How as we have previously reported, older Americans proceed to be lively in the workforce, working longer hours than in previous years because many of them cannot afford to retire.

According to , Nationwide, 22% of retirement-age staff are still employed; nonetheless, the number of self-employed people is 25%.

There are, of course, states where the number of retirement-age staff far exceeds this average.

In New Jersey, 33.8% of the workforce are retiree-age staff, followed by North Dakota (32.8%), Maryland (31.2%), New Hampshire (30.9%), and Connecticut (30.3%). . According to the Federal Reserve, only 51% of American adults aged 65 to 74 had a retirement account.

For adults 75 and older, that number drops to 42%.

According to , for black adults of retirement age, these numbers are lower.

According to , 67% of single black retirees have incomes below the senior ratea University of Massachusetts Boston dataset that measures whether older adults can afford basic living expenses. For white Americans, nonetheless, this figure drops to 50%.

According to Kilolo Kijakazi, a fellow at the Urban Institute who focuses on income, wealth and race, the disparities are related to racism in the labor market that dates back to the enslavement of black people.

“We have a history of discrimination in hiring, pay, promotions and benefits. Hiring discrimination also contributes to occupational segregation. “White people trafficked people of African descent to create wealth for whites, but black people did not benefit from the wealth of their labor,” Kijakazi said.

Kijakazi concluded: “After emancipation, we had laws and regulations designed to maintain this effect and even deprive blacks of the riches they had been able to create for themselves in the face of such adversity.”

As Darrick Hamilton, an economist and executive director of the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at Ohio State University, told the Times, white Americans have a bonus in wealth creation, putting blacks behind the each day eight ball.

“For most Americans, wealth tends to be created by wealth begetting more wealth,” Hamilton said. “Having access to an endowment that invests in assets that will passively appreciate in value over your lifetime is how most Americans generate wealth.”

Social Security, the entitlement program that pays retirement advantages, actually encourages people to work longer. However, most black staff work in industries that make it difficult for them to work until they reach maturity receive a full pension at the age of 70.

Social Security Works, a progressive organization looking for to reform Social Security to work for the modern employee, has proposed a straightforward change that they imagine will profit Black people and other staff of color after they retire.

Under their proposals, staff who turn 62 will receive 85% of their full retirement profit, which is predicted to extend to 100% after they reach full retirement age of 70.

According to A A 2023 joint study from the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College and the Urban Institutemaking the U.S. government’s retirement advantages formula more favorable to low-income staff would profit black staff, but not as much as simply paying them more for his or her work.

According to the study: “Although many of the benefit adjustments we modeled would disproportionately help Black and Latino beneficiaries and reduce Social Security benefit gaps, none of them would eliminate these disparities.”

The study concluded that: “Achieving equity in Social Security advantages for black and Latino adults would require significant progress toward equity in labor market outcomes. Although mortality and marriage also affect Social Security advantages by determining how long people will collect advantages and whether they are going to have access to spousal and survivor advantages, the primary factor influencing profit amounts is lifetime earnings. This puts black and Latino staff at a drawback because they are paid lower hourly wages and work fewer years on average than white staff. “Our recent analysis of the structural factors responsible for Social Security benefit shortfalls for Black adults found that improving Black workers’ lifetime earnings has the greatest potential to improve their retirement security.”

The press release of the associations Emmaüs France, Emmaüs International and the Abbé Pierre Foundation on July 17, 2024 caused shock amongst the public. It was announced that an independent report had been published by the Egaé group, an organization specializing in gender equality, workplace discrimination and violence. Investigation revealed the dark side of the man who had long been considered “France’s most beloved figure.”

Henry Grouès (1912-2007), higher generally known as Abbé Pierre and founder of Emmaüs – a world charity founded in France in 1949 – he allegedly sexually assaulted multiple women from the Fifties to the 2000s. These findings have had a profound impact on the constellation of groups related to Father Pierre and Emmaüs, revealing the challenges a corporation faces in leveraging a historical figure as a symbolic and strategic resource while concurrently attempting to distance itself from such a figure.

Abbé Pierre: A key symbolic resource

In 2018 we published article about how organizations use history as a strategic resource, specializing in the case of Emmaüs, which from the very starting has been closely linked to the personality of Abbé Pierre. The life of this priest, the history of the founding of Emmaüs, and the various symbolic elements related to Father Pierre’s image, equivalent to his clothing and public persona, supported the organization even after his death. Until early September, the logo and name of the Abbé Pierre Foundation, the fundamental part of Emmaüs, demonstrated this connection.

Strategic historical resources are each assets of organizational legitimacy and a battleground for power. Unlike tangible or financial assets, they’re shaped by each internal and external aspects, making it difficult for a corporation to totally control them. The public and legendary elements of historic resources make it difficult to denationalise or monopolize: Abbé Pierre essentially belongs to everyone.

Building and controlling narratives based on historical resources

Based on these observations, we provide insights into the strategic use of historic resources. Our model considers 4 dimensions to handle the challenges of strategic historic resources: appropriation, ownership, retention, and distancing.

Appropriation involves organizing scattered elements to create a coherent, easy historical narrative. For Emmaüs, this includes frequent use Abbé Pierre’s 1954 winter appeal and its image to strengthen the organization’s identity and mission. Emmaüs also faced challenges in controlling the use of Abbé Pierre’s image, well known in France as a public good. The organization needed to implement mechanisms equivalent to mental property rights to guard this resource. Conservation means preserving, enhancing and transmitting over time the characteristics and values ​​related to a historic resource. For Emmaüs, this meant maintaining the values ​​promoted by Abbé Pierre, even after his death, as a way to strengthen internal cohesion. Finally, distancing is about knowing when to maneuver away from a historical resource to avoid idolatry and organizational rigidity (and, on this case, accountability). In the past, Emmaüs needed to distance itself from Abbé Pierre to permit for organizational evolution while still recognizing his historical contributions.

Moving away from a historic resource

In the context of our archival evaluation, we now have already observed that since the Fifties, the organization or some of its stakeholders have made several attempts to distance themselves from the historical resource represented by Abbé Pierre. Although we now have not identified the sexual assault allegations mentioned in the Egaé report, several sources have indicated that Abbé Pierre can have did not keep the vows of chastity associated together with his ecclesiastical status as early as the Fifties. The challenge of distancing itself from Abbé Pierre for the Emmaüs constellation was not merely a matter of repute, as this organization, non-religious and financially independent, was relatively detached from the Catholic Church and its hierarchy.

Rather, the fundamental problem was controlling a person who was proof against managing structures and following rules. Moreover, during the Nineteen Nineties, Abbé Pierre created problems for Emmaüs by collaborating with the revisionist historian Roger Garaudy and by publicly collaborating with “rival” associations equivalent to the Droit au logement whose methods, if not goals, were diametrically against those of Emmaüs. In the summer of 2024, the model we proposed seems to have come to fruition and even intensified as the Abbé Pierre Foundation begins to distance itself from the image of Abbé Pierre. This distance has recently been dramatically increased following latest revelations made available by this organization in early September 2024.

Different distancing strategies

By analyzing 43 articles published in the French press between April and August 2024, we can outline the most significant messages of Emmaüs and the foundations advised by the crisis communications company. These messages, evident in statements from current and former leaders, can be summarized in six distancing levers:

From distancing to a whole break

These points reflect a communication strategy aimed toward preserving the integrity of the Emmaüs movement while meeting the demands for justice and recognition of the victims. The distance from his historical resource is evident, but Abbé Pierre stays an important historical reference. However, in early September 2024, the situation escalated with the publication of additional, much more serious testimony.

The Egaé Reportpublished on September 4, documents several cases of sexual assault, including one involving a vulnerable person and one other involving a toddler, in addition to rape cases.

Following these latest reports, the Abbé Pierre Foundation announced a series of actions, planning to completely abandon the image of Abbé Pierre in its activities and communications. Three organizations have taken radical steps to distance themselves from their historical resources by reviewing their memory policies. The Abbé Pierre Foundation will change its name, Emmaüs France is considering removing the words “Founder Abbé Pierre” from its logo, and the memorial/museum dedicated to Abbé Pierre will remain permanently closed.

Perhaps more revelations will come to light, as quite a few “historical cleansings” have already been announced. Even as the organization struggles to survive, distancing itself from its founder, it must depend on the values ​​that bind its community of volunteers, employees and donors to assist them survive what can be described as “organizational mourning.”

Hoping to draw customers, firms from Amazon Down Buzz we’ve got taken praising their good deeds in corporate social responsibility reports.

CSR reports allow firms to spotlight what they’ve done for workers, consumers, communities and the environment – essentially all of their goals beyond simply making a profit. Research shows that CSR statements are interconnected growing sales.

as professor of promotingI believed this raised an interesting query: when firms are successful with CSR disclosures, do they acquire recent customers, or do their additional sales come solely from their existing base?

In recent research several hundred Chinese firms, friend and I put the query to the test. We find that CSR disclosure reduces a firm’s dependence on existing customers by 2.1%.

This is excellent news for firms. This means that additional sales come from recent customers who are literally impressed by the corporate’s CSR activities.

But not all of the conclusions were positive.

To sell more products, firms often have to buy more supplies. A logical follow-up query, then, is: does a company’s disclosure of CSR information lead it to accumulate purchases from recent suppliers?

In fact, we found the alternative. Companies that published CSR information looked as if it would discourage recent suppliers. This is likely because suppliers often incur costs when a company decides to prioritize social responsibility.

Becoming depending on suppliers comes at a cost to businesses. When suppliers know that a company is determined by them, they sometimes demand payment in money fairly than credit. This may harm the corporate since it now has less funds for investments.

While CSR reports impress customers, they appear to antagonize suppliers – and that comes at a cost.

Why it matters

Previous research has shown that CSR disclosures can increase sales, but it surely has long been unclear whether these additional sales come from old or newly acquired customers. Our work provides transparency that firms can use to make decisions.

The findings are also of interest to lawmakers, regulators and corporate responsibility advocates who’re debating whether to make CSR reporting mandatory.

The United States doesn’t require firms to publish CSR reports, but some countries do. One of them is China, which in 2008 ordered all public firms to submit annual CSR reports, starting in 2009. This created the conditions for us to conduct an almost natural experiment.

Interestingly, in keeping with reports from the US Securities and Exchange Commission considered as undertaking some type of corporate social responsibility mandatory reporting. In the absence of necessities, many US corporations will proceed to voluntarily report their CSR.

In other words, the necessity for empirical evidence on the prices and advantages of CSR disclosure is greater than ever.

What’s next?

Increasing occurrence extreme weather phenomena AND weather-related fatalities and injuries piqued my interest in environmental responsibility. I actually have two ongoing research projects.

First, I exploit information publicly reported by the corporate to measure environmental risks and actions taken to cut back them. Second, I examine how CEO incentives influence a firm’s environmental disclosure, actions, and spending—or lack thereof.