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Many commodity supply chains suffer from an unfair value distribution across the supply chain like “Coffee Paradox.” This study explores the coffee supply chain to determine how the country of origin–geographical indicator can be used as a method of fair distribution of value and provenance across the supply chain effectuated by the blockchain technology. By looking at an exemplar case study for India, this study provides insights into diverse research streams and practice.

Based on the case method, analyzing the implementation of blockchain in the coffee industry by a leading Indian software implementation of the logic, dynamics and forces for a provenance model has been devised. It further adopts a stakeholder cum institutional theory framework to understand the logical implementation of a blockchain project embedded in a territorial logic for a commodity supply chain.

This study specifically looks at coffee which is representative of a commodity supply chain. It also explores how the malaise of unfair value distribution gets addressed by bringing farmers and the consumers on a common platform facilitated by blockchain technology. This study contributes to the literature on blockchain, territory, commodity and supply chain. Using stakeholder cum institutional theory, this study helps to explore how the implementation is successful by different actors in the supply chain through collaboration.

This study provides a new stream of multi-disciplinary study at the interface of supply chain, technology, international trade and geography.

Blockchains are embedded in the supply chain, and supply chains are embedded in territories. This linkage is paramount and the ability to make these blockchain projects successful requires the deep study of the interaction of territory, technology and actors from the provenance angle. De-commodification of coffee can be actualized through blockchain.

The coffee paradox and skewed value distribution is also a social problem wherein the farmers do not get the right price of their produce and are exploited. This case also highlights how this social malaise can be addressed and rightful and equitable distribution of value happens across the value chain.

This linkage between territory, blockchain, commodity supply chain and institutions has not been discussed in the literature. Adopting the territorial design approach, this study is an attempt to stimulate inter-disciplinary conversations and thereby create a provenance framework for commodity and research questions for scholars from different disciplines and divergent disciplinary perspectives.

Drawing on in-depth interviews and observations in Denmark and the United States, this chapter compares discourses and experiences of young unemployed professionals engaged in networking. Common across both sites is the kind of emotional labor perceived to be required for effective networking, with workers frequently drawing on romantic dating as a key metaphor. However, engagement in such emotional labor is more intense and pervasive for American jobseekers, while Danish jobseekers express greater concern about potential exploitation of the other party, corruption, and pressure to conform to norms of marketability. The chapter discusses possible links among networking experiences, hiring practices and political-economic contexts in the United States and Denmark.

The starting point of the paper is the meteoric rise of care and care work upon the societal and sociological agenda. Referring to Polanyi, the authors argue that this is the manifestation of a new phase of capitalist societalisation (Vergesellschaftung) of social reproduction in the form of an economic shift. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the societal organisation of care and care work and questions of inequality and justice.

The first part of the paper illustrates some facets of the economic shift in the field of care and care work. The second part reconstructs the societal organisation of care and care work in the private sector, state, third sector and private households from the mid-twentieth century in the context of questions of inequality and justice. The third part draws on the institutional logics perspective and French pragmatic sociology and the own case studies on home care agencies (HCA), residential care communities (RCC) and early child care (ECC) in Austria and Germany and shows how conflicting demands give rise to new questions of justice. The paper ends with a short conclusion.

The paper shows how the commodification and de-commodification of care and care work have changed over time and how the economic shift – illustrated in the case of HCA, RCC and ECC – is accompanied by conflicting demands and questions of justice.

A Polanyian perspective on the relation between market and society is combined with the neo-institutionalist and pragmatic idea that orientations rooted in the “logics” of the market, the state, the family and the profession influence how conflicting demands in elder and child care are dealt with and how questions of inequality and justice arise.

Social policy, labour markets and industrial relations are closely linked, both empirically and conceptually, as described in the first part of the paper using examples drawn from the USA and Europe. The same issues are then explored in more detail for the Russian case. The latter half of the paper presents the results of a new survey of Russian heads of household in St Petersburg, Moscow and Voronezh. The households have been selected from among those unemployed, on forced leave, facing imminent redundancy, or recently re‐employed after unemployment. Interactions between these four labour market states, household labour market strategies, and their variations across the three cities are explored. Conclusions regarding the current mix of social policy, labour markets and industrial relations in Russia close the paper.

Contemporary categorizations of western-style welfare states distinguish a particular pattern of organizing social security mainly found in Scandinavian countries, and sometimes labeled as a “social democratic welfare regime.” This is characterized by general access of the population to a social security system organized and administered by public authorities. This categorization is widely acknowledged, but the Scandinavian “social democratic” model is rarely ever analyzed in detail.

While most health services are provided by public actors, it is often overlooked that health services in Scandinavian countries in certain fields are delivered to a substantial part by private actors. In Norwegian rehabilitation specialist health care, these private actors stand for more than 30% of all service delivery.

Based on a content analysis of publications of the Norwegian Ministry of Health and Care Services we look into the relation between public and private actors in rehabilitation and relate our findings to classifications of Scandinavian welfare states into an institutional, social democratic model.

With the aim of finding a balance between social and economic benefits, the social economy has reemerged in the crisis of the welfare state. The Fordist welfare state can be characterized by state-provided welfare, the mediation of paid work and welfare by the labor market and redistributive policies. Globally, neoliberalism and the market have given rise to social exclusion; in this context, the social economy is emerging as an alternative to the market domination of societies. This paper aims to construct a conceptual framework of welfare provision in an open innovation era.

The welfare state system between the Fordist welfare state and post-Fordist welfare state is different on provision and delivery of welfare service. To construct the conceptual relation among the social economy, the state and the market and welfare provision in the social economy, this study mainly used the literature review.

Attention should be paid to civil society at the local level to ignite social economy through open social innovation. Various social actors in the local community need to change and develop the social economy with collaborative entrepreneurship and collaborative economic mindsets.

This paper presents the welfare service model led by social economy and open innovation, as well as social change. To fill the shortage of welfare provision caused by crisis of the welfare state, social economy is considered as an alternative for neo-liberalism. This study emphasizes that endogenous local development is a prerequisite for social economy as a welfare supplier.

In the social economy, reciprocity, democracy, self-help and social capital at the local level are emphasized. Also, open innovation put emphasis on collaboration economy among the local community, firms and the public sector: this emphasis can be expected to affect the welfare provision system and the social relations surrounding welfare. To address social problem and social needs, the social economy can adapt and apply the open innovation model.

The previous researches on open innovation mainly deal with the business sector and the public sector, but this paper has a focus on the relation between provision of social welfare and social innovation. The social economy is likely to function properly on the foundation of open social innovation.

A widely held supposition is that goods and services are increasingly produced and delivered for monetised exchange by capitalist firms in pursuit of profit. The result of this view of an ongoing encroachment of the market is that there is only one perceived future for work and it is one characterised by an ever more commodified world. The aim of this paper is to evaluate critically this discourse. Analysing the balance between commodified and non‐commodified work in the advanced economies, a large non‐commodified sphere is identified that, if anything, is found to be expanding relative to the commodified realm. Rather than reading the future of work as a natural and unstoppable progression towards a victorious, all‐powerful and hegemonic commodity economy, this paper thus opens up the feasibility of alternative futures beyond a commodified world.

This paper examines the similarities and variations in the professional and work organisation of nursing in Greece and Poland. It evaluates the evidence of “convergence” as opposed to “embeddedness” in the professional and gendered organisation of nursing in these two countries. The feminised character of nursing is discussed, in relation to the family within the configuration of health‐care services. This issue also relates to the clientelistic relations and familialism that pervade health‐care delivery in both countries – although for different historical and cultural reasons – and which reflect and reinforce patriarchical relations within these societies.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the patterns and determinants of the division of household tasks within couples in countries under different welfare-state regimes.

The paper investigates data on “urban middle- and upper-class” couples living in New York, Paris or Tokyo area, from a 2007 international comparative time-budget survey carried out at the initiative of the Rengo-Soken Research Institute. Each partner was interviewed separately, offering a unique statistical source for analysing the organisation of domestic time.

The results shed light on the degree of proximity among the three populations in their housework-sharing arrangements. Greater parity in partners’ housework time is found for the New York couples, regardless of their occupational activity. In Paris and especially in Tokyo, other demands on the partners’ time and the contribution each makes to the household income both impact the actual division of household labour.

The partners’ gender ideology was not elicited, and inclusion of lower-class couples could change certain results. However, the findings attest to the strong role that welfare-state regime plays in shaping housework time allocation.

Unlike other international comparisons, the survey used enables us to ensure strong comparability of measures. The welfare-state regime and family model frameworks clearly highlight the interplay between individual determinants and the institutional context.