High road or common neoliberal trajectory? Collective bargaining, wage share, and varieties of capitalism
- Mpuku, Mutale Natasha Muchule
- Authors: Mpuku, Mutale Natasha Muchule
- Date: 2022-10-14
- Subjects: Collective bargaining , Globalization , Labor union members , Wages Statistics , Income distribution , Economic development , Neoliberalism , Capitalism
- Language: English
- Type: Academic theses , Master's theses , text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/357611 , vital:64760
- Description: Wage shares have been falling since the 1980s across developing and developed countries. There has also been a downward trend with labour market institutions in these countries, with a few exceptions. This thesis analyzes these trends using firstly an extended literature review and secondly an econometrics analysis of a panel of 36 countries over 39 years. The extended literature review identified two broad competing narratives surrounding this topic: the mainstream and the alternative growth narratives. They both focus on two different growth regimes, the former, posits that growth is profit-led and the latter that growth is wage-led. Both are not ‘zero sum’ processes and seem to offer the same end result (growth and development). However, profit-led growth seems to have two problems. First, at least in the medium run, there is a trade-off between growth and income distribution. And secondly, profit-led growth is contradictory at the global level. Wage-led growth, which offers a ‘high road’ approach, seems far more appealing. Furthermore, several authors, including in South Africa, have claimed that regime-switching (to wage-led growth), is possible, and it seems that labour market institutions may play an important role in facilitating such a switch. However, the empirical literature, especially regarding middle- and low-income countries, is sparse and inconclusive. The panel data analysis provided by this thesis was not conclusive in establishing whether the wage-led, high road path is still viable for countries like South Africa. However, it did not find strong evidence of the contrary. The thesis concluded that there is scope for further research in this field and makes certain suggestions in this regard. , Thesis (MCom) -- Faculty of Commerce, Economics and Economic History, 2022
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2022-10-14
- Authors: Mpuku, Mutale Natasha Muchule
- Date: 2022-10-14
- Subjects: Collective bargaining , Globalization , Labor union members , Wages Statistics , Income distribution , Economic development , Neoliberalism , Capitalism
- Language: English
- Type: Academic theses , Master's theses , text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/357611 , vital:64760
- Description: Wage shares have been falling since the 1980s across developing and developed countries. There has also been a downward trend with labour market institutions in these countries, with a few exceptions. This thesis analyzes these trends using firstly an extended literature review and secondly an econometrics analysis of a panel of 36 countries over 39 years. The extended literature review identified two broad competing narratives surrounding this topic: the mainstream and the alternative growth narratives. They both focus on two different growth regimes, the former, posits that growth is profit-led and the latter that growth is wage-led. Both are not ‘zero sum’ processes and seem to offer the same end result (growth and development). However, profit-led growth seems to have two problems. First, at least in the medium run, there is a trade-off between growth and income distribution. And secondly, profit-led growth is contradictory at the global level. Wage-led growth, which offers a ‘high road’ approach, seems far more appealing. Furthermore, several authors, including in South Africa, have claimed that regime-switching (to wage-led growth), is possible, and it seems that labour market institutions may play an important role in facilitating such a switch. However, the empirical literature, especially regarding middle- and low-income countries, is sparse and inconclusive. The panel data analysis provided by this thesis was not conclusive in establishing whether the wage-led, high road path is still viable for countries like South Africa. However, it did not find strong evidence of the contrary. The thesis concluded that there is scope for further research in this field and makes certain suggestions in this regard. , Thesis (MCom) -- Faculty of Commerce, Economics and Economic History, 2022
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2022-10-14
Investigating emerging deleuzoguattarian connections to the environment via information technology
- Authors: Siwak, Jakub
- Date: 2016
- Subjects: Mass media and the environment , Neoliberalism
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , DPhil
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10948/8329 , vital:26343
- Description: This thesis explores whether or not it is possible to positively inflect – via digital means – people’s orientations toward nature through connecting their duration to the time of animals. The thesis opens with an overview of the contemporary environmental crisis, mapping related significant discourses, events and responses from the early 1960s onward. In this regard, after thematizing the relatively ineffective global institutional response to the environmental crisis to date – in spite of both consistent criticisms proffered by a range of stakeholders and widely available information on the scope of current environmental degradation – the lack of any concerted effort to deal with this issue is accounted for in terms of the dimensions of what Kilbourne, Beckmann and Thelen refer to as the ‘Dominant Social Paradigm’ (DSP). However, it is argued that of these dimensions, the technological dimension is most amenable to pro-environmental inflection, particularly through recent developments within information technology. That is, despite the latter being the privileged technology of neoliberalism, and despite the environmental cost of its current material infrastructure, it is also highly unlikely that societies will abandon their dependence on information technology in the near future. Given this, the importance of considering how such technology can be harnessed to positively re-orientate users’ perceptions of the natural world, in a way that also avoids the pitfall of technophilia, is advanced. In terms of this, both positive and negative appraisals of information technology by prominent new media theorists are discussed, and information technology is put forward as a tool that remains indeterminate in terms of its use. After this, and with a view to exploring how the technological dimension of the DSP might possibly be inflected in a pro-environmental manner, the thesis draws on the works of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari who promote desire and difference outside the ambit of capitalism, particularly through desubjectivation in relation to their concept of ‘becoming-animal.’ Finally, after dealing in addition with some potential theoretical challenges to the application of Deleuze’s ideas within the digital realm, focus shifts to three contemporary digital artefacts which have the capacity, albeit to varying degrees, to facilitate a becoming-animal. In this regard, a distinction is made between those artefacts that precipitate first-, second- and third-order hybrid durationality, and it is argued that the latter category presents the greatest promise of interfacing the time of humans with the time of animals.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2016
- Authors: Siwak, Jakub
- Date: 2016
- Subjects: Mass media and the environment , Neoliberalism
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , DPhil
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10948/8329 , vital:26343
- Description: This thesis explores whether or not it is possible to positively inflect – via digital means – people’s orientations toward nature through connecting their duration to the time of animals. The thesis opens with an overview of the contemporary environmental crisis, mapping related significant discourses, events and responses from the early 1960s onward. In this regard, after thematizing the relatively ineffective global institutional response to the environmental crisis to date – in spite of both consistent criticisms proffered by a range of stakeholders and widely available information on the scope of current environmental degradation – the lack of any concerted effort to deal with this issue is accounted for in terms of the dimensions of what Kilbourne, Beckmann and Thelen refer to as the ‘Dominant Social Paradigm’ (DSP). However, it is argued that of these dimensions, the technological dimension is most amenable to pro-environmental inflection, particularly through recent developments within information technology. That is, despite the latter being the privileged technology of neoliberalism, and despite the environmental cost of its current material infrastructure, it is also highly unlikely that societies will abandon their dependence on information technology in the near future. Given this, the importance of considering how such technology can be harnessed to positively re-orientate users’ perceptions of the natural world, in a way that also avoids the pitfall of technophilia, is advanced. In terms of this, both positive and negative appraisals of information technology by prominent new media theorists are discussed, and information technology is put forward as a tool that remains indeterminate in terms of its use. After this, and with a view to exploring how the technological dimension of the DSP might possibly be inflected in a pro-environmental manner, the thesis draws on the works of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari who promote desire and difference outside the ambit of capitalism, particularly through desubjectivation in relation to their concept of ‘becoming-animal.’ Finally, after dealing in addition with some potential theoretical challenges to the application of Deleuze’s ideas within the digital realm, focus shifts to three contemporary digital artefacts which have the capacity, albeit to varying degrees, to facilitate a becoming-animal. In this regard, a distinction is made between those artefacts that precipitate first-, second- and third-order hybrid durationality, and it is argued that the latter category presents the greatest promise of interfacing the time of humans with the time of animals.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2016
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