UMB OSC group at conference on Inequality, Institutions and Organizations in Vancouver

By Ed Carberry, David Levy, Banu Ozkazanc-Pan, Suhaib Riaz, Mary Still.

The Organizations and Social Change (OSC) research group at UMass-Boston had a strong presence at a recently held conference on “Inequality, Institutions and Organizations” at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver. The conference was organized by John Amis (Memphis), Tom Lawrence (Simon Fraser) and Kamal Munir (Cambridge) and featured guest discussants such as Jerry Davis (Michigan), Steve Barley (Stanford) and Pam Tolbert (Cornell) among others.

Research related to inequality comprises a key area of interest for several scholars in the OSC group at UMass-Boston and their strong presence at Vancouver highlighted their various ongoing projects. The UMB OSC group had the highest number of participants from any one institution and they were also amongst those called upon to summarize the work in their respective streams.

Facebook, the IRS, and Inequality

By Ed Carberry

Facebook has been in the news recently for receiving a big tax refund. This comes at a time when a never-ending series of manufactured crises have placed the federal deficit at the center of our limited national attention. This comes at a time when Main Street faces dire consequences from the realization of the Norquistian dream of eliminating most sources of tax revenue. Indeed, the news that Mark Zuckerberg and his colleagues at Facebook are receiving a tax refund seems a particularly egregious and confusing manifestation of one of the most significant barriers to recovery: corporations and the wealthy executives who run them seem unwilling to contribute their fair share to get the country moving again.