Academic, practitioner, and policy interest in digital labor platforms (DLPs)âbusinesses that use their digital infrastructure to intermediate transactions between workers and clients who need their servicesâis surging. While these transformational platforms have brought many benefits, there are growing concerns about the harms and entrepreneurial risks they create for workers. As such, there is a growing interest in problematizing the ownership and governance of DLPs. Our paper critically compares three increasingly common archetypesâCorporate DLPs, Cooperative DLPs, and Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) DLPsâto discern their likelihood of addressing or exacerbating platform workersâ exposure to harms and entrepreneurial risks. Our analysis identifies promising new opportunities for those interested in cultivating a digital solidarity economy by highlighting the merits and demerits of different alternatives to Corporate DLPs, as well as promising new hybrids like Cooperative DAO DLPs. Furthermore, it advances our understanding of factors that contribute to DLPsâ being structured in particular ways and how choices about DLPsâ structures, in turn, prompt the evolution of organizational archetypes. âą Calls for regulating a plurality of organisational archetypes in the digital economy to mitigate harms and risks to workers. âą Evaluates the harms and entrepreneurial risks of workers across 3 archetypes: Corporate DLPs, Cooperative DLPs, and DAO DLPs. âą Identifies two variants of DAO DLPs, the Non-Cooperative DAO DLP and the Cooperative DAO DLP. âą Furthers our conceptual understanding of the benefits, risks, and harms of the burgeoning digital solidarity economy.
Stefano Balietti, Pietro Saggese, Stefan Kitzler, Bernhard Haslhofer
This chapter explores how Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs), a novel institutional form based on blockchain technology, challenge traditional centralized governance structures. DAOs govern projects ranging from finance to science and digital communities. They aim to redistribute decision- making power through programmable, transparent, and participatory mechanisms. This chapter outlines both the opportunities DAOs present, such as incentive alignment, rapid coordination, and censorship resistance, and the challenges they face, including token concentration, low participation, and the risk of de facto centralization. It further discusses the emerging intersection of DAOs and artificial intelligence, highlighting the potential for increased automation alongside the dangers of diminished human oversight and algorithmic opacity. Ultimately, we discuss under what circumstances DAOs can fulfill their democratic promise or risk replicating the very power asymmetries they seek to overcome.
This paper asks why startups in the blockchain industry are exiting to Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs), an outstanding phenomena in the wider digital economy which has tended to retain centralized ownership and governance rights of many platforms, products and protocols. Drawing on a narrative analysis of three case studies, I find three possible drivers: (1) exit to DAO is motivated by both financial and stewardship goals which it simultaneously promises to realize via the issuance of tokens; (2) exit to DAO adds an additional layer of ownership and governance rights via tokens, without requiring existing rights to be relinquished, thus making it a lucrative strategy; and (3) markets, laws and social norms underpinning the broader environment in which exits to DAO occur, seem to play an important role in driving the decision. This paper contributes to the academic literature by situating DAOs as a hybrid (and perhaps incomplete) entrepreneurial exit strategy and identifying plausible drivers of the phenomenon which warrant further dedicated research.
This research paper presents a theoretical framework for the development and deployment of 'Smoky,' an innovative artificial intelligence system designed to confront systemic racism. Grounded in Africancentered scholarship, 'Smoky' represents a pioneering endeavor in leveraging technology for social equity. The paper explores the conceptualization, development, and potential applications of 'Smoky' within the decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) framework of Planetary Chess. Control theory and automation principles are integral to the design and operation of 'Smoky,' ensuring its effectiveness in addressing racial injustice. The paper highlights the role of control theory in system design, automation of monitoring and response, feedback mechanisms for learning and adaptation, integration with blockchain technology, decentralized control, and continuous evaluation and improvement. By integrating control theory and automation into the 'Smoky' system, the paper contributes to the advancement of technologydriven solutions for social justice. This paper serves as a call to philanthropists and potential collaborators to join in the realization of this vision, contributing to the advancement of technology-driven solutions for social justice.
Subnational governments have become more involved in the âregulation of unemploymentâ (the design, implementation and financing of unemployment-related benefits and activation), partly because they are thought to be better placed to activate the unemployed than federal governments. However, depending on its specific design, decentralization can reduce the incentives subnational governments have to implement effective activation. Such âinstitutional moral hazardâ is not yet systematically theorized. We examine how and to what extent it affects three federal countries. We distinguish three factors that influence whether institutional moral hazard is perceived as a problem and how it can be resolved. We identify two types of subnational challenges to federal control.
Abstract: Transformation of industrial districts has attracted much attention for long. The Ruhr area in Germany, which used to be a pillar of the industrial economy in the past and is a robust cultural and economic region now, is always a typical case. Based on field visits and semi-structured interviews, this paper takes Zeche Zollverein in Ruhr as an example, trying to find out how multiple agents take part in and cooperate with each other during its transformation and to summarize its mechanism of multi-agent governance. It is found that during the transformation in Zeche Zollverein, administrative, social and market powers actively participate and interact in the protection and development of industrial culture, financing and investment, renovation of buildings and environment, daily operation and management as well as social life and space activation. In the framework of multi-agent cooperation in Zeche Zollverein, different levels of governments combine top-down management and moderate decentralization, acting as a backbone; the public are important elements in the activation of social life while social organizations share public affairs with governments and citizens enjoy participating in public activities; market economies form a virtuous circle between their self-development and the regional transformation. From single subject controlling to multi-agent cooperation, the transformation of governance framework in Zeche Zollverein is a remarkable enlightenment for industrial districts in China. Under the realistic conditions of our country with Chinese characteristics, governments tend to be responsible for every stuff in cities and get overburdened. Learning from Zeche Zollverein, they can try to break away from the idea of "all-around arrangement", and to cooperate more with and release some functions to the society and the market, attracting them to locate in the district and develop themselves on their own initiatives, so as to promote regional transformation jointly.
In this paper, the German and Korean trade unions are investigated on their history, unionism and strategies. Through an international comparative study between the two countries, the author attempts to draw applicable implications from German-style unionism unique labor relations for Korean unions and their leaders. During the Weimar Republic, the German labor unions were divided along partisan lines, a situation that led to competition among the socialist, communist, Catholic, and liberal trade associations. After World War II, labor leaders wanted to break from the past, and to form a trade union federation independent of political parties. The result was the establishment of the Federation of German Trade Unions (Deutscher GewerkschaftsbundâDGB) in 1949. Four principles guided the founders of the DGB. First, the labor movement wanted representation through an organization that was unitary and autonomous, with no ties to particular religions or political parties. Second, labor leaders decided to organize the unions along with industrial lines so that all workers at one firm would belong to the same union irrespective of their individual occupations. This organizing principle provides unions with greater bargaining power when negotiating with employer associations, because one union represents the entire workforce of an industry. Third, a decentralized system of interest representation was created. Individual unions typically emulate the federal structure, with local, district, state, and national offices. Each level has some input into the shape of union policy. Fourth, the unions chose to rely on legislation for the protection of workers' rights, rather than on direct negotiations with business representatives. German Codetermination Act (Mitbestimmungsgesetz). The act implements the rule of parity (that is, equal representation of shareholders and employees on a supervisory board), especially for German stock corporations, German private limited liability companies and German limited liability partnerships with more than 2,000 employees. The German Codetermination Act was originally highly disputed, but has become an accepted part of corporate Germany in past decades due to attempts to balance the interests of shareholders and employees. âSocial partnershipâ has played a major role to integrate German society, and to alleviate labor disputes after the World War II in Germany. German unionism characterized by codetermination and âsocial partnershipâ between the labor and management can shed light on Koreaâs future industrial relations. Koreaâs union participation rate of 10.2 percent is less than half of what it was in 1989. Among OECD countries, Korean workersâ unionization ranks near bottom. That does not mean that unions do not wield considerable power. Critics accuse union leaders of serving their own interests before those of their workers and undue participation in politics, and say the current setup harms Koreaâs business competitiveness. To others, the unions are a necessary counterweight to the power of chaebol and to thank for gains in workersâ rights and working conditionsâmaking the idea of curbing their power ridiculous if not sinister. An important development in Korean unionism after 1987 was the emergence and rise of a movement independent of the officially recognized Federation of Korea Trade Unions. There were many attempts to organize a separate national center by union activists who did not follow FKTU policy lines although Korean law allowed only one national center until 1997. Non-recognized unions formed the Korea Confederation of Trade Unions and the KCTU was officially recognized by the government in 1999.
This article addresses the market for employment services. It adopts a dynamic perspective on welfare markets and demonstrates how the institutional design of quasiâmarkets in the Danish Public Employment service has been promoted, altered, and reâregulated over a period of 10 years. It was in 2002 when quasiâmarkets have been created by using the instrument of contractingâout employment services to private providers. Seen from the perspective of policymakers at the national level, contractingâout is attractive as it has a buffering function and allows adapting the amount of the public financed employment services comparatively easy to changing needs resulting from changing labor market conditions. However, contractingâout makes accountability to public goods more difficult as the chain of accountability is stretched or may even be broken. Against the background of accountability scandals, which have revealed the poor quality of privately provided services, the market design was reâmodeled again by replacing standardized national tendering with a decentralized, partnershipâbased and dialogueâoriented approach, where services are developed in joint efforts between purchaser and provider. All in all, the development of quasiâmarkets in the Danish Public Employment system can be described as a partial reversal from marketization. Paradoxically, elements of network governance, which were abolished initially, have been introduced again.
[Excerpt] It is not surprising that most theories of human capital treat the firm as the key unit of analysis, given the deep imprint that Becker (1964 [1993]) left with his early efforts to distinguish between general and specific human capital. It is especially understandable for research that focuses on American institutions and practices. Ever since the passage of the New Deal employment policies of the 1930s, firms have been assigned central roles in the delivery and financing of a variety of labor-market services, including the provision of workforce training and development (Osterman et al, 2001). Most of the chapters in this volume reflect this emphasis by exploring how individuals and firms allocate the costs and share the benefits of human capital, incorporating human capital development into alternative theories of the firm (such as transaction cost, resource-based, agency, entrepreneurial, and knowledge-based perspectives), and how human capital plays into emerging research on social capital, organizational capabilities, learning, and human resource strategies and architectures. But, as Chapters 12, 22, and 23 each suggest, firm-centric theories, particularly those founded upon the neoclassical economics framework, need to more fully take into account how firm boundaries, strategies, and practices relate to other institutions in society. This is particularly important given the changes in employment relationships that are acting to reduce the labor-market functions served by individual employers. In short, the central argument of this chapter is that a more up-to-date theory of the changing nature of employment relationships is needed to understand whether and how human capital is to serve as a source of competitive advantage in a modern economyâeven one as decentralized as that of the US.
This article is based on the research project 'The functioning of sector level wage bargaining systems and wage setting mechanisms in adverse labour market conditions', commissioned and financed by the European Foundation for the improvement of Working and Living conditions, whose support is
In an era in which neo-liberalism has strong societal influences, it seems particularly indispensable to look into the efforts and achievements in Europe to create the social dimension of the integration. Particularly focusing upon the European social dialogue at the macro level, this article depicts its history, function and the challenges it faces.In the main section, the social dialogue at this level is examined in terms of (1) actors, (2) tripartite concertation, (3) consultation according to Articles 137 and 138 of the Treaty and (4) the bipartite, autonomous dialogue between the social partners. With regard to the actors, such problems as the decreasing density and legitimacy of trade union representation in some countries and the lack of a sectoral institution of employers are described, along with some recent organizational developments In the context of the Lisbon strategy adopted in March 2000, the tripartite concertation has taken a significant, albeit embryonic step towards the advent of the corporatist configuration that relates economic and social policies. The consultation processes have created three directives that set minimum standards in the EU. Together with the increasingly autonomous bipartite dialogue that began with a work programme in November 2002, the social dialogue now serves as the driving force of labour market regulation and social integration.Nevertheless, with the national corporatist systems being encroached upon, the European system has been facing some challenges In the last section, its major problems are classified into five categories: the legitimacy of interest representation, the effectiveness of social legislation, dim prospects as a means of macro-economic regulation, the decentralized systems of industrial relations in the CEE countries and an unclear position in the future associational democracy. The European social dialogue may open up a new possibility of formulating innovative policies based on participative democracy that was only available in each member state. Nevertheless, whether or not such a possibility will come true in the near future remains to be seen.
This article examines the influence of New Public Management ideas on recent changes in the Portuguese central government. Its purpose is to analyse the tendency to make public organizations more autonomous and to decentralize following the example of other countries inspired by the practice of the private sector and New Public Management stressing managerial flexibility. The message it conveys is that changes were primarily guided by values of the public domain, juridicial concerns and the primacy of politics, building a public governance that emphasizes the role of politicians and opens the administrative system to the sociopolitical environment.
ConclusionsIn Spring, negligence again presents itself as the avenue through which judges reform private law.The emphasis throughout was on negligence, although the speeches of Lords Woolf and Slynn demonstrate that contract could have provided a remedy.It is somewhat surprising that the contractual analysis did not dominate the speeches, especially since Scally indicates that the contractual analysis should be preferred in cases involving harm arising from e m p l ~y m e n t .~~ Yet only Lord Woolf held that the 'primary source of any liability is contractual rather than tortious,' since the relationship with the defendants arose from the previous engagement;55 the other Law Lords did not address the point.We might also ask what would have happened if the plaintiff had brought the action in defamation.Would their Lordships have found a remedy by reforming the law of defamation?For example, would they have held that qualified privilege should not be available to employers or, if available, it should be rebuttable by proof of carelessness rather than malice?Certainly, Derbyshire County Council v Times Newspaperss6 suggests that the House of Lords is willing to take a fresh look at the rules of defamation where political values are at stake; would it do so where more personal or commercial values are at stake?It seems doubtfuls7; perhaps the employer's qualified privilege has stood too long in a tort 'beyond the redemption of the courts'58 for the judiciary to re-examine it.59And perhaps the return of a more liberal view of negligence makes it unnecessary. Agitating for Part-Time Workers' Rights Charlotte Villiers and Fidelma White"In 1994, progress was made for part-timers in the pursuit of their rights at work.In Equal Opportunities Commission v Secretary of State for Employment,' the House of Lords, having recognised the standing of the Equal Opportunities Commission (EOC), granted a declaration that provisions of the Employment Protection (Consolidation) Act 1978 (EPCA) indirectly discriminate against women and therefore are incompatible with European Community law.This involved reversing the decisions of the Divisional Court and the Court of Appeal.This case is significant for a number of reasons.First, while the case recognises the need to protect part-time workers, the EOC was successful because it was held ~ 54 supra n 48, at pp 302-304 (per Lord Bridge).55 supra n 1, at p 390. Cf South Pacific Manufacturing Co Lid v New Zealand Security Consultants & Investigations Ltd, supra n 18, at p 297 (per Cooke P). 56 [1993] AC 534.57 But see Lord Woolf, supra n 1, at p 400: 'it by no means follows that so far as references are concerned the same view should be taken of public policy as was taken when Whiteley v A d a m was decided.' 58 Slim v Daily Telegraph Lid [1968] 2 QB 157 (per Diplock LJ).59 cf White v Jones, supra n 3, at p 216 (per Lord Mustill), and Hedley, 'Recovering Lost Legacies: White v Jones in the Lords' [1995] 1 Web JCLI: 'if we are truly convinced that the will admitted to probate does not reflect [the testator's] wishes at the time of his death, why admit it to probate at all?'