include unavailable data for key areas such as North Korea.

Implications are that development policies should promote meaningful private ownership and personal freedom.

This research explores how ownership and freedom critically impact prosperity and provides a more complete, multi‐disciplinary framework for economic development.

This paper examines the effect of financial (banking) freedom and market power on bank net interest margins (NIM).

The study uses data from 11 sub-Saharan African countries over the period, 2006-2012, and the system generalized method of moments to assess how financial freedom affects the relationship between market power and bank NIM.

The authors find that both financial freedom and market power have positive relationships with bank NIM. However, there is some indication that the impact of market power on bank margins is sensitive to the level of financial freedom prevailing in an economy. It appears that as competition intensifies, margins of banks in freer countries are likely to reduce faster than those in areas with more restrictions.

Competition policies could be guided by the insight on how financial freedom moderates the effect of market power on bank margins.

This study provides new empirical evidence on how the level of financial freedom affects bank margins and the market power-bank margins relationship.

Studies media convergence in Canada, arguing it has always been a possibility as change is not a consequence of new technologies but a shift from efforts to prevent cross‐media combinations, to initiatives that promote this aim. Sums up that media reconvergence and the information highway are at the top of the communications policy agenda, but how it will involve is unclear.

The ideational connections between social democracy and basic income is the theme of this article. Social democracy is not a fixed doctrine, but as a movement it shares some key ideas with the policy of basic income, like solidarity, equal opportunity, freedom and social security. Due to current challenges emerging from waves of digitalisation, globalisation, etc., the support for a universal basic income has taken off, but not among social democratic politicians. The article argues that the social democratic policy of full employment implies an increasingly tough work orientation that is challenging to reconcile with de-commodifying social rights, which has characterized social democratic welfare states. It is further argued that a strict reciprocity-based policy has not proven effective in getting people into work on a permanent basis, and that the current challenges require new policy ideas. Two alternatives are discussed: guaranteed jobs and a basic income. The article argues that the lack of enthusiasm for the last option among social democrats is based on the misconception that a basic income will harm people's motivation to work, their self-respect, the social economy and the principle of justice. The article sheds light on this misconception. In the closing remarks, the proposal for an ‘emergency basic income’ is considered in view of the current global corona crisis.

The growth of more contingent pay systems has been a key development in the 1980s and 1990s. Various contextual changes — such as the pattern of employment, the decline of collective bargaining and Government support for particular initiatives to encourage financial participation — has given employers an increasing freedom in determining both the composition and level of remuneration (Brown and Walsh, 1994). This new freedom has allowed new pay systems to develop which are, according to the prescriptive literature, much more contingent on individual business circumstances than in the past (Armstrong and Murlis, 1994; Schuster and Zingheim, 1992). Pay determination has become increasingly linked to the performance of the individual company or business unit, the team or work group and, of course, the individual employee. Concepts such as the “going rate”, the “rate for the job” and pay comparability have been challenged and, in some cases, replaced with new approaches to pay determination. These new approaches include “person related pay”, as opposed to “job related” (Mahoney, 1989; Gomez‐Meja and Balkin, 1992); more decentralised pay determination systems (Millward et al, 1990; Jackson, Leopold and Tuck, 1993); more “variable” or “at risk” pay (CBI, 1994i); and more flexible benefits schemes (IDS, 1991). Most importantly, the concept of “reward strategy” has emerged, the clear linkage of remuneration systems to business objectives and company culture (Hewitt Associates, 1991; Murlis and Armstrong, 1994; Gomez Meja and Balkin, 1992). A recent CBI/Wyatt publication on “Variable Pay” (CBI, 1994) concludes that employers are looking for payment strategies based around three criteria: