Patterns of Labour Solidarity Towards Precarious Workers and the Unemployed in Critical Times in Greece, Poland, and the UK

The purpose of this article is to examine whether and by what means traditional unions and other labour-oriented organisations engage in solidarity activities in favour of precarious workers and the unemployed. Our findings derive from qualitative data analysed from 10 in-depth interviews per country conducted as part of a large collaborative project with participants sampled from trade unions and other labour-oriented solidarity organisations based in three European national contexts: Greece, Poland, and the UK. Our aim here is to discern common features and differences in the strategies and answers given, within the three national contexts. To this end, we examine the actors engaged in labour solidarity; the value frames upon which these actions draw; the beneficiaries of their solidarity actions; the type of activities adopted mainly in favour of precarious workers and the unemployed; and their engagement in transnational labour solidarity activities.

Democratic Theory and the Potential of Value Frames in Assessing Media Performance

Media users need information and knowledge to act as free citizens. From this basic democratic assumption, news standards for media performance can be derived. Porto’s (2007) model of the ‘interpreting citizen’ assigns a central role to the diversity of interpretive frames. These frames enable citizens to make judgments about societal issues and related political positions. However, a theoretical foundation for classifying these frames in terms of their content is missing. We propose to derive such a basis from democratic theories of citizenship, which assume that values define a citizen’s position vis-à-vis the political sphere. Building on the cleavage approach from political science, we characterize which values organize political debates. The results of a large-scale content analysis of German news media demonstrate which empirical insights into media performance can be gained with a theoretically derived classification of value frames (most notably, measuring the substantive content of plurality). Based on this, we discuss additional avenues for future research.

Values Underlying Preferences for Adaptive Governance in a Chilean Small-Scale Fishing Community

Environmental change requires individuals and institutions to facilitate adaptive governance. However, facilitating adaptive governance may be difficult because resource users’ perceptions of desirable ways of life vary. These perceptions influence preferences related to environmental governance and may stem from the ways individuals subjectively value their work and their connections to their environment. This paper uses a value-based approach to examine individual and institutional preferences for adaptive governance in Carelmapu, Chile. We show that two groups had different value frames rooted in divergent ontologies which influenced their actions related to adaptive governance, creating conflict.

The Relationship of Organisational Value Frames with the Configuration of Alliance Portfolios: Cases from Electricity Utilities in Great Britain

Increasing concerns over global and local sustainability issues motivate businesses to develop solutions via collaborative partnerships. While many studies explain the contributions of sustainable alliances to economic, environmental, and social sustainability, less is known about how a portfolio of these alliances is configured. This study aims to answer this question by examining the relationship between organisational value frames and alliance portfolio configurations of 16 utility companies in the electricity industry of Great Britain. The study finds that organisational value frames play a key role in the selection of alliance partners and hence the configuration of alliance portfolios. The results demonstrate that British electricity utilities often collaborate with cognitively similar organisations. The results demonstrate that cognitive homophily is common in selecting partners to tackle sustainability issues. While previous studies demonstrated homophily in partner selection as resource homophily or status homophily, in the sustainability context, this study shows that homophily is also about values that guide interpretations of sustainability issues.

Value(s) for Whom? Creating Value(s) for Stakeholders

While mankind in the 21st century faces several sustainability challenges, many business practices remain on a nonsustainable pathway. At the same time, many scholars as well as managers consider maximizing shareholder wealth as the only business imperative. We argue that this situation calls for revisioning—that is, reorienting and redefining—what is meant by value creation. This revisioning requires a considerable broadening of our understanding about the purposes and functioning of businesses. Thus, we ask one central question: Value(s) for whom? In this article, we derive and discuss three phases of the academic debate on stakeholders and value creation. We argue that in today’s third phase, the notion of collective value frames the debate. To enable transformations toward creating collective value, embedded relations with stakeholders are of central relevance. In a nutshell, the answer to our question is the following: Creating value(s) for stakeholders.