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Although many attempts have been made by international organizations like the World Bank and IMF to raise living standards, the dire poverty of billions of people and the widening gap between rich and poor, both within and between countries, point to the failure of these policies.
Globalization and information technology are driving the world into a new era. Is it the responsibility of business to pursue the common good - and more precisely, to participate in the construction of the global common good? This book brings together contributions from various disciplines, written by scholars who are at the forefront of this debate. It provides multiple insights into a tripartite relationship: business, globalization and the common good. It helps explain why the business sphere will probably not be in a position to ignore the common good much longer, and why this latter concept, widely ignored in today's management realm, is likely to become part of tomorrow's corporate policies and practices in the global context. Finally, this work opens up a plethora of avenues for future research, calling for the development of transdisciplinary approaches and for the elaboration of a research program embracing theoretical, empirical and spiritual perspectives to tackle this complex issue.
Elaborating on the concepts first introduced in Global Public Goods, this book addresses the long overdue issue of how to adjust the concept of public goods to today's economic and political realities. The production of global public goods requires the orchestration of initiatives by a large number of diverse actors across different levels and sectors. It may require the collaboration of governments, business and civil society, and in most cases it almost certainly calls for an effective linkage of the local, national, regional, and global levels. In light of today's new realities, this book examines a series of managerial and political challenges that pertain to the design and implementation of production strategies and the monitoring and evaluation of global public goods provision.As participatory decision-making enhances the political support for - and thus the effectiveness of - certain policy decisions, this volume offers suggestions on a number of pragmatic policy reforms for bringing the global public more into public policy making on global issues. Nine case studies examine the importance of the global public good concept from the viewpoint of developing countries, exploring how and where the concerns of the poor and the rich overlap.Providing Global Public Goods offers important and timely suggestions on how to move in a more feasible and systematic way towards a fairer process of globalization that works in the interests of all.
Economic growth and the creation of wealth have cut global poverty rates, yet vulnerability, inequality, exclusion and violence have escalated within and across societies throughout the world. Unsustainable patterns of economic production and consumption promote global warming, environmental degradation and an upsurge in natural disasters. Moreover, while we have strengthened international human rights frameworks over the past several decades, implementing and protecting these norms remains a challenge.These changes signal the emergence of a new global context for learning that has vital implications for education. Rethinking the purpose of education and the organization of learning has never been more urgent. This book is inspired by a humanistic vision of education and development, based on respect for life and human dignity, equal rights, social justice, cultural diversity, international solidarity and shared responsibility for a sustainable future. It proposes that we consider education and knowledge as global common goods, in order to reconcile the purpose and organization of education as a collective societal endeavour in a complex world.
Labour has been on a wild ride over the past thirty years. New Labour argued that we had no choice but to accept a globalized free market economy in which the race was to the swift, the open and the flexible. Corbynism reacted against this with a jumble of old school statism and identity politics. Both ultimately failed. In this book, Maurice Glasman takes the axe to the soulless utilitarianism and ‘progressive’ intolerance of both Blair and Corbyn. Human beings, he contends, are not calculating machines, but faithful, relational beings who yearn for meaning and belonging. Rooted in their homes, families and traditions, they seek to resist the revolutionary upheaval of markets and states, which try to commodify and dominate their lives and homes, by the practice of democracy, mutuality and pluralism. This is the true Labour tradition, which is paradoxically both radical and conservative – and more relevant than ever in a post-COVID world. This crisp statement of the real politics of Blue Labour – rather than the absurd caricature of its detractors – is Glasman’s love letter to the left-conservatism that provides Labour’s best chance of moral – and indeed electoral – redemption.
Robert B. Reich makes a powerful case for the expansion of America’s moral imagination. Rooting his argument in common sense and everyday reality, he demonstrates that a common good constitutes the very essence of any society or nation. Societies, he says, undergo virtuous cycles that reinforce the common good as well as vicious cycles that undermine it, one of which America has been experiencing for the past five decades. This process can and must be reversed. But first we need to weigh the moral obligations of citizenship and carefully consider how we relate to honor, shame, patriotism, truth, and the meaning of leadership. Powerful, urgent, and utterly vital, this is a heartfelt missive from one of our foremost political thinkers.
