The moral embeddedness of labor market transactions in Indonesia: a study of Chinese migrant workers

Abstract

PurposeMoral consideration is significantly important as social responsibility of economic actions. This article aims to analyze the moral embeddedness of labor market using the typology of moral behavior in market exchange by Beckert (2005).Design/methodology/approachThis study contributes to methodological novelty through a digital research design using Gephi and NVIVO software. Textual Network Analysis (TNA) is used to analyze the moral embeddedness of labor market transaction of Chinese migrant workers.FindingsOverall, the results show that the presence of Chinese migrant workers in Indonesia is a form of Trojan altruism and harmful to local labor market. This study also provides a theoretical debate that morals are always embedded in markets.Research limitations/implicationsThe data and focus of this study are the Indonesian side, particularly the local labor market. In addition, access to interviews with the Chinese government and companies is very challenging and cannot be done because they cannot carelessly provide information to journalists and researchers.Originality/valueIn contrast to previous studies on Chinese migrant workers that tend to use the economic perspective, this study applies the moral perspective that is more sociological and discusses social responsibility of market actions.Peer reviewThe peer-review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-11-2022-0737

Planning scenarios for improving the performance of education personnel after COVID-19 at XYZ University

“…The WFH scheme is part of the concept telecommuting (remote working) (Allen et al, 2015;Bezovski, 2021;de Klerk et al, 2021;Mendrika et al, 2021;Pillai & Prasad, 2023), which is actually not new in the world of work and urban planning, this concept has been known since the 1970s as one of the efforts to overcome traffic congestion from daily commuting home-office (Hamlin & Heathfield, 1991). However, it is undeniable that the concept of working from home is still unfamiliar to most people or workers, especially in Indonesia (Irawanto et al, 2021;Pranata et al, 2022;Sitorus et al, 2023;Subari & Sawitri, 2022;Yamin et al, 2021), because before the pandemic, the normal condition of working people was the routine of going to the office to carry out work activities in a uniform environment (Beck & Hensher, 2020;Frankeberger et al, 2022;Lipták & Musinszki, 2022;Mantesi et al, 2022;Reineholm et al, 2023). With restrictions on activities outside the home, companies are encouraged to be able to optimize the WFH method for their employees.…”