Cobalt trade built on misery

Illicit Cobalt mining supplies the world's demands for lithium ion batteries.
The DRC is far and away the largest supplier of cobalt (extracted from coltan) on the world market. But much of the mining and extraction of cobalt is illicit, unregulated, illegal.
(link to article on the Guardian)

Certainly we, the consumer, are the end users of products containing cobalt. Markets and industry have an insatiable demand for the digital devices that require cobalt and other rare earth elements in order to function. However, global companies are the real beneficiaries, profiting from a porous and corrupt supply chain. These firms have been served in a class action on behalf of a sample group of parents and children; a handful among the multitude of unnamed people who have been dispossessed, evicted, crippled, killed, abused, exploited by the cobalt industry's corrupt and shady foundations.
http://iradvocates.org/sites/iradvocates.org/files/stamped%20-Complaint.pdf

The United Nations SDGs and links with industries in countries around the world...

The United Nations SDGs

What does business have to do with SDGs? Some economies experience high inflation, high interest rates, depreciation of local currency,

There has been a growth in the establishment of free-trade regions in Africa.
MSME (micro, small and medium enterprises).

Africa is not a country: Africa is 54 different countries, Africa is 1.4 billion people

``When I travelled to other countries in Africa I discovered I didn't know Africa; I come from West Africa we like a lot of spice in our food, in East Africa I discovered there is `no' spice in the food.''

Place Belongingness Africa; speaker panel 2019

``Jumia is an e-commerce company operating across the continent of Africa "we're building the Amazon of Africa" but they lost 90% of their IPO value. I contend largely because investors assumed an environment without understanding. They didn't know that road infrastructure is uneven, that electrical operators operate a universal service, that rail, and telecoms and all kinds of infrastructure that we take for granted in many in countries, just aren't in place beyond the urban areas. Indeed, even many urban conurbations have patchy, weak or non-existent water, sewerage, electricity, etc.''

(Sangu J. Delle Esq.)

``I am a Pan-Africanist, I became more African when I left Africa. I grew up thinking I was Ghanian first, then I left Africa and in those countries I experienced `othering' and I encountered people who considered me African first, they didn't consider me Ghanian.'' (Sangu J. Delle Esq.)

Workshop Schedule: Africa, Place, Belongingness, Entrepreneurship and Sustainable Development

Time Presentation Venue: Room Q131, UCD Moore Centre for Business 09:45-09.50 Welcome Speech Penelope Muzanenhamo PhD, Assistant Professor, UCD College of Business 09.50-10.00 Irish Aid’s contribution to SDGs in Africa Ms Edith Delaney, Africa Unit, Development Cooperation and Africa Division, Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Ireland 10.00-10.10 Place and Belongingness: The Place of Proudly Made in Africa and African Entrepreneurs in Sustainable Development Ms Vikki Brennen, CEO, PMIA 10.10- 10.15 Placing Africa Business Research within the global context (or why we do what we do about Africa in UCD College of Business)  Professor Maeve Houlihan Session Chair: Maeve Houlihan 10.15-10.35 Sub-Saharan African Entrepreneurship and Sustainable Development: Wishes and Realities Dr Eva Roberts, CEO Morvigor, Sierra Leone 10.35-10.55 Place, Belongingness and Sustainable Development: Entrepreneurial Case Studies from Making Futures. Sangu J. Delle Esq., Entrepreneur Investor and Author, Palm Investments Corporation 10.55-11.15 Entrepreneurial Achievement among formerly Displaced African Individuals Mr Vinod Tailor Deputy Lieutenant, JYVI Director, UK 11.15-11.30   Coffee Break.   Relocate to Room Q118EY, First Floor, Lochlann Quinn School Session Chair: Kevin Ibeh 11.30-11.55 Business in Africa, Borders, and the Liability of Colonialism: A meeting point or a missing link? Kenneth Amaeshi PhD, Professor, University of Edinburgh Business School, UK 11.55-12.20 Entrepreneurial intentions, initiatives and sustainable development: An international perspective  Sally Kah PhD, Lecturer, Liverpool John Moores University, UK Seamus O’Brien, Lecturer, Liverpool John Moores University, UK Seng Kok, Senior Lecturer, Liverpool John Moores University, UK  Emer Gallagher, Senior Lecturer, Liverpool John Moores University, UK 12.20-12.45 Anything goes in Africa, or Does it? The Effect of Corporate Social Irresponsibility on Shareholder Value Andreas Hoepner PhD, Professor, UCD College of Business, Ireland Qian Li PhD, Lecturer, University of Cardiff, UK Penelope Muzanenhamo PhD, Assistant Professor, UCD College of Business, Ireland 12.45-13.10 Reflections on advancing professionally through scholarly contributions to African business and sustainable development Kevin Ibeh PhD, Professor, Pro Vice Master, Birkbeck, University of London, UK 13.10-14.10.      Lunch Break.    Session resumes in Room Q118EY Session Chair: Kenneth Amaeshi 14.10-14.35 Can entrepreneurship become the engine of growth and primary driver of sustainable development in Africa in the digital era?  Franklyn Lisk PhD, Professor, University of Warwick, UK Syeda-Masooda Mukhtar PhD, CEO Chelsea Global, UK 14.35-15.00 From nationalism to Pan-Africanism: An examination of African companies’ and entrepreneurs’ response and influence David Nyaluke PhD, UCD-Proudly Made in Africa Fellow in Business and Development, Ireland 15.25-15.50 Geogames for Youth Empowerment: Minecraft as a Sustainable Entrepreneurship resource for the Global South Bruno de Andrade PhD, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, UCD School of Architecture, Planning and Environmental Policy 15.50-16.15 I am an African and an Entrepreneur, So What? The effect of an Entrepreneur’s Social Identity on Contribution to a Competitive Supranational Place Brand  Penelope Muzanenhamo PhD, Assistant Professor, UCD College of Business, Ireland Ebes Esho PhD, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of Johannesburg, South Africa Samuel Adomako PhD, Lecturer, University of Bradford, UK Robert Hinson PhD, Professor, University of Ghana Business School, Ghana Amon Chizema PhD, Professor, University of Birmingham, UK 16.15-16.20 Closing Remarks Franklyn Lisk 16.20 Informal meeting: Funding Possibilities for Business Research on Africa

Africa: Place, Belongingness, Entrepreneurship and Sustainable Development

Striking the Startups

Striking the Startups (2017); a short paper by Arianna Tassinari and Vincenzo Maccarrone - IRC PhD Student at UCD 

Mobilised and organised from disorganised and invisible labour. The plight and potential for labour power among precarious labour if they are prepared to coordinate collective bargaining and union rights. 

Private regulation of labor? CSR practices in the global supply chain

Research Seminar by Prof. Sarosh Kuruvilla, Cornell University.

Friday @ 12pm (N202 - Smurfit).

Globalisation and Outsourcing

Big question: What is the economic and social impact of IT outsourcing on both client and supplier countries?

1. Dilemma - problematise the trend to outsourcing and offshoring IT services.
2. Impact - list the conventionally understood negatives of outsourcing and offshore economic activity
3. The how do we explain the data?
4. Model behaviour using tools?
5. Possible experimental model? Process for behaviour change? Evidence to theory to evidence to theory

Data from 4.7 World Development Indicators: Structure of service imports (http://wdi.worldbank.org/table/4.7)
Plot the breakdown of Commercial service imports (Transport & Travel no longer tracked in this category) comprised of:

• "Insurance and financial services" and 
• "Computer, information, communications, and other commercial services"

Statistical tools enable us to represent the data, makes sense of variation in the data, understand and infer meaning from the data. In drawing conclusions from the data we must balance concerns of validity, significance, 

A wake-up call against the lazy application of statistical significance p-values ((Amrhein et al, 2019)). P-values should not be used in this dichotomist way of determining whether a result refutes a hypothesis or not.

• p > 0.05 (commonly taken to mean a hypothesis is NOT supported, but this is NOT what the value itself means)

versus

• p > 0.05 (reread the p-value as it should be employed, to mean that there's a probability higher than 5% that what we observe could have arisen by chance)

You need to apply judgement when looking at data and use context when interpreting results.

The failings of traditional economics SD curve approaches is that it simply has no means of interpreting increasing income inequality and increasing dominance of market economy by firms.

"Motivate with facts, go to the models, return to the facts" (Carlin, 2019)

Core Econ Workshop 2019

2019 RES Nuffield Foundation Workshop: Teaching and Learning with CORE
Tue 25th June 2019 - Wed 26th June 2019 University of Warwick
https://www.core-econ.org/event/core-workshop-2019/

"The workshop is supported by the RES and the Nuffield Foundation...
...and focuses on the effective and innovative teaching of economics using the CORE texts (The Economy, Economy, Society, and Public Policy and Doing Economics), and their associated teaching and learning resources. It will introduce participants to the rationale behind the content and pedagogy of CORE and offer practical tips on designing and teaching a course based on these texts.

The workshop will be suitable for both those who have some experience teaching with CORE and those who are completely new to the texts."

Notes on seminar sessions on Core Econ (The Economy) and ESPP (Economy, Society, and Public Policy).

1. https://www.core-econ.org/project/core-the-economy/
2. https://www.core-econ.org/project/core-espp/

Core treats policy questions based on actual data.

Teaching core strives to explicate the role of models, the fact that they are being used. 

A principle underlying Core is to make explicit the various assumptions associated with whatever model is being used.

A central value of Core is to seek sources of relevant data, to apply the model, test against the stated problem, and draw inferences or even conclusions.

A consequence is that Core students learn to approach research material with 'a question', 'question assumptions', seek out the data, who can apply a variety of tools to model questions. 

"Core sets up problems and then people go about addressing them... as a consequence they acquire more general skills and aptitudes to engage in self-directed learning" (Robbie)

"Students of Core study 'like real economists work', using feasible sets, indifference curves, use Nash equilibria." (Wendy)

Teaching Core: ask students to respond intuitively to problems. Use polls for large classes.

Polling students can achieve different objectives. Intuition may be correct but not understand why. Intuition may be skewed based on respondent's role or position in society (wealthy, poor, employed, unemployed, coal-miner, common good).

Use group discussions to pause before responding...

A Kuhnian paradigm shift is in the making

(Wendy & Sam) We think we are in the midst of a paradigm shift in Economics. From the current dominance of X towards Agency theories.

• Theory X (the classic supply demand curve), implying agents acting as perfectly rational, the assumption of homo economicus.
• Agency theories point towards heterogeneous agents, information asymmetry, Game Theory, Nash Equilibria, Principal Agent Model, behavioural economics. 

Examples within Core Econ are all motivated by fairly current and compelling questions. For example: What is the impact of setting a minimum wage on a monopsony? Which after analysis we show that when contracts are incomplete the monopsony firm exercises power and social norms to ensure the work is performed at a higher effort level. (for a explanation of this result watch Charlie Chaplin's factory time).

A model of the economy as a whole - the labour market and product market: income inequality
Model of the economy as a whole must be intimately connected with income distribution.
Capital vs Labour (Marxian)
Firm vs consumers (Smithian)
For a given competitive landscape the markup and demand is local. However the


Postscript:
How big is a bushel of grain and what can you do with it? A bushel, essentially a volume measure, a large tub volume (like a basket, a volume of 8 gallons or 36L), that when filled with various grains weigh between 14-20 kg (oat grains are larger but lighter than wheat, grains may contain more or less moisture).

WS (wage-setting), PS (price-setting) curves

Summary of study trip to Belgium "10 Days to Brexit"

A class study trip to Belgium, travelling to Brussels and based in the Irish College Leuven has just concluded (see photo). This optional 3-day activity covered lectures and visits to sites at the cutting edge of innovation in Europe.
We had lectures from the KU Leuven Research & Development Unit, UCD, and the European Shippers Council on supply chain digitalisation. We visited the offices of DataCamp, the Data Science learning platform headquartered in Leuven; the Microsoft Innovation Centre, Health House and Living Tomorrow demonstrator labs; and we visited the European Commission with presentations from DG Communication and DG Connect on Pan-European Digital Innovation Hubs.

Leaders of Tomorrow Workshops 2019

Great news.
A group of students from this year's UCD's MSc Digital Innovation class have been accepted for the opening rounds of Leaders of Tomorrow (2019). These intensive sessions take place over March 28th (9:30 AM – 6:00 PM) & 29th (8:00 AM – 4:30 PM) at The Dock in Dublin.

LEADERS OF TOMORROW : Early Entrepreneur Accelerator
Website: https://accenture.com/LeadersofTomorrow
News: https://www.accenture.com/ie-en/careers/leaders-of-tomorrow-award

TUPE

Transfer of Undertakings Contracts (image source: Employment Rights Ireland)

What is a TUPE contract? Transfer of Undertakings contracts (sounds like 2p) are an approach to providing continuity of employment, fair terms and conditions for employees impacted when an employer decides to outsource part of its business. Employees follow the contract instead of losing their jobs when a sourcing job is switched to another provider.
The principle is - the people follow the work - the contracting supplier hires the people currently working to deliver the services. The same people do the same work they were performing before only under a new contract with a different employer.

To learn more read through the the information on Employment Rights Ireland and other trusted sources.

Information on transfer of business regulation at Citizens Information Ireland.