The 4-day working day can increase productivity, improve work-life balance and retain talent when there is a real commitment on the part of the company that promotes it. These are some of the conclusions of InnovaWorking, a European scientific project coordinated by the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M), which presented today in the European Parliament its research results on innovative working time policies that have been negotiated between unions and employers in different countries of the European Union. 

Deezer, a key actor in music distribution in France, has inaugurated, alongside the CNRS, the EHESS, the Universite Pantheon-Sorbonne, and Universite Paris Cite, the Mixtapes LabCom, which will study listening practices on these music streaming services. Based on a data set of unprecedented wealth, the teams will describe and understand the social and spatial diversity of listening habits and tastes. This joint research project, supported by the French National Research Agency (ANR) of up to €363 000 over 54 months, will more generally document the circulation of musical works in France and abroad, as well as the impact of music streaming services on these works.

A new study by Northwestern University asks whether voters approve of politicians who use the power of their office to retaliate against corporate political speech criticizing the politician’s actions.

The researchers sought to determine whether voters would consider retaliation against a company an abuse of political power, and if voter opinion would depend on whether they had the same political party affiliation as the politician.

The researchers surveyed 1,000 adults to collect opinions on actions of increasing severity a governor could take in response to public criticism from an in-state business.

In the survey results, voters showed no difference in how they responded to no attack and the verbal rebuke by the governor. In those scenarios, partisanship was the largest factor in how people viewed the governor’s actions. 

However, when it came to retribution against the company by the governor, the drop among in-party respondents was large enough to shift them from a positive vote intention to a negative vote intention.

The Minister for AI and Digital Government launched the UK’s first of its kind AI for Science Master’s programme at King’s College London.