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Research Summary: With increased political polarization, Americans are displaying more animus across, and affinity within, ideological identity groups. We argue this dynamic incentivizes firms to minimize ideological misalignments across their workforce by locating new establishments in areas that are ideologically proximate to their current operations. We further argue that the desire to minimize ideological distance to new establishments is stronger in knowledge‐intensive industries and young organizations. We find support for these arguments through the analysis of over 220,000 new establishment openings from 2009 to 2014. Critically, we find the effect of ideological distance on location is stronger when societal polarization is high. Our theory, and findings, contribute to several literatures and advance our understanding of the impact of polarization on strategy. Managerial Summary: Being a liberal or a conservative is central to many Americans' identity. As political polarization rises, individuals increasingly trust and favor others who share their ideological identity, while distrusting and avoiding those that do not. This study investigates how these societal trends affect where firms choose to locate new facilities. Because social ties and trust across workers support collaboration, resource‐sharing and organizational performance, we argue that managers will seek ideological alignment within their firms by locating new establishments in areas that are ideologically proximate to existing operations. Analysis of over 220,000 new establishment openings from 2009 to 2014 supports this contention, and shows that the tendency to avoid ideologically distant locations is stronger when societal polarization is higher. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay is an excerpt from a keynote speech delivered by Benjamin Barber at the 2nd Annual Summer Research Institute on the "Future of Community Engagement in Higher Education." The speech focuses on six conditions that will impact community service-learning and voluntarism efforts in the years ahead: the ideology of neo-liberalism and privatization, multiculturalism, political polarization, widening inequality, and global interdependence.

With the challenges of inequality so embedded in the political and economic infrastructure and their origin at least in part associated with national and global forces outside and beyond the control of the city, remediation is extraordinarily difficult. Only with innovation and imagination is inequality likely to be touched. Only if we are willing to look at the informal as well as the formal economy, and ignore the common wisdom about corruption and squatting and hidden capital, are we likely to find some partial answers to the burdens under which the most progressive and prosperous cities labour. (Excerpt)

In this article, the author analyzes public education, and whether America can survive without it. There is a deep sense in which the phrase "public education" is redundant: Education is public, above all in a democracy. To think of it any other way is to rob it of its essential meaning. For education is an essential public good addressed to young citizens-to-be as members of a community. Education not only speaks to the public, it is the means by which a public is forged. It is how individuals are transformed into responsible participants in the communities of the classroom, the neighborhood, the town, the nation and (in schools that recognize the new interdependence of our times) the world to which they belong.

Asserts that the interdependence that characterizes the contemporary world is undermined by the commercialization and privatization pervading U.S. society with consumerist pressures reaching even into school programs, but that terrorism has dramatically underlined global interdependence and public responsibilities. Explores what makes an adequate civic education in this environment. (EV)

Explains that the challenge for the next millennium is preserving and securing the common good against the forces associated with globalization. Discusses globalization in detail, the privatization of public power, the commercialization of what is privatized, and the infantilization and homogeneity of consumers. (CMK)