- Integrating Research, Integrating researchers
Action 01 – Tensions between Flexibility and Security
The main objective is to identify existing data sources that are of relevance to the tension between labour market flexibility and socio-economic security. In close cooperation with the RECWOWE European Data Center (EDAC) the aim is to produce data inventories that clearly point to the whereabouts of data sets containing relevant indicators.
Action 02 – Reconciling Family and Employment
The aim is to develop indicators for evaluating work life balance practices, policies and norms at the workplace level, at the state level, as well as guidelines and benchmarks at the EU level. Researchers aim to develop an instrument for implementing a capabilities approach on the household level that brings together individual agencies to achieve a better-balanced work life.
Action 03 – Quality and quantity of jobs
The aim is to analyse the quality of employment and the public policies directed at enhancing it within EU member states. One step in achieving this is to elaborate the concept of ‘quality of employment’ and to work on the relevant indicators for its measurement. Current understanding of both objective and subjective quality of employment is far from being clear and broadly shared.
Action 04 – Toward employment – friendly welfare states
These activities will build on data gathered in Strands 1 and 3 and will collect and analyse data on welfare regimes, in close cooperation with the RECWOWE’s EDAC. In coordination with the data collection of Strand 1, precise data on welfare programmes will be collated through information on entitlements, types of benefits, modes of financing and modes of governance of the major programmes of the systems.
- New data sets, New Teams, New Projects
Action 05– The European Data Centre for Work and Welfare
The aim is to create a European Data Center (EDAC) for Work and Welfare which will integrate and make publicly available existing and new quantitative and qualitative, micro and macro data relevant for the analysis of tensions between work and welfare. The aim is also to demonstrate how the (meta) data covered by EDAC can be used in analyses.
Action 06 – cross-Strand integration of Ongoing Research Activities
The aim is to organise a cross-fertilisation of knowledge between the different strands and to organise Ongoing Research Activities. Its organisational objective is to merge ongoing research programmes. Finally, the objective is to integrate transversal themes, especially in two dimensions: the EU dimension and the influence of values in Europe.
Action 07 – Cross-Strand of New Joint Research Activities
The proposals of new research themes in each strand (horizontal activity), the concentration and selection of these proposals in a cross-strand will lead to promoting new themes and programmes of research and to proposing an exploratory prospective of NRJA.
Action 08 – Plenary Conferences
The aim of the annual plenary conferences is to gather and integrate all the researchers and to organise the overall activities of RECWOWE (workshops, “executive” seminars, etc.)
Action 09 – Publication and Dissemination Centre
The PUDISC aims to provide a resource for RECWOWE participants who seek to disseminate and publicise ongoing research. The aim of this action is also to offer an outlet for the publication and review of work in progress, through the establishment and management of the on-line high quality ‘Working Papers’ series. Finally, the PUDISC wants to strengthen the internal cohesiveness and external openness of the Network, for example via the publication of a Newsletter.
Action 10 – Training Activities Centre
Training and doctoral schools are key elements in the integrative activities of RECWOWE and also as one part of the spreading of excellence. Within a domain characterised by variation across member states, new European policies emerge, and thus a potential for an exchange of knowledge, both of which have to be transferred to the new generations of early stage and doctoral researchers.
Action 11 – Dialogue Centre
The Dialogue Center (DIAC) aims to create an ongoing dialogue between the research community gathered within RECWOWE, policy makers in charge of labour market and welfare policies and practitioners with a stake in employment and social policy.
ELIAMEP is participating along with the London School of Economics and the Catholic University of Louvaine in Action 6 of RECWOWE. Our major task, which starts after September 2007, will be the cross-strand integration of on-going research activites of RECWOWE. We will focus on the transversal variables of RECWOWE research and will produce an analysis of the EU dimension and values, including aspects such as the Open Method of Coordination (OMC) and the European Employment Strategy (EES).
George Pagoulatos and Dimitris A. Sotiropoulos who participated in the kick-off conference of RECWOWE (Paris, December 2006), representing ELIAMEP, will also participate in the 2007 general conference of RECWOWE, scheduled to take place in Warsaw (June 2007). They will present a paper, co-authored with Myrto Stassinopoulou, which will be on modes of governance and will discuss the OMC and the EES.
