Adam Smith Business School

Professor Stuart Carr, Massey University

"From ‘Invisible Hand’ to ‘Sustainable Livelihoods’: How did we get here, and where next?"
Monday, 12 June. 11:00
Room 540A and Zoom

For Zoom details, please contact business-school-research@glasgow.ac.uk

Abstract

Adam Smith's Invisible Hand was arguably antithetical to the way the world of work has turned out, in the wake of the Washington Consensus on Neoliberalism, the Covid-19 pandemic, and our post-pandemic world of work. The latter is characterised by a Great Precarity and an ongoing destruction of the ecosystem on which we all depend for our lives, and livelihoods. The term Sustainable Livelihood is much less than 300 years old, but it has been gaining traction across a range of disciplines and professions, including my own - Humanitarian Work Psychology. This presentation outlines recent, post-pandemic advances in Humanitarian Work Psychology, in the areas of fair incomes, human security, and eco-social protection. Each of these respects a core element in the International Labour Organisation's Decent Work Agenda, and UN Sustainable Development Goal 8 - Decent Work and Economic Growth. But the concept of sustainable livelihood invites us to go farther than mere 'decent' work - towards a humanitarian handedness that Adam Smith originally, arguably, and hopefully, presaged.

Bio

Holder of the UNESCO Chair on Sustainable Livelihoods, Stuart C. Carr is also a Professor of Psychology, Industrial and Organizational (I/O) Psychology Program, Massey University, New Zealand. Stuart co-facilitates the End Poverty and Inequality Cluster (EPIC), which includes a focus on transitions from precarious labor to decent work and living wages. Intersecting with EPIC is Project G.L.O.W. (for Global Living Organizational Wage), a multi-country, multi-generational, interdisciplinary study of the links between decent wages (in purchasing power parity), and sustainable livelihoods for the eradication of poverty – the primary UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG1). Stuart’s professional focus is Humanitarian Work Psychology, which has included a Global Task Force for Humanitarian Work Psychology, promoting Decent Work aligned with local stakeholder needs, in partnership with global development agencies. He was a lead investigator on Project ADDUP, a multi-country DFID/ESRC-funded study of pay and remuneration diversity between national and international labor in developing economies. Stuart is a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand (RSNZ), the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP), and the New Zealand Psychological Society (NZPS). He was the coordinating Principal Investigator for a RSNZ Marsden Grant awarded to the New Zealand hubs in GLOW (2018). He is a previous Editor of the Journal of Pacific Rim Psychology, and International Perspectives in Psychology: Research, Practice, Consultation, which supports the SDGs.

---

For further information, please contact business-school-research@glasgow.ac.uk

We foster a positive and productive environment for seminars through our Code of conduct.

First published: 5 June 2023