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This article conceptualises the notion of “social investment’ within the context of social protection and active labour market policies. This paradigm is confronted to the neoliberal ‘making work pay’ paradigm and the conservative workfare doctrine build on the idea that a stronger work ethos needs to be inculcated through reduced rights and more duties. The social investment paradigm advocates generous social protection combined with enabling investments and is thus perfectly congruent with social inclusion objectives. The empirical analysis shows remarkably small effects of both types of policies in the past 15 years: ALMPs have had small positive effects on employment, but also on exits into inactivity. The most positive employment effect of ALMPs is a redistribution of employment opportunities towards older, female and less educated groups. The Re-inVEST research analyses in-depth participatory case studies of policies targeting disadvantaged groups in different European countries, using an ‘enriched’ social investment model, building on a human rights and capabilities approach. The findings indeed show very wide differences in quality – and a lot of room for improvement. In order to improve their effectiveness as well as inclusiveness, the right to decent ALMPs should be put on the policy agenda.

Modern philanthropy used public interest as an argument for intervention in "social question". The critical point of this text argue how "disinterested" were the "good intentions" of a group of philanthropists, liberals, secularists and reformists who, under the argument of urban modernization, sought to displace beggars from the streets to contain them in the Asilo Particular para Mendigos, founded in Mexico City in 1879. We show the social composition of the founding group and the many meanings on their social actions. We explore a peculiar research elaborated on the routes the beggars traveled through the city, that gave the reasoned support to the foundation. Using the "wellintentioned" argument of helping the poor, philanthropists exerted their influence on urban planning provisions, in addition to mitigating social tensions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The social investment perspective has become a prominent topic in both social policy discussions and theoretical considerations regarding welfare state change. Empirical evidence on how this perspective has affected welfare state provision is much scarcer—and sometimes contradictory. This article aims to assess whether welfare state benefits increasingly have incorporated elements of social investment, and what has triggered the reforms made to the benefits. To achieve these aims, we examined two poverty relief benefits in Austria, namely, unemployment assistance and social assistance. We scrutinized changes made to these benefits from 2000 onwards. To identify their (potentially changing) contributions towards social investment, we applied a framework that considers the economic aims of the paradigm (while neglecting other aims). According to this framework, a social investment benefit intends to improve the human capital of its recipients, enhance their employability, and/or enhance their employment integration. The findings suggest that the three elements of social investment were particularly relevant in reforming social assistance. However, the changes implemented were incoherent and do not support the hypothesis of an ever‐increasing significance of social investment. The main triggers for reform were the political ideologies of (changing) governments. These ideologies determined the direction of changes made to both social assistance and unemployment assistance. If social investment thus ought to be more than just a theoretical concept or a nonbinding policy recommendation, modifications made to welfare state benefits would need to follow a more coherent path. Regarding poor relief benefits, Austria has not pursued such a track (yet). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Throughout the past decade, the notion that social policy should be applied as a tool to enhance the productive capacity of families, rather than to smooth consumption, has gained considerable traction under the moniker of social investment (SI). Against lingering critiques of the usefulness of SI research, Plavgo and Hemerijck primarily present bivariate, cross-sectional correlations of national-level outcomes to provide what they call a 'social investment litmus test'. They conclude that SI policies are effective at achieving 'positive returns in employment and poverty mitigation'. They also present evidence to suggest that 'passive' income supports are not effective at reducing poverty and promoting employment. Given the importance of their claims and the pre-eminence of SI in recent social policy literature, we feel compelled to respond and clarify that the authors' findings do not support their conclusions. In doing so, we (1) review the central claims from the authors' study, (2) provide evidence as to why the authors' findings do not support their claims of a 'social investment litmus test', and (3) propose a path forward for a more critical assessment of the performance of policies labelled as SI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article contributes to the study of the demand side of welfare politics by investigating gender differences in social investment preferences systematically. Building on the different functions of social investment policies in creating, preserving, or mobilizing skills, we argue that women do not support social investment policies generally more strongly than men. Rather, women demand, in particular, policies to preserve their skills during career interruptions and help to mobilize their skills on the labour market. In a second analytical step, we examine women's policy priorities if skill preservation and mobilization come at the expense of social compensation. We test our arguments for eight Western European countries with data from the INVEDUC survey. The confirmation of our arguments challenges a core assumption of the literatures on the social investment turn and women's political realignment. We discuss the implication of our findings in the conclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although social investment has become an increasingly important topic in the welfare policy discourse, reform efforts are stalling in many contexts. We examine whether labour unions and their members may be one factor contributing to the varying implementation across countries. In particular, we focus on the difference in the policy attitudes of union members and non-members. Using a new comparative survey, we investigate how union member attitudes toward social investment and classic compensatory policy differ from those of non-members, and how these differences vary across countries. We find that union members appear to be lukewarm supporters: even though union members are generally supportive of social investment policies, they tend to support compensatory policies even more. We also find cross-national variation in these associations, for which we provide some tentative explanations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social investment has become the dominant paradigm guiding the reform of European welfare states. Beyond its normative postulates, social investment is a useful analytical framework for the study of ongoing changes in social policy. From this perspective, this article finds evidence of a turn toward social investment in the welfare budget in Spain that began in the mid-nineties. In addition, it shows that the development of new policies linked to social investment have not occurred at the expense of traditional social protection policies. Lastly, it is found that the impact of austerity differs for the different dimensions of social policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Against the historical‐conceptual background of EU social policy and evolutionary governance, this article analyses the approach with which the EU propagates social investment policies. Social investment, understood as an active rather than passive way of social protection, has become a salient instrument for reinvigorating the EU’s social dimension, especially in the aftermath of the sovereign debt crisis. By means of a large‐scale document analysis, we develop four EU social investment propagation approaches (reference, objective, tool, and action) according to how active (passive) and concrete (abstract) the EU’s intervention in social investment is. The results show that the EU mainly propagates social investment with an active approach, i.e., policy recommendations targeted at national governments. In terms of substance, the EU’s treatment of social investment is based on labour activation policies backed by skills development and job search support policies, which is consistent with the main purpose of social investment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the main indicators of economic development is the welfare level. The welfare level symbolizes that the policies implemented by the state in a society are in the context of social justice. Social justice aims to reduce social inequalities between people. In this framework, states provide social transfers to individuals through taxes and play an intermediary role in the redistribution of income. In this sense, the role of welfare states is not merely to benefit through social transfers. Further, states ensure social welfare by including other welfare stakeholders, market and non-governmental actors, through their regulations. However, the welfare understandings of countries differ in terms of holistic social welfare. In this respect, the welfare approach of Islamic economics is an approach that essentially prioritizes moral values and aims to ensure economic prosperity by considering social balance. In this regard, beyond social assistance and meeting the basic needs of people, it is envisaged that economic policies that reduce income and wealth inequality will be implemented for the transformation of the economic structure. However, as the Islamic economics and the neoliberal economic understanding differ in many respects, similarly, the neoliberal-based social investment and the welfare approach of Islamic economics also differ. In this context, the study aims to discuss the social welfare understanding of Islamic economics and neoliberalism-based social investment approach theoretically together with social welfare and conservative approaches and to reveal their perspectives in detail. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Surveillance and governance of the poor have been key foci for the critical social policy literature for some time, although scholarship regarding the role of big data in social policy – and how this might differ from previous forms of surveillance – is continuing to emerge. This article contributes to this literature by exploring the use of big data under Australia and Aotearoa/New Zealand's social investment approaches. Both seek to replace social policy spending with "investment" expected to produce future fiscal returns; in the words of a former Aotearoa/New Zealand Prime Minister, they aim to do "more with less". We argue that big data often provides a poor evidence base for social investment and can, instead, be better understood as part of a panoptic toolkit for poverty governance, mediating continuous surveillance, examination and normalisation of the body politic by enabling the discursive (re)construction of people's identities and subjectivities. This construction serves to exacerbate social inequalities and undermine the rights of ordinary citizens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Childcare policies have become an important element of social investment reforms, but in most countries access to childcare has remained socially unequal. Some studies have suggested that a trend towards more gender egalitarian work–family attitudes has facilitated the expansion of childcare provision. Yet, we know little about the repercussions of an unequal expansion of childcare provision on public attitudes towards the work–family nexus. Building on multilevel models of 18 European countries and two waves of the International Social Survey Programme, this analysis examines the effects of an unequal childcare expansion on attitudes towards maternal employment. The results reveal that individuals with lower income remain more skeptical of maternal employment when childcare provision is highly unequal. The unequally distributed benefits of an expansion of childcare provision contribute to a divergence of attitudes across socio-economic groups, which might create a more difficult political terrain for the implementation of expansive social investment reforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Proponents of policy instruments often have to justify them to shifting political masters. This article explores the evolution of social investment, both as a policy solution and a set of policy instruments, during a period characterized by political turbulence. Discourse analysis of texts produced by an instrument constituency shows how a constant set of policy instruments are framed as a changing solution to different political problems. This helps us develop the concept of dynamic persistence, which elaborates how the instrument constituency was able to maintain support for their policy instruments by realigning them to different ideological principles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social investment is an important aspect of companies in Russia at the present stage. This leads to the task of evaluating the effectiveness of social investment strategies and the economic feasibility of implementing social investment projects. It also actualizes the problem of the advisability of disclosing information about the company’s activities to external stakeholders. The problem of social investment is becoming especially urgent in conditions of insufficient rates of economic growth and deterioration of the financial condition of many companies. The inconsistency of theoretical approaches and the results of practical research do not give an unambiguous answer to this question.The article considers the resource approach and the approach based on the theory of stakeholders. According to the theory of stakeholders, non-financial reports consider the source of reducing information asymmetry and harmonizing the interests of stakeholders. The dynamics of non-financial reporting by Russian companies is analyzed based on the data of the Register and the Library of non-financial reports of the Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs of Russia. The analyzes were carried out in a temporary and industry breakdown. The features of the formation of types of non-financial reporting by industry are revealed. The factors determining the interest in reducing information asymmetry taking into account industry specifics are identified. Data can be used to form a feedback relationship with stakeholders.

The purpose of the study is to identify the ways to increase social responsibility in the modern management of industrial enterprises on the example of corporation “Arterium”. The basic principles that have been used in the research are historical, systematic and comparative methods, institutional and structural-functional approaches. In the paper the theoretical foundations of corporate social responsibility were considered, foreign and domestic practices were analyzed, in particular, based on “Arterium” corporation. The urgency of the work is to study the current state of corporate social responsibility in Ukraine, and, in particular, at the “Arterium” enterprise. More and more companies are introducing CSR into their business, business standards are changing, and socially responsible behavior becomes an essential element of successful entrepreneurship. It was found that the corporation, implementing the principles of social responsibility of business towards society, focuses on the following areas: business ethics and ethical marketing, innovation and product development, patient health and safety, protection against fraud, investment in employee training, environmental policy and Green office, support for health, sports and education programs, community care. According to the results of the conducted research: - the situation and effectiveness of corporate social responsibility at the specified enterprise have been substantiated; - the algorithm for developing a social report for “Arterium” corporation has been proposed as a method of increasing social responsibility. To achieve the goal, the following tasks have been solved: - the essence of the concept of corporate social responsibility and the state of CSR in the world have been investigated; - the activity of “Arterium” corporation has been analyzed; - the state of corporate social responsibility in Ukraine has been assessed; - the experience of foreign companies in the field has been studied.

This study investigates how policies shape retirement and labour market participation of older workers and thus help extending working lives. It employs a time‐series–cross‐section analysis of the effects of macro‐level institutional pull, push and retention factors on effective retirement age and employment rate of older workers in 15 OECD countries from 1992 to 2010. The comparative approach reveals that public pension system rules that have been geared towards postponing retirement in many countries in past decades, indeed, are significant determinants of lengthening working lives. In particular, statutory retirement age and financial disincentives for early retirement proof important. Institutional effects differ by gender, though. Furthermore, the results point to the importance of social policies supporting labour market participation throughout the life‐course: social investment in human capital and public services clearly supports extending working lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evaluation has different uses and impacts. This article aims to describe and analyse the constitutive effects – how evaluation forms and shapes different domains in an evaluation context – of evaluation related to an evidence-based policy and practice, by investigating how the evaluation of social investment fund initiatives in three Swedish municipalities is organized and implemented. Through interviews and evaluation reports, the findings show how this way of evaluating may contribute to constitutive effects by defining worldviews, content, timeframes and evaluation roles. The article discusses how social investment fund evaluation contributes to a linear knowledge transfer model, promotes a relation between costs and evidence and concentrates the power over evaluation at the top of organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social investment is a policy approach intended to promote the social inclusion of excluded individuals and groups, mainly through labour market participation and long-term human capital development. Since the 1980's this approach has spread from Europe worldwide and is now regarded as the latest shift from both 'traditional' welfare and the unrestrained neoliberal policy implemented under the austerity regime of the last decades. Most social investment studies focus on the social and economic impacts of policy at the macro-level. This article takes a different perspective to examine how members of excluded communities experience social investment policy in their daily lives. The study analyzes qualitative data collected from a purposive sample of 96 participants from excluded communities in the North of Israel. Findings indicate that participants strongly support social investment ideas of inclusion via human capital development and the labour market. However, their experiences in both areas point to continued struggles with social mechanisms that marginalize them and reinforce multigenerational exclusion. Findings affirm critique of social investment when implemented without major structural changes. The study implications for policy suggest that, without such changes, the paradigmatic promises of social investment may further entrench social exclusion by replicating discriminatory and oppressive practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given the crucial role of Green parties in modern party systems, surprisingly little is known about the impact that Green parties in governments have on distributive issues, on the spending or the revenue side of distributive politics. Providing such insights is the purpose of this study. Based on an encompassing cross-national data set of 34 countries from 1970 to 2015, this article examines the impact of Green government participation on three dimensions of distributive policy making: social consumption, social investment and taxation policies. It is found that the inclusion of Green parties in national governments leads to higher spending on social investment, while the status quo prevails regarding social consumption and taxation. Nonetheless, as procurers of centre-left majorities, Greens in government prevent retrenchment on social consumption and decreasing corporate and top marginal income taxes. This work bears relevance for the study of party politics, the reconfiguration of welfare states and the literature on coalition dynamics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social Impact Bonds are considered a highly marketised form of public service delivery and are understood to "work" through the introduction of new capital into payment-by-results contracts. This paper, for the first time, connects findings from UK SIBs to the evaluation of conventional payment-by-results contracts and the theoretical literature on governance and accountabilities. Markets and capital emerge as a potential red herring with hybridity of governance and the "social" positioned as important dimensions facilitating qualitatively different services. This raises questions as to whether it is possible to extend SIBs, or whether increased scale and mainstream investors will dilute the "SIB effect". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Today, participation in social investment is a critical concern of urban management in metropolitan areas. To be effective in both public and private sectors, such participation requires an accurate knowledge of geographical distribution of resources and social needs in different parts of the city in order to better manage these investments. To this end, the present research aimed at providing an objective and tangible integrated approach to identify urban neighborhoods with high potential for social investment. The research area was neighborhoods located in Mashhad, Iran. Thirty-one criteria in three dimensions of empowerment, education, and culture were identified. Having determined, normalized, and weighted the values of each criteria in different neighborhoods using the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) method, the weight scores of each neighborhood in each dimension were added up by GIS approach and Arc GIS 10.1 software. Then, in order to conclude the overall status of social investment in different neighborhoods, a fuzzy inference system (FIS) was designed in the MATLAB 2014a environment according to experts' opinions. Finally, based on the output of the designed system, the overall status of each neighborhood studied was determined in terms of social investment and neighborhoods with high potential for social investment were identified. The approach presented provides an insight for urban mangers, companies, and philanthropic investors to invest more effectively given the appropriate social investment opportunities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article is devoted to identify the need for social investment in the activities of Ukrainian corporations in formulating a social responsibility strategy. The purpose of the article is to investigate the development of social investment in the activities of corporations to determine the main directions of social responsibility in the formation of the strategy of Ukrainian companies. The methodological survey was conducted using a social investment index based on data from the official e-CSR website, non-financial reports of Ukrainian best-practice companies and corporate sustainability reports. The article is investigated definition of social investment as a subjects of the investment process, types of social investments. It is calculated the social investment index of Ukranian best-practice companies with responsible investing practices (PJSC «Mironovsky Bakery», DTEK, NNEGC Energoatom, PJSC Arcelor Mittal Kryviy Rih, NJSC «Ukrenergo», LLC Lifefell, NJSC Naftogaz of Ukraine, LLC «Nova Poshta», SCM, PJSC Carlsberg Ukraine). The analysis allowed to determine the effective and destructive directions of doing socially responsible business which is based on selected indicators. The results allowed us to identify key barriers to social investing and the main directions of development of corporate social investment in Ukraine: increase of transparency of corporate activity, information awareness of business on the development of social investments in the national market, ensuring the ethics of doing business and adhering to the principles of integrity in the implementation of company development strategies, improving product quality in accordance with international standards.

Social policy in Ukraine requires a deep reform, a new paradigm in which exercising of the rights to social protection would be considered and function as a mechanism of sustainability support for the social system. Within the general problem of social policy modernization we point out an aspect related to the fact that rather often solving of social problems is replaced with populistic imitation as the result of critical shortage of financial and organizational resources as well as absence of any conceptual vision of the mechanism to be used to mobilize such resources. The goal of the article is to identify the ways of coordinating high humanitarian goals of social policy with real financial opportunities of the Ukrainian state. Realization of the fact that the country cannot afford to implement social programs fixing the current state of arts and creating obstacles on the way to structural changes in the economy should be the starting principle of social policy modernization. Transition from «social costs» policy to «social investment» policy, encouragement of the behavior of citizens that would promote economic effectiveness of the country is required. However, even in case the best, most fair models of national product re-distribution are applied, that will not adequately solve current problems. Since the main issue is what resources will be mobilized by the state to achieve social re-distribution and using what methods it will achieve this. We substantiate that the system of progressive taxation with parallel systemic changes in the fiscal policy, effective campaign against tax evasion could be the most effective tool for expanding budget finance base for the social domain. Another social policy mechanism is the system of social insurance, developed over the years of independence, primarily directed at quick response to numerous available challenges, sometimes, of force majeure nature. Its reform requires a comprehensive social insurance concept, reconciliated with the wage system, tax system, labour market policy, and demographic situation.

This article analyses the socio‐economic determinants of public preferences towards public spending and parental fees for childcare and how they are conditioned by institutional contexts. Previous studies of childcare policy preferences have focused on attitudes regarding the provision of care. However, when it comes to questions of financing, we know astonishingly little about how supportive individuals actually are of expanding pre‐school early childhood education and care, and how support varies across different socio‐economic groups in society. This is an important research gap because childcare provision and how it is financed have redistributive implications, which vary depending on the institutional design of childcare policy. Using novel and unique survey data on childcare preferences from eight European countries, we argue and show that preferences towards expanding childcare are more contested than it is often assumed. The institutional structure of childcare shapes how income matters for preferences towards how much should be spent and how provision should be financed. Where access to childcare is socially stratified, the poor and the rich develop different preferences towards either increasing public spending or reducing parental fees in order to improve their access to childcare. The findings in this article suggest that expanding childcare in systems characterised by unequal access can be politically contested due to diverging policy priorities of individuals from different social backgrounds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Nordic Journal of Transitions, Careers & Guidance is the property of Ubiquity Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Socially responsible business activity is becoming increasingly important in today's society as a vital driver in maintaining human development globally. Thereby, the research problem lays upon the potential of providing flexible support to overcome human development challenges in order to improve the quality of life within national economies. The paper aims to indicate socially responsible activity of global corporations to support human development in Ukraine and the possibility of using companies' capacity to provide social investments for sustainable human development needs. The practical issue concerns the potential of providing flexible support to overcome human development challenges in Ukraine, improving social investments activity of US and European corporations. The research is conducted through a review of scientific articles and corporations' reports from the last ten years, evaluating the trends of social investments, including deeper understanding of the priorities of human development financial support. The findings section presents analytical research to determine social investments in Ukraine, considering European and US corporations' funds and their potential to strengthen human development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Active Labour Market policies are a pillar of the Social Investment (SI) strategy. The article aims at analysing the transformations of social work following the introduction of PALs in a context where ideas, organization and practices inspired by New Public Management (NPM) - quasi-markets, planning and performance measurement - influence users' activation, capacitation and empowerment. The analysis of the Labour Market Service Workers' experience in the Veneto region suggests that the SI strategy adapted itself and reinforces NPM efficiency-driven ideas. The SI NPM perspectives therefore converge into a trust in the market as a regulation mechanism and contribute to the precariousness and pressure in terms of values, time, money and professional development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Labor et Educatio is the property of Jagiellonian University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In Germany, social investment can be crucial for disadvantaged young adults, as intergenerational mobility is low and credentials are decisive for employment. However, the literature on policy implementation calls attention to 'Matthew effects', by which the most disadvantaged often have the least access to social investment. We contribute to ongoing research on Matthew effects by examining whether the worst-off among young German welfare recipients are assigned to active labour market policy measures that are more advantageous or less advantageous. Findings for a register sample of 20–22 year olds in 2014 support hypotheses that those with the lowest education and employment experience participate less often in the most advantageous measures; particularly in firm-based upskilling and employment assistance, and more often in measures that proved to be not as beneficial, such as workfare programmes. On a positive note, welfare experience during adolescence as an indicator of low socio-economic status in the family of origin does not additionally affect access to social investment policy measures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The focus of this article is on family policy reforms in four European countries – Austria, Finland, Portugal, and Slovenia – between 2008 and 2015. These years were marked by the ‘Great Recession’, and by the rise of the social-investment perspective. Social investment is an umbrella concept, though, and it is also somewhat ambiguous. This article distinguishes between different social-investment variants, which emerge from a focus on its interaction with alternative social-policy perspectives, namely social protection and austerity. We identify different variants along the degree of social-investment: from comprehensive, over crowding out, towards lean forms. While the empirical analysis highlights variation, it also shows how there is a specific crisis context, which may lead to ‘crowding out’ of other policy approaches and ‘leaner’ forms of social investment. This has led to strong cutbacks in family cash benefits, while public childcare and parental leaves have proved more resilient in the investigated countries. Those findings are revelatory in the current Covid-19 pandemic, where countries are entering a next, possibly larger economic crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers an overview of scholarship on social investment policies in relation to the integration of immigrants and the role they can play in multicultural societies. At first sight, social investment is a promising strategy to deal with the inequalities in human capital and life chances that plague multicultural societies. However, on the basis of the available knowledge, the article shows that the benefit of social investment interventions for immigrants may be lower than expected for two main reasons. First, there are access biases in most typical social investment policies (for example, childcare, active labour market policies, training) that tend to limit participation by non-natives. Second, employers' recruitment preferences and labour market discrimination are also likely to limit the potential of social investment interventions for immigrants. I conclude that to exploit the full potential of social investment policies in the promotion of immigrant integration, these policies need to be adapted, particularly by taking into account the essential role played by employers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate when voters favour social investment. Welfare states have transformed their core policies as a result of low economic growth and fiscal pressures. The social investment strategy, such as broader education provision and promotion of women's employment, aims at shifting the economy from the traditional Keynesian welfare state to the high-productivity economy by encouraging long-term and inclusive human capital formation. Social investment is popular among citizens in many developed economies, especially in the EU where governments promote social investment as part of their welfare policy packages. However, in Japan, the term 'social investment' is rarely used in policy discussions. Consequently, we ask what levels of voter support social investment policies have in such an environment; which voter characteristics are associated with social investment support; and whether voter support for social investment differs when placed in a broader policy context. To answer these questions, we conducted an online survey with a conjoint experiment. Our data analysis shows that social investment policies are popular among Japanese people, despite a lack of familiarity with the concept of social investment. We find that social libertarians and female respondents are more likely than social authoritarians and male respondents to support social investment. In addition, there is some evidence that higher income voters are favourable to social investment policies. Furthermore, voter support for social investment depends on the policy context. Support becomes weaker when social investment policies are presented in combination with decreasing levels of social security spending. Our results highlight what kinds of social investment policies could be achieved without damaging electoral fortunes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The methodological and formative foundations for the development of the corporate social responsibility practice of international companies to ensure a sustainable level of economic security are defined in the article. It has been determined that the corporate social responsibility of international business is a systemic guideline in the development of corporate plans for market development, which are explained by the annual increase in the degree of integration of economic processes in the context of globalization, which provides for corporate transparency, social responsibility, and business efficiency. With the organizational foundations, it has been revealed that the concept of corporate social responsibility provides an opportunity to position oneself as a reliable employer and business structure, which is successfully developing and operates in accordance with international standards and requirements of the modern market. The modern directions of implementation of the practice of corporate social responsibility of international business have been substantiated, a structure for assessing the social responsibility of international business has been formed. An information map of social investment in the international business environment has been developed. The main areas and directions of corporate social responsibility in the international business environment that ensure economic security are highlighted and structured. A system of indicators for a comprehensive assessment of corporate social responsibility in the business environment and a method for ranking the integral indicator within the limits of corporate economic security have been developed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Protection and inclusion have for long been some of the guiding principles of the European welfare states. The crisis of 2008 placed social investment high on the social policy agenda in the EU and specific policies that the new paradigm embraces have been in focus. Unfortunately, little attention is paid to administering policies. Creating one-stop shops, as a new way of easier and more efficient use of available resources for citizens, is perceived as the most suitable way for administration of specific policies. This paper is a contribution to this debate, looking at ways social policy is administered across the EU, from a double perspective. First, having social investment as the theoretical but also practical approach and second, looking at different welfare state regimes. This approach should point to major differences in social policy administration but also present which models perform the best. Most importantly, the paper aims to show how administering social care influences implementation of policy changes across the European Union.

The paper develops a conceptual scheme for integration of processes of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and dual education with a view to raising the quality of vocational education and enhancing the efficiency of social investment of business and the state in the training of highly qualified staff for industrial production. The author discusses the prospects of practical implementation of interaction between the interested parties when realizing the programs of manufacturing staff training based on the dual education model by national enterprises. This approach allows reducing staff risks in the long term and improving the transparency and accountability of companies to stakeholders. Integration of processes proceeds in stages, meets the requirements of international standards of corporate social responsibility and makes it possible to improve the institutional environment of dual education development in Russia. Using the author’s own theoretical insights, we propose an algorithm for building a system of dual education targeted at complying with requirements of the state and employers for the outcome of the training of workers and specialists of an industrial company.