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"This book explores social innovation and entrepreneurship in China. Focusing on selected social enterprises and processes, it addresses the question of "why China?", not in terms of military, economic or political ambitions, but in the terms of social innovation and welfare policies. The analyses range from detailed ethnography to discussions of broad global trends. Despite vastly improved social conditions in the country, there are still unresolved issues that social enterprises address. The study elaborates on the complexities involved in their positioning between the state and their beneficiaries. Adding to the complexity is China's dual system of circulation and the moral economy of ethnic minorities. The theoretical foundation of the study is the Durkheimian concept of the social contract. Its content is viewed as comprised of Maussian total social facts or guanxi, a similar Chinese framing, operationalised to particular socio-cultural configurations. The empirical cases document how social enterprises reposition elements in the various configurations in order to mobilise resources from their stakeholders. The book concludes that the discursive topology is altered in the process and the social contract is renewed in culturally meaningful, if paradoxical, ways. This book will be of interest to researchers, students and academics in the fields of business and social entrepreneurship, especially to those with a particular interest in the Chinese case."

The article discusses practical experiences with establishing conditions for employee participation in retailing. Social dialogue and human resource management perspectives frame the discussion. These are two different systems for organizing relations between employers and employees. Companies that do not have either are called 'bleak houses'. There are many 'bleak houses' in retailing, and work conditions leave much to be desired. This increases transaction costs and has adverse effects on work climate and productivity. An innovative approach to employee participation was tried out through a series of R&D projects in a Norwegian retail chain. The research strategy was based on a participatory approach called 'democratic dialogue'.

Taxation is central to the financing of most states, and monitoring that taxpayers comply with laws and regulations is a correspondingly important government activity. Governments have many ways to design tax systems, and no two national tax systems are the same. Hence, compliance strategies differ and so do outcomes. Complying with tax laws, beyond the fiscal aim of contributing revenue to a state, is multifaceted in a globalized world. Tax administrations struggle to control large multinational enterprises' (MNEs) tax planning, avoidance and general evasion, whereas MNEs grapple with the problem of having to comply with widely divergent national tax systems. As a response, tax administrations, through membership organisations such as the OECD, invent forms of collaboration between tax administrations and MNEs—all with the goal of increasing tax compliance. One way they do this is through the co-operative compliance model. Here, we compare two compliance projects, based on this model, in Norway and Sweden to shed more light on what tax compliance is in practice. We elaborate on Valerie Braithwaite's seminal concept of tax compliance as a 'dance' between tax administrations and taxpayers. In so doing we underline the significance of paying attention to conceptions of time and space as critical elements of creating compliance in practice between tax administrations and MNEs.

This report is an evaluation of the NHO Programme in China. The objectives of the NHO Programme is to support the further development of democratic institutions within Chinese working life, through development of organisations and businesses within a developing tripartite system. The Programme was initiated in 1986, and re-established on a new platform in 1993. Origi­nally the focus had been on management training. With establishment of the Human Rights Dia­logue between Norway and China in 1993, the NHO Programme was given a new direction and focus on development of democratic institutions within Chinese working life. In 1996 the Programme was expanded to include both major Chinese employers association: China Enterprise Con­federation (CEC) and All China Federation of Industry and Commerce (ACFIC). From 2003 both form and content was somewhat changed. The Programme is organised in two parallel processes in China, one NHO-CEC and one NHO-ACFIC. As today's organisation of the Programme seems to work very well and meet Chinese needs, we see no reason to suggest changes made in this area.

Purpose– The purpose of the paper is to shed light on the particular organizing design practices behind making items exchangeable into commodities. It is a constructive contribution to establish more critical studies of merchandizing.Design/methodology/approach– The study included several longitudinal projects in retail chains in Scandinavia. The research was based on anthropological and participatory research methods. We introduce the term "waremaking" as a term for the work to make items exchangeable and expand on a distinction between silent and seen design (Gorb and Dumas, 1987).Findings– Waremaking is business, but includes giving form to relations between business and society to make exchanges at all possible. We found considerable silent design work that is not commonly acknowledged in economic and social theory.Research limitations/implications– There is a need for comparative and aggregate studies. We deconstruct the conventional categories "commodities" and "merchandizing" and a study of the contingent effects on the meaning of other constructs is needed.Practical implications– Introducing the notion of waremaking yields important insights for organizations and managers. We offer a new framework of waremaking that crosses existing boundaries and helps construct new interfaces between designers, traders and consumers in society.Social implications– The papers reveal merchandizing as a culturally complex and nuanced form of work and a crucial field of practice.Originality/value– Scholars have denoted little attention to the cultural work of merchandizing. By delineating a new practice-based framework encompassing both ordinary and extraordinary work, we can address the cultural production of commodities.

Recent increases in the immigrant population in Norway have raised the issue of immigrant inclusion in the Norwegian society. The political emphasis has been on welfare, education and health for many decades. However, today the increasing shortage of labor in the market has raised the issue of inclusion of the immigrant population in work life. This article documents a 3-year-long action research process that laid the groundwork for collaboration among public, private, and nongovernmental organizations in order to find solutions to this newly emergent need in work life. The purpose was to complement existing top-down policy initiatives in this area with a novel bottom-up strategy, aiming to facilitate action-oriented dialogues about the inclusion of immigrants in working life. Initially an international project targeting the cities of Oslo and Drammen was narrowed to a group of large firms in The Grorud Valley in Oslo, where a substantial proportion of the country's immigrants live and work. The project demonstrates several valuable aspects of this action-research strategy — such as creating a broad-based dialogue platform on which novel policies and practices might be generated — but also a number of challenges, such as mobilizing private firms to participate in dialogues and keeping initiated dialogues active.