Economy for the Common Good: Job quality and workers’ wellbeing in Austria and Germany

Zum Workshop

The Economy for the Common Good is a socio-economic movement promoting an ethics-based economic system in which the collective interest and common good is put above companies’ profits. Its far-reaching model aims to promote a comprehensive response to distinct coexisting crises such as the socio-ecological crisis, cyclical capitalist crises and employment crisis. However, given the novelty of the model, there is still limited knowledge of how the model is being implemented and of its social impact.

Over the past two years, the project "Gemeinwohl-Ökonomie: Arbeitsplatzqualität und Gesundheit" (FWF M 2158 Meitner-Programm) has studied the job quality components of this economic model in Austria and Germany, as well as its associations with health and employees’ job satisfaction. In this event, we will introduce this economic model, as well as present and discuss the main results of the project.

Zu den Lehrenden

Dr. Laia Ollé Espluga is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Sociology of the Universität Graz and collaborator with the Research Group on Health Inequalities, Environment-Employment Conditions Network of the Universitat Pompeu Fabra (Spain). Her research span worker participation, job quality, and work-related health inequalities. She has recently focused workers' health status in the social economy sector by conducting analyses of worker cooperatives and leading the project "Gemeinwohl-Ökonomie: Arbeitsplatzqualität und Gesundheit".

Harald Kalcher is international coordinator for ECG (Economy for the Common Good) consulting. In a team of management consultants, he supports ECG companies, NGOs and municipalities in Austria and Germany. He studied political science and social psychology in Salzburg, helped to shape the first natural supermarkets in Germany with organic agriculture and is now involved in the transformation to a Common Good society as a speaker and transformation coach.