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According to Sen's theoretical framework of capability (1985), individuals reach their full potential once they have the freedom, intended as the set of functionings at their disposal, to do so. However, many critiques have been developed against the lack of embeddedness of the capability approach in social and political relations and structures. In this article, the authors investigate the influence of three institutional contexts (Belgium, the Netherlands and France) on the respective work-related functionings of self-employed and regular workers, with a focus on human capital investment and institutional support offered to them.

Data from the European Working Conditions Survey (EWCS) are used to highlight similarities and differences in building work-related functionings for regular and self-employed workers. A regression analysis is provided at the country level.

In the three labour markets, the authors find that the building of work-related functionings is more successful for regular employees, especially as regards institutional support. Self-employed workers, on the other hand, need to rely on their individual capability as regards employment protection and human capital investment. However, the authors find interesting differences between the three institutional contexts. In both Belgium and France, self-employed workers are subject to higher instability in terms of changes in salary and hours worked, whereas atypical work is better positioned in the Dutch labour market. The Netherlands is also characterised by a less significant gap between regular and self-employed workers with respect to participation in training.

In this article, the authors contextualise Sen's (1985) theoretical framework by taking into account the institutional differences of labour markets. In particular, the authors provide a novel application of his capability approach to regular and self-employed workers in an economically relevant European area.

What is the relation between the land system with Chinese characteristics and the country's high-speed economic growth in the past decades? There is a lack of rigorous academic research based on the general equilibrium theory of macroeconomics on this issue.

By building a multisector dynamic general equilibrium framework with land system, this paper explores how the land supply mode with Chinese characteristics affects China's economic growth as well as its transmission mechanism.

This paper confirms the importance of land system with Chinese characteristics in explaining the mystery of China's high-speed economic growth. Counterfactual analysis shows that if China adopts a land system similar to that of other developing countries, GDP will drop 36% from the current level under the baseline model.

As the industrial sector shrinks relatively and the output elasticity of infrastructure decreases, this inhibitory effect will become more apparent. China should improve its land supply mode, especially expand the supply of commercial and residential land and reduce the cost of land in the service sector. This can promote better economic development in the future and thus improve household welfare and the structure of aggregate demand, replace “land-based public finance” and thus inhibit the “high leverage” risks of local governments.

A “living” wage (LW) is conventionally defined as enabling meaningful participation in society above subsistence through, for example, recreation, supporting a family, and savings. There is increasing debate over LWs due to growing inequality, rising living costs and welfare reform but this remains largely framed by the econometric cost-benefit parameters that apply to minimum wage regulation. The capabilities approach advocated by Sen (1999) offers a different perspective that is inclusive of choice, contingencies and the inter-connections between quality of (paid) work and private life. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The paper adopts this framework and utilises a qualitative exploration of the narratives of 606 New Zealand employees to understand perceived wage effectiveness. The results suggest that a focus on a specific LW rate might be conceptually limiting, in comparison to a LW range.

First, the findings indicate that there is a pivot range in which people move from self-assessed “survival” to “decent” income. Second, a LW may have more than a simply monetary effect in better meeting employees’ living costs; it can also improve well-being through subjective perceptions of valued freedoms to do with job satisfaction, equity and security.

The results thus draw attention to a wider notion of a LW in terms of personal and family well-being, utilising a capabilities approach, with implications for organisational practice, policy and theory concerning sustainable livelihood and the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

This study argues that in order to address the problems associated with the modern market economy at their core, such as persistent poverty, growing inequality and environmental degradation, it is imperative to re-assess the well-being and moral philosophy underpinning economic thinking. The author attempts to offer a preliminary way forward with reference to the Islamic intellectual tradition.

This study employs content analysis of classical and contemporary Islamic texts on human well-being and economic ethics to derive a conceptual well-being model. The paper is structured in four sections: section one provides an overview of relevant secondary literature on moral economic approaches; section two outlines the main well-being frameworks; section three discusses the concept of human well-being in Islam informed by the Islamic worldview of tawḥīd, the Islamic philosophy of saʿādah, and the higher objectives of Islamic Law (maqās_.id al-Sharīʿah); and finally, section four discusses policy implications and next steps forward.

A conceptual model of human well-being from an Islamic perspective is developed by integrating philosophical insights of happiness (saʿādah) with an objective list of five essential goods: religion (Dīn), self (Nafs), intellect ('Aql), progeny (Nasl) and wealth (Māl) that correspond to spiritual, physical and psychological, intellectual, familial and social, and material well-being, respectively.

Further research is needed to translate this conceptual model into a composite well-being index to inform policy and practice.

This model can be used to review the performance of the Islamic finance sector, not solely in terms of growth and profitability, but in terms of realising human necessities, needs and refinements. It can also provide the basis for the Organisation of Islamic Co-operation (OIC) countries to jointly develop a well-being index to guide national and regional co-operation. More generally, this study highlights the need for research in Islamic economics to be more firmly rooted within Islamic ontology and epistemology, while simultaneously engaging in productive dialogue with other moral schools of economic thought to offer practical solutions to contemporary challenges.

This study offers three aspects of originality. First, by outlining well-being frameworks, it highlights key differences between the utilitarian understanding of well-being underpinning modern economic theory and virtue-based understandings, such as the Aristotelian, Christian and Islamic approaches. Second, it provides a well-being model from an Islamic perspective by integrating the Islamic worldview of tawḥīd, the Islamic philosophy of saʿādah, and the higher objectives of Islamic Law (maqāṣid al-Sharīʿah). Third, it proposes an ethical framework for informing economic policy and practice.

This paper explores the relationship between married women's intrahousehold decision-making participation and marital gender roles, next to factors suggested in the household bargaining literature. Additionally, the authors investigate whether women's employment carries the same importance for decision-making participation as contributions to household incomes.

Using 2011/2012 Nicaraguan Demographic and Health Survey (DHS), the authors estimate multinomial logistic regressions for eight decision-making domains, analyzing three levels of decision-making: wife-dominant or sole decisions, joint decision-making (with the partner) and decision-making by someone else. The authors create an additive index for measuring internalized marital gender roles.

Women's intrahousehold decision-making participation is explained differently depending on the decision-making area and level of participation. Women with a better relative position vis-à-vis partners and not following patriarchal gender roles are more likely to make decisions jointly with their partners, but not alone. Women's age and educational level are the strongest predictors in the analysis. Women's employment reduces their decision-making participation in children's disciplining and daily cooking-related decisions.

It focuses on married women only, while marital status might be a determinant of decision-making itself and left out the contribution of unearned incomes.

Interventions aimed at increasing women's intrahousehold decision-making participation should not only focus on economic endowments but also comprehend the gendered dynamics governing intrahousehold allocation.

The study incorporates quantitative measures of marital gender roles in the study of intrahousehold decision-making. It also contributes to the literature with insights from contexts where women's involvement in employment increased against a background of patriarchal gender roles.

Using an enhanced version of the theory of reasoned action (TRA), this study investigates the antecedents of organic quinoa-based food buying intention. In addition to attitude toward this behavioral intention, the proposed model examines the influence that ecological welfare, political values, and consumer-perceived corporate social responsibility (CSR) of the point of sale exert on consumer willingness to purchase organic quinoa-based food.

Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to analyze the data collected through an intercept survey conducted at specialized organic stores on a convenience sample of 158 individuals in Italy.

Although ecological welfare and a retailer's CSR image positively influence consumer attitude toward buying organic quinoa-based food, political values negatively affect this attitude. Furthermore, consumer attitude is found to be a crucial predictor of behavioral intention.

At the theoretical level, the results are useful for demonstrating that other variables, in addition to those used in the traditional TRA, can further explain consumers' organic food buying intention. Additionally, the findings might be useful for both quinoa producers and retailers in creating and executing their marketing and communication strategies.

In addition to contributing to the stream of literature that investigates possible variables that might increase the predictive power of the TRA, this study sheds some light on organic food purchasing consumer behavior.

As corporate sustainability is systemic, it cannot be achieved without effective involvement of suppliers. This study aims to examine the drivers of supplier companies’ resource allocation to a sustainability issue that affects customer companies and society at large.

Supplier companies’ resource allocation for a sustainability issue is explained from variables at the levels of the institutional, supply chain and internal environments of a supplier company. The framework is tested with a moderated regression model on 102 supplier companies in animal-based supply chains, focussing on their resource allocation for farm animal welfare.

The findings show that supply chain factors have the strongest influence on suppliers’ resource allocation, including a strong effect of investment specificity and a U-shaped effect of chain integration. Also, significant effects from institutional variables, namely, the pressure on consumer companies, and an inverted U-shaped effect of sustainability competition are found. The innovativeness, referring to the internal environment of supplier companies, appears as another important factor for the allocation of resources to animal welfare, as a sustainability issue.

The results have implications for consumer market companies to deal with sustainability issues that require involvement of their suppliers, for supplier companies to increase their competitive positions and strengthen their relationships within the supply chain, and for policymakers seeking solutions for sustainability issues in the market domain.

While existing literature focusses mostly on the corporate sustainability of highly visible and large consumer companies, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to examine the drivers of supplier companies’ resource allocation for a sustainability issue, namely, animal welfare. It provides insights on what drives supplier companies, usually operating outside the spotlight, to become part of a sustainability transition.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the intended and unintended consequences of compliance and auditing pressures in the Bangladeshi garment industry. To explore this issue the authors draw on three medium-sized suppliers. The institutional changes that followed the Rana Plaza accident in April 2013 make Bangladesh in general and the garment industry in particular an interesting and suitable research setting for standards compliance.

The study adopts a multiple case study approach. Face-to-face interviews have been conducted with the owners of three Bangladeshi garment manufacturing firms and several workers. Additionally, organisational documents and local newspaper articles had been collected wherever possible.

The results indicate that the pressure for compliance has led the case companies to prioritise the implementation of measurable standards over the socially grounded needs and priorities of workers. As a consequence certain initiatives instead of adding new social value in fact destroyed previously existing social value. Furthermore, the pressure for compliance created the necessity to find ways to cover the sizable cost of compliance. This prompted firms to pursue process upgrading through technological advancements and increased work pressures on the labour force. These initiatives led to an increased power imbalance and the exclusion of unskilled workers from the job market.

The paper contributes to the understanding of the human rights implications of compliance and auditing pressures and initiatives. Furthermore, in order to further enrich existing knowledge in the critical accounting literature, the study draws on insights from the global value chains (GVC) and international business (IB) literatures.

The paper contributes to the understanding of the human rights implications of compliance and auditing pressures and initiatives. Furthermore, in order to further enrich existing knowledge in the critical accounting literature, the study draws on insights from the GVC and IB literatures.

This paper aims to identify and conceptualize a set of relational capabilities that school libraries in the Alentejo region of Portugal develop for acquiring new knowledge that exists externally in the wider community.

A qualitative research design operationalized via case studies was followed for the empirical analysis. Empirical findings are based on the analysis of the 84 narrative reports submitted by school libraries as part of a national performance evaluation exercise that took place between 2010 and 2012. Data analysis followed the techniques of inductive data categorization, within case-analysis, and cross-case analysis.

The exploration of the relational capabilities that school libraries in the Alentejo region of Portugal develop for acquiring new knowledge that exists externally in the community resulted in the identification of relationships that school libraries in the region have established to acquire new knowledge: connecting with and supporting organizations committed to civic engagement; facilitating discussions about challenging issues through strategic partnerships; convening community conversations to identify shared concerns and solutions; and embracing local culture to foster endogenous development.

The ability to seek and recognize the value of new and external knowledge, assimilate it and apply it to organizational ends has been traditionally linked to the concept of absorptive capacity. While absorptive capacity literature in business settings is prolific, literature that focuses on school libraries’ ability to identify and explore external knowledge and applying it to improve their performance is scarce. Focusing on the specific context of the Alentejo region of Portugal as an archetypical rural area, this paper identifies how knowledge existing externally in the community is absorbed by rural school libraries through specific relational capabilities that reflect school libraries’ community orientation and engagement in participatory processes that develop social resilience.

Whether by direct or indirect action (or by inaction), multinational enterprises (MNEs) can have both a positive and a negative effect on within-country social and economic inequality. This paper aims to comment on this multifaceted relationship between MNEs and within-country inequality.

Given the absence of either robust theory or evidence in the neglected realm of MNEs and within-countries inequalities, this paper offers some general observations, highlights some of the key issues and illustrates possible avenues for future research studies.

The capacity of MNEs to upgrade economic activity in the host country is a key policy objective. MNEs have arguably contributed to reducing income inequalities between countries. However, the limited evidence available suggests that the gains of FDI are rarely evenly distributed within recipient countries, and many of the underlying dynamics need further investigation.

The authors broaden the engagement with inequality beyond income levels, as this is just one aspect of inequality that shapes or impedes human development. They believe it is necessary – for both MNEs and policymakers – to have a more nuanced understanding of how, and under what circumstances, the presence of MNEs affects inequality in host economies.

This paper relates the large literature on inequality (going beyond the mainstream focus on income inequality) to the mainstream understanding of MNE-assisted development.