Oikonomics, the UOC’s magazine of economics, business and society, organized a presentation event on 19 June 2024, of which we attach a video, of a very special edition such as that of its tenth anniversary. For this reason, the publication devotes a monograph to the analysis of well-being from a holistic view. A vision that, on the one hand, addresses the analysis of the current challenges posed by the welfare society, understood as a system by which the public administration guarantees citizens a set of basic social services, mainly in health, education, pensions, unemployment, housing... to improve their living conditions and promote equal opportunities for personal fulfillment. And, on the other hand, it also incorporates elements of reflection regarding personal well-being with approximations to the study of human strengths and happiness.

This monograph from Oikonomics, therefore, shows well-being as a broad concept to examine how personal sovereignty, collective well-being, welfare state, public education, health, pension system sustainability and tax awareness interact to shape citizenship quality of life. This act organized in the College of Economists addresses this analysis from three areas: personal sovereignty, the role played by the public sector in the construction of the welfare society and the sustainability of finances that allow it to be financed. Issues that raise deep questions and future challenges to identify and correct possible adjustments that need to be made to have a fair and efficient welfare state.

Moderated by the coordinator of the monograph, the professor of the Economic and Business Studies of the UOC, Fernando Alvarez, these issues are addressed by three authors of the articles that make up this special edition of Oikonomics: the professor of Economics of the Universitat de Barcelona, Alejandro Esteller; the collaborating professor of the Economic and Business Studies of the UOC, Gemma Segura and the collaborating profesor of the UOC, Laura López. To commemorate Oikonomics’ birthday, the UOC’s director, Àngels Fitó; the vice-rector, Mª Jesús Martínez, the head of the Economic and Business Studies, Xavier Baraza, and the head of Oikonomics, Joan Miquel Gomis, also participated in this presentation.

In the last twenty-five years – from 1996 to 2021 – a series of actions have marked the evolution of the economy: from transformations linked to new information and communication technologies to the Covid-19 pandemic, among other things, through to the financial and economic crisis of the second half of the first decade of the 21st century. In this article, we look at the impact of events in the last twenty-five years on economics teaching, whether this is evolving alongside the economic reality or not, what has given rise to a mismatch between economics and the social and economic reality. To analyze this, in the first section, we will tackle the social mission of the “economist” in the sense of being teachers of highly diverse collectives, and in the second section, we will reflect on the evolution of economics teaching at University. The analysis leads us to conclude that, although economics teaching has varied over time, it has not undergone substantial change in recent decades. The lack of diversity of thinking in economics curricula joins forces with a lack of diversity among prominent thinkers and professionals to often translate into an incomplete view explaining the complex economic reality and an interaction with other disciplines, particularly social sciences.

On the twenty-fifth anniversary of the opening of the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya and its Economics and Business Studies, a group of professors from the tourism field of the institution reflect upon the current situation of the sector at a key moment. On the one hand, they bring their ideas on what has been the evolution of tourism over the last twenty-five years and the elements and key factors that have conditioned this evolution to date. On the other hand, based on the crisis generated by the effects of the pandemic, they deliberate on identifying possible future scenarios and the key factors that may condition them.

On the occasion of the celebration of the 25th anniversary of the creation of the Open University of Catalonia (UOC), the authors take the opportunity to reflect on the recent evolution of the labour market in Spain and its labour relations, as well as its future challenges. A period that begins with a long phase of expansion of the Spanish economy and ends with the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. In the middle, events with a relevant economic and labour effect such as (i) the relocation that has accompanied globalization, (ii) the migratory movements that have rendered us a host country, (iii) the violent impact that the Great Recession that began in 2008 and the pandemic of 2020, as well as (iv) the process of technological and digital transformation in which we are immersed. Despite this, the article does not have a vocation for the past and stops in the analysis on two great challenges. Job quality, a challenge that has been present in the last twenty-five years and that, far from being resolved, has become more urgent. And the digitization of employment, the great test of the Spanish economy and society that may be a turning point in our employment structure.

This article analyses the connection that scientific economics has made between economic development and social sustainability. Starting from the classical idea of value in capitalism, the article reviews the main contributions that classical, neoclassical, heterodox and modern economic syntheses have made on the possibility of a socially sustainable economic development. From this review, the need to build a new sustainable value economy is identified and its main dimensions are analysed, especially the role that firms, markets and government should play. In our research on the fit between new sustainable ways of generating value and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the results obtained are unfavourable. The SDGs must substantially modify their approach and methodology to move towards a more socially sustainable economic value.

Airbnb is the most valuable tourism company in history and an epitome of the platform economy in tourism. Since 2020, together with the entire tourism sector, it has experienced the crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The paper presents the context for the current international research on Airbnb by describing the origin, current state, and possible developments of the platform offer during and after the pandemic. The data on the global Airbnb offer in 2018, 2019, and 2020 comes from web-scraping the platform website. It shows that the dynamic growth of accommodation supply stopped in the last year. The platform offer has continued to disperse geographically towards less saturated markets and rural areas during the pandemic period. Entire flats and apartments have been continuously growing in dominance in the structure of the listing, while the slower growth in the percentage of multihosts’ listings indicates a slowdown in the process of the professionalisation of the platform offer.

This paper examines some key changes to Airbnb's travel philosophy, protocols and standards since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. It reflects on how the climate of uncertainty imposed by the global health crisis has induced Airbnb to promote among its users a new ethos of flexibility, adaptability, liability and long-term commitment. In particular, we discuss how new protocols and regulatory measures have engendered a culture of uniformity and transparency regarding issues of health and safety, but also concerning social interactions, personal communication, labour, and the conduct of everyday life of Airbnb's hosts and guests. The article also highlights that the changes implemented by the platform have not gone unchallenged and how some of the protests against the new measures and protocols were manifested via the Airbnb Community Center. We conclude with a few considerations about possible future directions of the Airbnb hospitality machinery and their potential consequences on the post-pandemic landscapes of travel and tourism.

The regulation of work has been built on a dependent/self-employed dichotomy, which is being overcome by the development of new forms of employment. Among these, those linked to new economic models, such as the collaborative economy, are becoming very relevant. In these forms of work people provide services with an economic value, but outside traditional markets and contractual schemes. These provisions of services find a faulty fit in this binary model, demanding their own regulatory framework. The objective of this work is to define this problem, and to propose some alternatives to solve it.

It has been a decade now that research on the collaborative economy and colla- borative consumption (CC) has thrived. Tremendous academic research has been conducted into this specific concept. This paper re-evaluates the conceptual framework proposed almost half a decade ago about the conceptual foundations, frontiers and limits of the concept of collaborative consumption. The paper provides a revised definition and assesses to what extent the scope and limits in contrast to other forms of exchange still hold now despite current challenges.

The fact that women do not occupy positions of responsibility within highly competitive companies in the technological sector demonstrates how organisations are failing to adapt to the present reality: women are half of the population and are sufficiently prepared to occupy professional posts, but they are rarely welcomed. The liberalist explanations, that is to say, those which maximise the principle of freedom as regulating the market, indicate that women are not present because they take private decisions which involve a lack of ambition or commitment to the companies. In the face of this evidence, I maintain that the organisations are less than healthy social structures, which impose rules and values that cannot be adapted to the differing realities of women and men who are eager for another organisational culture – one which could fit better with their lifestyles. This work tackles this question by providing evidence on the basis of two generative axes of psychosocial risks for the knowledge society: (1) the imbalance between personal and work lives (2) the imbalance during the management of personal and emotional relations, as well as in the daily practices in the organisations, in the family and, in general, in society. The results of this work show that the technological companies are facing up to some changes relating to the profile of their workers, however, there is a need for a more profound reflection and cultural changes which abandon the idea that there exists a male professional ideal.