Juha Antila/Pekka Ylöstalo (Ministry of Labor, Finland)
E-Mail address: juha.antila@pt2.tempo.mol.fi
Changes in the quality and transitions of working life
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Working life and the changes in it form a sensitive indicator for the whole society's development.
Economical and social statistics that are often used as indicators provide useful information on macro
level, but they seldom help in observing single, quality-related changes inside working life, not to
mention the expectations for the future. For fulfilling this need, the Working Life Barometer was
developed in Finland. With the help of the barometer, working life and the transitions in it have been
observed in Finland since the year 1992.
There are two key words in the working life barometer, quality and transition of working life. The
quality of working life refers to all working conditions, from the basic safety to the relationships
between the persons at work. By monitoring the transition, descriptive information can be gained about
the recent development, present state and expectations for the future.
This presentation is based on a project called 'Working Life Barometer in the Baltic Countries 2002'.
The project handled many kind of working life issues (unionisation, bargaining, work stress, pay,
working hours, in-firm training etc.). Since this was the second time these themes were examined in
Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania the results tell something of the trends and trajectories in these countries
within past years.
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Nevill S. Don Arachchige (International Research Foundation for Development, USA)
E-Mail address: nifrd@aol.com
Information Society, Technological Hubs and Labor Markets: Development Dynamics
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Growth of information technology has produced a complex pattern of labor mobility, market structures
and networks in emerging technological hubs in the world. These patterns have made tremendous
impact on the organizational culture, and socio-economic-political landscape of the origination and
destination of labor migration. This paper will examine pertinent issues in the areas of labor mobility,
organizational environment and human resource networks shaped by the growing technological hubs.
This paper will consist of four parts: I) trends in capital-labor mobility, growth trajectories in the
information work force and market structures of techno-global space; ii) organizational culture and
dynamics of information society, and its impact on human resource networks of the information labor
market; iii) analysis of socio-economic-political implications; iv) develop a modest approach to further
research on comparative labor markets of the information society.
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Peter Auer (ILO, Switzerland)
E-Mail address: auer@ilo.org
Tenure, employment security and transitions on the labour market: the case for protected mobility.
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1. I will start with a paradox: the discussion about labour market flexibility and mobility requires
also a discussion of its contrary, the stability of the employment system. Why? One answer is
that if one is to discuss mobility and transitions, one deals with a position of workers
somewhere in between jobs, or between jobs and another labour market status such as
training, retirement, household, etc. But successful transitions are usually those ending in a
longer term, stable and decent job. The decency of a job is also depending on the rights that
are derived from that job, such as a good salary, social security, representation rights (a voice)
and so on. But high up the decency ranking ofjobs is also the employment security that a job
offers and this is also linked to the contractual arrangements. For example, it has been found
that indefinite contracts yield higher job satisfaction (all other things being equal) than time
limited contracts (European Commission, 2001).
2. So finally, while workers are in transition the "decency" of their transition might be
considered (are they protected?: see below) what is more important is the outcome of the
transition phase. The way is not really the goal here: the way is transitions and the goal is to
end up in a relatively stable job. If we consider transitions and mobility as a bridge into good
employment, we have to acknowledge that it is not only the bridge, which is important, but
even more the land to which the bridge leads. And this "land" should preferably consist of
more stable jobs, that give people a reasonable time frame on which to base their decisions to
consume, invest, form families and have kids. In turn, via the shaping of household patterns of
consumption and investments, job stability matters also for the macro-economy.
This is why stability and flexibility are linked and why employment stability has a worth in itself, once
we do not talk abstractly about the adjustment mechanics of the economy, but talk about people and
decent work.
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Richard Belfield (London School of Economics, UK)
E-Mail address: r.a.belfield@lsc.ac.uk
Institutional Convergence? (De-)Centralization of Pay Setting and Pay Inequality in Europe
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Rising pay inequality has been a feature of many EU labour markets in recent years. In addition, the
last two decades have witnessed considerable change in the form of pay-setting institutions in EU
countries, at least partly in response to the perceived demand for greater local flexibility in pay
determination. Consequently, observers have asserted that global pressures of greater competition and
deregulation are driving a process of convergence among national industrial relations systems around a
"model" characterized by high inequality and substantial internal institutional heterogeneity. This
paper appraises developments in the areas of inequality and the reform of pay-setting institutions in the
EU's four largest member states, and investigates evidence for a connection between the two trends. It
further speculates on the significance of its findings for the debate about institutional convergence.
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Avner Ben-Ner (University of Minnesota, USA)
E-Mail address: benne001@umn.edu
Diversity and its Discontents
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We conducted an experiment in which subjects were asked to describe their attitudes towards other
individuals in the context of different forms of interaction (such as working together, and sharing an
office). The other individuals were identified alternately by various ethnic, religious, national, and
other background attributes. From information about the background of the experimental subjects
measures of the differences between them and the other individuals were constructed and used as
independent variables in a regression explaining various forms of behavior. On the basis of a
preliminary analysis it appears that certain forms of diversity enhance cooperation whereas others
detract from it. The paper will examine in detail various forms of diversity.
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Sonia Bertolini (University of Turin, Italy)
E-Mail address: sobert@rocketbail.com
Atypical jobs: the behaviour of labour demand and its effects on labour market segmentation.
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One of the limits of the research carried out on the market of atypical workers in Italy is that previous
studies have concentrated on the labour supply, while they have omitted the behaviour of the
employers, i.e. demand for labour, in their analysis and its effects on labour market segmentation. This
paper focuses on these aspects of atypical jobs.
In fact, in the post-Fordism the firms must reconcile two main demands, as regard the human resources:
on the one part they need flexible relations with their workers; on the other they need their involvement
and fidelity. In Italy, where the normative is strict as regards the dismissal, big part of numerical
flexibility is guaranteed by atypical job forms, which have only been recently introduced (1996 by the
Treu Statutes). The labour market segmentation was considered from the Economics and Sociological
literature the main solution for the employers to reconcile flexibility and fidelity. The emergence of
new contractual forms, like atypical jobs, brings up to discussion such explanations, since not only the
firms' secondary functions, but also the primary ones are externalised.
The paper is based on an empirical research realised in Italy on a particular form of atypical
employment, namely "Co-ordinated and Continuous Collaborations".
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Robert Boyer (CEPREMAP, France)
E-Mail address: robert.boyer@cepremap.cnrs.fr
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Since the seminal distinction by Gary Becker between human capital and firm specific competences,
economists tend to conclude that general education should be governed by the choice and the payment
of individuals that benefit from it, whereas firm specific investment should be initiated by the managers
and the related benefits shared between the firm and the workers. Actually, international comparisons
and the comparative study run by OECD on adult learning show that the distribution between education
and training is more complex. First, in many countries large firms do finance the upgrading of the basic
knowledge of the workers, when this is perceived as a precondition for cumulative competence
building, at the sector or local level. Second, many associations provide a complex mix of complement
of insufficient basic education and some technical or professional competences. These are examples of
the blurring of the distinction between education and training and they abound specially when low
educational level and low skills workers are concerned.
A core argument of the paper is precisely that many structural transformations that took place during
the last decade reinforce the need for an integrated approach. The emerging productive paradigms
imply a deeper abstraction of work, the shift of international competition from price to quality, product
differentiation and innovation calls for more polyvalent and learned workers. The higher education
level of young generations and the ageing population put at the forefront the issue of the enterprise as
the locus of life long learning. Finally, even the more uncertain macroeconomic prospects and the
intensification of workers mobility imply the codification and the recognition of transferable
competences from one firm to another. For all these reasons, the training systems inherited from the
Golden Age have to be adapted and in some case redesigned in order to cope with the needs and
opportunities brought by a learning society.
A closer investigation of the transformations of the firm suggests that the basic labor contract of the
Fordist era has been differentiating itself according to the nature of competences that can be either
idiosyncratic to the firm, or essential but challenged by professional's mobility or according to a third
configuration rather low and transferable. These configurations of competences respectively define
three contrasted labor contracts governed by polyvalent stability, professional or activity, market
flexibility. Thus competence formation has become essential both for firms' competitiveness and
individuals' access to a job. Consequently, training within the firm has different frequency and
objectives for each of the related labor contracts. This taxonomy might explain why at the firm level as
well as the national one, training strategies and systems differ so much, due to the domination of one of
these ideal type.
Finally, an efficient learning within the firm calls for two basic conditions. First, the nature and
frequency of training has to be coherent with wage formation, promotion and seniority rules, typical of
each of the three labor contracts. Second, the training strategy adopted by the firms has to fit into the
global architecture of labor market institutions governed by the existence or not of a national social
pact, of a system for competence and knowledge recognition, the role of intermediation of professional
or local associations and finally the individual or collective nature of rights to training and life long
learning. A comparative analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of training at the firm level shows
that an efficient response to market evolution and innovation may have a negative counterpart iii i.e. a
possible widening of inequality in term of access to training according to firm size, educational level of
individuals, age. Generally, with few exceptions, large firms train more than small ones, select workers
with already good educational level and competences and neglect older workers who tend to be pushed
into early retirement. Some surveys suggest that the global efficiency of investment in training would
be improved if redirected in order to correct these unbalances. But alternative methods for organizing
training around schools, professional associations, NGOs, or State may compensate some deficiencies
of a pure firm centered system but conversely introduce some adverse effects.
This framework leads to a major proposal: the success of learning at the firm level calls for the
insertion of training into a sophisticated web of complementary institutions at the sector, local, national
levels. Using the data gathered by the OECD project on adult learning, as well as previous
investigations about labor market institutions allow to detect at least four configurations in order to
organize life long learning. The countries such as Finland, Sweden and Norway, seem to promote both
dynamic efficiency and a low degree of social and economic inequality, compared for instance to
typical market led systems. This might be one of the reasons why European Commission directives
after the Lisbon submit have been promoting a benchmarking of social and employment policies by
reference to the Scandinavian social democratic model. But historical analysis shows a strong inertia in
the system governing education, training and employment. Therefore each country should investigate
its own path in the direction of a learning economy.
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Martin Brussig (Zentrum for Socialforschung Halle e.v., Germany)
E-Mail address: brussig@zsh.uni-halle.edu
Skill adaptation after recruiting in Germany: Forms and determinants
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Recruitment of new personnel is almost always followed by formal or informal adjustment training
periods that provide the new employee with job specifics and firm specifics. Although managers often
underline the necessity to reduce the time span and the costs of the vocational adjustment once the
recruiting decision is made, there is only little that we know about structures and determinants of that
skill adaptation process. Recent discussions concerning insufficiencies of primary vocational education
and training, the importance of social skills and organizational culture as well as the eroding reliability
of vocational certificates point to the significance of vocational adjustment after hiring.
Current theoretical perspectives, however, are contradictory in how to account for the skill adaptation
after recruiting. According to the resource-based view (Parallax/Hamel 1990; Barney 1991), vocational
adjustment after the recruiting decision aims at the transmission of firm specific knowledge and
expertise. Since resources are valuable, rare, intangible and not imitable, innovative and high skill
organizations must ensure a long and costly firm specific post-recruitment training.
Others emphasize differences in organizational contexts of skill formation and skill usage. According
to this argument, which is prominent in institutionalise thinking (Surge 1991; Lane 1995; Mars den
1999) enterprises may provide a work organization easily compatible with the bundle of skills and
professional norms shared by the new employee. Given a widely acknowledged system of transferable
skills, as for instance the German Facharbeiter, a short training period after recruiting should be
possible even in innovative and high skill organizations. In this perspective, the length of the training
period does not vary primarily with the explicit and implicit skill requirements of the job, but with
principles of work organization (e.g. Lutz 1987; Eyraud et al. 1990; Marsden 1994).
My contribution attempts to describe different forms of skill adaptation after recruiting and some of
their determinants. To test different theoretical perspectives, a special focus is on organizational
determinants, such as firm size, work organization, and labour market strategies. The research is based
on an investigation of strategies of skill formation in about 1,500 German enterprises (autumn 2002).
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John Burgess/Jim Jose/Victor Quirk (University of Newcastle, Australia)
E-Mail address:eckjb@cc.newcastly.edu.au
Preparing the Foundations for Radical Labour Market Policy: the Australian Working Nation
Program
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The 1998 implementation of the Job Network arrangements for job matching services in Australia
represented one of the most radical labour market policy developments across the OECD. The previous
public sector provider, the Commonwealth Employment Service, was abolished and provision of job
matching and services to jobseekers was tendered out to a combination of profit and third sector service
providers. In this paper we wish to examine the lead into this radical policy development. One
neglected issue in the analysis of the Job Network has been its origins in the development of Australian
labour market policy. In this paper we examine the development of "radical" policy not as a break with
the past but as a continuity of prior policy development. Our starting point is the 1994-1996 Working
Nation program developed and implemented by a previous Labor government. We argue that this prior
process of review and reform established the groundwork and the processes that were later used by the
subsequent Coalition (conservative) government in its Job Network program. Part of this prior
development process included using the contestable market process to provide employment services,
impose greater discipline on the unemployed, and replace employment with "job readiness" as the
primary goal of labour market policy.
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Klaus-Peter Buss (Goettingen University, Germany)
E-Mail address: kbuss@gwdg.de
How to get skills for high-tech manufacturing. New strategies in the supply of vocational
qualifications in the U.S. – the case of semiconductors.
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The paper focuses on processes of institutional change in the supply of vocational qualifications in the
USA. Traditionally US manufacturing is organized in a taylorist manner with a high division of labor
and vocational qualifications mainly based on work place experience. Now, due to the spread of high
performance work organization strategies, companies are facing a rising demand for vocational
qualifications on the shop floor. Though, at the same time societal conditions don't seem to support the
production of appropriate vocational qualifications. The education system doesn't offer suitable
qualifications. Inter-company relations are marked by several collective action problems obstructing
industry-wide solutions. And – since poaching skilled labor is a widespread practice – companies are
reluctant to train workers themselves. Taking the example of the semiconductor industry the paper asks
how a new high road strategy can be realized under these conditions. On this industry's initiative in the
late 1990s new industry-specific education programs were set up all over the US. The paper will show
how the strategy implementation is locally accompanied by processes of institutional change with
regard to inter-company relations, relationships between companies and colleges and internal labor
markets, helping to overcome societal constraints.
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Iain Campbell/Sara Charlesworth (RMIT University, Australia)
E-Mail address: iain.campbell@rmit.edu.au
Family-Friendly Benefits in Australia: Towards an Assessment
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Family-friendly benefits, i.e. benefits available to employees in their job for the purpose of helping
them to balance work and family responsibilities, are an important element in modern employment
relationships. Drawing on recent research conducted for the Victorian government, the paper aims to
assess the adequacy of family-friendly benefits in Australia, in relation both to the achievements in
other OECD countries and to the pattern of needs in the Australian workforce. The paper distinguishes
'family-friendly' and 'family-hostile' measures. It considers individual benefits in terms of their
quality, spread and practical efficacy. The paper outlines some of the pitfalls of standard measures of
spread and examines the factors that can limit the take-up of specific benefits. It suggests that, apart
from a small number of benefits such as unpaid parental leave and family/carers' leave, most family-
friendly benefits in Australia are of variable quality and are available only to a minority of specialised
favoured employees (generally high skilled employees in large firms in the private and public sectors).
Many of the specific benefits have a minimal practical effect, as a result of the dominance of family-
hostile measures such as long hours and high work demands. The argument is illustrated by examining
three broad categories of benefits that are particularly important in resolving pressures around caring
responsibilities – special leave and career breaks, good quality part-time work, and employee-oriented
flexible working arrangements.
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Daniele Cecchi (University Degli Studi de Milano, Italy)
E-Mail address: daniele.checchi@unimi.it
The Italian educational system: family background and social stratification†
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The present paper analyses the low educational attainment characterising Italy with respect to other
countries, and explores potential causes of this phenomenon. Given the high intergenerational
persistence, it focuses on the mechanism of education transmission, and finds that early tracking is
strongly correlated with parental education. Once children are channeled into different tracks
(technical/vocational secondary schools on one side, academic oriented high schools on the other),
transition to university is heavily dependent on past schooling, but parental education still plays a role.
On the contrary, family income seems not to prevent educational attainment, such that "cultural
constraints" seems a more appropriate description of the problem of Italian tertiary education than
"liquidity constraint". Once we have assessed this evidence, it is not easy to put forward solutions to
the problem. Nevertheless, given the scant evidence on the effect of school resources on children
performance, our analysis points to put greater efforts to reduce parental influence on children's
schooling: early schooling; full day schooling instead of homework; adult participation in formal
education; later tracking; reversibility of choice; and so on.
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Rosemary Crompton (City University London, United Kingdom)
E-Mail address: r.crompton@city.ac.uk
Service careers and social polarisation
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This paper draws on research including case studies of three sectors, banking ('Cellbank'), retail (a
supermarket chain 'Shopwell') and local government. In this paper, we will focus mainly on Shopwell
and Cellbank. Wage levels for basic grade Shopwell employees (the great majority) were low. In order
to achieve even an average wage, it was necessary to gain promotion.
The work-life histories of Shopwell employees graphically illustrate the consequences of past decades
of organisational 'downsizing' and 'delayering'. Lacking substantial reserves of 'human capital', the
life chances of Shopwell workers had been meagre. Cellbank employees possessed more by way of
qualifications, and many had benefited from the past history of formalised, bureaucratic, career
development. Both Shopwell and Cellbank had introduced 'high commitment' management practices
alongside individualised career development. One consequence of individualised career development
was that making the transition to the first rung of the managerial ladder had become increasingly
problematic. Our examination of individualised career development in Shopwell will demonstrate that
promotion requires a high level of both material (long hours working) and cultural commitment (an
identification with the 'Shopwell way of working').
Economic and social polarisation in Britain is a consequence of both the inflation of top salaries as well
as the proliferation of low-level service jobs such as those at Shopwell. The circumstances of
employment at Shopwell (which include the way in which employee subjectivities are 'worked upon')
make the development of collective action in respect of employment controls highly unlikely. Thus the
widespread development of individualised systems of employee control suggests that the reduction of
economic polarisation will only be achieved by the improvement of universal entitlements to economic
and industrial citizenship.
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Anne de Bruin/Ann Dupuis (Massey University, New Zealand)
E-Mail address: a.m.debruin@massey.ac.nz
Conceptualisations of the Work-Life Nexus of Non-Standard Workers
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A variety of concepts and models have been developed to explain the changing face of work in
contemporary society, especially the increasing significance and extent of non-standard work. This
paper initially points to the conceptual and definitional inadequacies of both 'non-standard work' and
the notion of the 'work-life balance'. Drawing on interview data from the non-standard work phase of
the Labour Market Dynamics Research Programme, a major New Zealand government funded
interdisciplinary research programme, we present our notion of the work-life mosaic as an approach to
understanding work-life experiences. The image of the mosaic attempts to capture the combinations
and permutations of individual workers' employment, free-work and home life experiences and
activities and also encompasses ideas on open and closed portfolio work. We argue that despite the
value of the work-life mosaic concept, it neither effectively conveys the dynamic context in which
aspects of the mosaic are located, nor recognises sufficiently the importance of the evolving nature of
an individual's relationships and networks. The paper highlights the challenge of developing relevant
conceptualisations to fit the work-life nexus of the spectrum of workers in the twenty-first century.
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Guillemette De Larquier/Christian Bessy (University of Paris- X Nanterre, France)
E-Mail address: larquier@u-paris10.fr
Hiring and market intermediaries : a comparative approach to IT labour market in France and
Great Britain
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Vanessa Di Paola/Stephanie Moullet/Josiane Vero (LEST, France)
E-Mail address: dipaola@univ.aix.fr
A fuzzy measure of overeducation: local versus central public service
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It usually exists three measures of overeducation: normative, statistical and subjective. These three
approaches present however two key disadvantages. Firstly, an individual can be overeducated
according to one approach and can be not overeducated when using another one. Each approach does
not consider the overall overeducation dimensions. Secondly, these three approaches classify
individuals as "not overeducated" or "overeducated", without any mention to overeducation intensity.
Challenging these two disadvantages is the purpose of the present paper. In order to do so, we propose
a fuzzy approach to measure overeducation. This approach yields a multidimensional criteria of
overeducation intensity. This measure is implemented on public employment for which a recent
research shows a clear diplomas depreciation of people who pass entry examination. The goal of this
paper is, therefore, triple:
- to analyse the divergence between the three usual measures,
- to propose a continuous multidimensional criteria of overeducation,
- to analyse the specificities of overeducation as well in local as in central public services.
Our method is implemented on a French survey, named "98 Generation ", which consists of a sample
of 55.000 young people who had ended their initial education in 1998.
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Louise M. Dobish (University of Michigan, USA)
E-Mail address: ldobish@umich.edu
Effects of the Ideology of Neoliberalism on Expectationsand Decisions of Economic Actors
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The tenets of neoliberal ideology pertaining to the rights of citizens in terms of economic well-being
and criteria for recompense profoundly shift our understanding of the rights and responsibilities of
economic actors (government, shareholders, firms and employees). These shifts progressively
diminish the responsibilities of institutions and magnify those of individuals. There is a significant
body of literature on neoliberalism and the world economy. I seek to enrich existing understandings by
examining the lived effects and practical implications of neoliberal ideology. I study the
transformation in the past two decades in the experiences and interpretations of employees of firm
actions in the context of rights and responsibilities of economic actors. Drawing upon the experiences
of 20 professional employees working in the United States for a multi-national company, I find a
collectively- shared story of work where the "market" is regarded as the governing force driving firm
actions and controlling employee well-being. I find a shift in firm logic away from the rhetoric of
meritocracy and performance over time to decisions based on instantaneous cost/benefit analyses as
the criterion for continued employment. Although individual characteristics influence the congruence
or dissonance in employees' perceptions and actions, there is a common frame and understanding that
defines their expectations of the future.
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Maryse Dubouloy (ESSEC, France)
E-Mail Address : dubouloy@essec.fr
High potential execituve managers between false-self and autonomy
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There are now more and more papers about skills and behaviours expected from high potential
executive managers (hi-po EM). Those expectations are numerous, however we shall mainly pay
attention on autonomy and creativity. Some researchers add the capability to deal with paradox. In fact,
this characteristic is linked to the status of hi-po EM itself.
Hi-po EM simultaneously must develop their autonomy, while they have to be in conformity with the
company's expectations (Bateson's double-bind theory)
Some studies point out this aspect without however deepening it. We intend to identify to what extend
the hi-po EM are conscious of this paradoxical expectations and how they succeed (or not) to manage
them.
The main hypothesis is : more the hi-po EM are unconscious of this paradoxical situation, more they
set up more or less efficient defence mechanisms in order to deal with this conflicting situation.
We shall try to identify these defence mechanisms, mainly the false-self (Winnicott).
We decided to go for a multidisciplinary approach : psycho-sociology, human resources management,
organisational behaviour, psychoanalysis.
We shall interview 4 types of Executive Managers (6 people in each category)
We intend to go on with this research in order identify to what extend the different training programs
strengthen or free hi-po EM from their false-self and consequently weaken or reinforce their creativity.
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Nicola Düell (Economix Research &Consulting, Germany)
E-Mail address: duell@economix.org
Dimensions of precarious employment - experiences from five European countries
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Differences between models of the welfare state, systems of labour market regulation leading to
different types and levels of labour market flexibility and labour market risks, and the combination of
these models have shaped the debate about labour market and social policy reforms in a number of
European countries. In this context, the incidence and the development of precarious employment has
been addressed in a number of countries. This paper is going to analyse precarious employment from a
comparative perspective, by taking experiences of five European countries into account (France,
Germany, Italy, Spain, UK). To start with, the paper gives an overview of the different perceptions of
precarious employment in the academic and political debate in the five countries. The paper addresses
than the problem of measuring precarious employment, which is not only linked to the unsatisfying
comparability of data, but is also due to the fact that precarious employment is a multidimensional
phenomenon. Key questions are whether precarious employment is on the increase and what role
precarious employment or forms of precarious employment may play at the labour market
(segmentation versus transitional labour markets). Finally, the assessment and the explanations for the
incidence and dynamics of precarious employment needs to be located in the labour market context by
looking at both demand and supply side factors, in the broader economic context and finally in the
institutional context.
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Ekkehard Ernst/Leila Chentouf (CEPREMAP, France)
E-Mail address: ekkehard.ernst@cepremap.cnrs.fr
Work organization and incentives
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The paper examines the relationship between the organization of the production process and the
optimal incentive policy. Tasks are allocated among workers according to training requirements,
monitoring constraints or economies of scope. Depending on the prevalent organization principle only
certain incentive instruments can be effectively applied. In particular, group work and flat hierarchies
are dominant when strong productive spill overs exist among employees. Moreover, training
complementarities on the firm level will favor firm investment in employee skills by making firm
training centers comparatively less expensive, requiring, however, cooperative workplace relations.
Finally, an incentive complementarily on the organizational level pushes firms to apply either a rank
order tournament or a group production goal to all employees, depending on the task organization on
the employee level.
These results are used to analyze the impact of the institutional environment on the selection of the
optimal work organization as the former imposes constraints on the use of particular incentives.
Comparative evidence suggests for instance that particular forms of industrial relations preclude the use
of strong incentives in countries like Germany, while the flexibility of the labor market in the US
makes monitoring an optimal incentive policy with consequences for the resulting work organization.
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Giovanna Fullin/Anna Ferro/Ivana Fellini (University of Brescia, Italy)
E-Mail address: giovanna.fullin@unimib.it
Labour shortage and the recruitment of foreign workers. The case of the construction sector in Italy
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Foreign workers represent a big part of the labour force in the construction sector in several European
countries. In fact labour shortages for medium and low skill occupations are relevant issues and for
this reason immigrants are or could become an important resource for employers. This paper aims to
analyse how foreign workers are involved in construction activities, to what extent their presence is
linked to the firms outsourcing strategies and what are the companies' recruitment procedures. The
research has been carried out by the authors inside an International research project
(www.pemint.ces.uc.pt) financed by European Community that started in October 2001. The countries
involved are Italy, Great Britain, Germany, Switzerland, Portugal and Holland. The paper focuses on
the Italian case, referring to other countries involved in the project to highlight relevant specificities,
differences or common trends. During 2002 several employers and human resource managers in! big
and medium size Italian construction firms were interviewed and statistical data were collected, when
available. The value of this paper refers to the perspective used, as it takes into consideration the firms
point of view to study migration issues, and the sector considered that has a complex organisational
structure.
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Marcus Gangl (Social Science Center Berlin, Germany)
E-Mail address: gangl@wz-berlin.de
Welfare States and the Scar Effects of Unemployment: A Comparative Analysis for the United States
and West Germany
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The paper examines the preservation of human capital as one institutional mechanism by which modern
welfare states contribute to protect the economic position of individuals and households across spells of
unemployment. In particular, the paper addresses whether welfare state transfers reduce the scar effects
of unemployment through supporting worker job search for adequate reemployment, and thus
indirectly improving workers' post-unemployment job outcomes. In its empirical analyses, the paper
draws on 1984-1995 employment history data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation
and the German Socio-Economic Panel, and applies novel discrete-time, discrete state space event
history methods. The analysis identifies the institutional effect of interest from the microlevel
comparison of workers covered by unemployment benefits versus non-covered workers. The empirical
estimates show significant positive effects of welfare state support on workers' post-unemployment job
outcomes in both countries, in particular in terms of avoiding severe earnings losses, downward
occupational mobility, and entering unstable job arrangements. As workers face constrained choices in
labor markets, however, the protection of economic status achieved by transfers comes at the economic
cost of a slight prolongation of unemployment duration. Simulation analyses finally suggest that cross-
national differences in welfare state coverage might account for 15-25% of the aggregate U.S.-German
differences in both unemployment duration and career implications of unemployment.
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Michele V. Gee (University of Wisconsin-Parkside, USA)
E-Mail address: michele.gee@uwp.edu
An International Analysis of Competitive Skills Levels in Workforces Operating in the World
Economy
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This paper explores the strategic mismatch between skills needed in the evolving world economy, and
the skills level of workforces in several countries. There are entire countries, and subcultures within
countries, that are experiencing serious skills deficiencies.
The preparedness of a nation's workforce has tremendous implications for productivity, economic
output, and overall quality of life. Many advanced economies, transition economies, and developing
economies are facing the challenge of skills shortages in their labor forces.
The paper also explores the influence and interaction of social, cultural, gender, political/legal, and
racial characteristics with respect to the development and employment of high levels of skills in various
countries including China, the United States, France, Japan, and the United Kingdom.
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Anthonette Gibson-Rodriguez (Howard University, USA)
E-Mail address: toni_g98@yahoo.com
Federal Child Labor Policies in America, 1912 to 2002: A Historical Materialist View
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This study examined the relationship between the development of federal child labor policy and the
developments within the U.S. economy from 1912 to 2002 from a historical materialist perspective.
This was an exploratory, historical, policy analysis that employed the theoretical framework of
historical materialism to provide insights into the ways that economic forces impacted upon the
development of child labor policy. The findings suggested that between 1912 and 2002, a total of
sixteen laws, with child labor provisions, were introduced into the Congress. The analysis indicates
that legislation designed to protect children were actual provisions within laws designed to address a
labor force in crisis. At points of intense pressure, capitalists were forced to concede to a labor force
which was demanding work, standard working conditions and basic minimum wages. Despite this
pressure, there is no centralized comprehensive child labor law banning the use of children sixte! en
and below in the work force. Legal restrictions against child labor were primarily applied to the
manufacturing and service industries, yet absent from the agricultural sector where children were
readily used. The significance of these findings lies in the contradictions of American values towards
the well being of its most vulnerable population.
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Yvan Guichaoua (CEPREMAP, France)
E-Mail address: yvan.guichaoua@club-internet.fr
Informal apprenticeship systems and social stratification in Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire
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The labour force of small-craft industry of Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire, is mainly composed of workers
labelling themselves "apprentices". However if we look at the different aspects of the employment
relationship they have set with their boss, we notice that some of them are charged fees whereas others
are not. These differences can be justified in economic terms by considering alternatively that the type
of human capital being transmitted (general or specific) differs from one place to another or by
assuming different costs of teaching or productivities of workers. One can finally assume that either
entrepreneurs or young workers face credit constraints. Our paper challenges this narrow economic
view. A survey, led in Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire, shows that the chances of paying fees or not are
correlated with sociological characteristics of apprentices (sex, religion) and, above all, their social
proximity to their boss. We suggest that these two apprenticeship systems correspond to two parallel
courses to enter the informal labour market. Their origins can be rooted in Côte d'Ivoire migratory and
social history.
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Mark Harcourt/Helen Lam (Waikato Management School, New Zealand)
E-Mail address: mark@mngt.waikato.ac.nz
The Use of Criminal Record in Employment Decisions: The Rights of Ex-convicts, Employers and
the Public
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Evidence suggests that employers discriminate against ex-convicts in the labour market. The problem
is potentially serious as it involves more than 25% of the male population. Since research has shown
that most people with prior convictions stop offending by their late 20s or early 30s, the validity of
selection based on criminal record remains questionable. This paper examines the need for legal
protection of ex-convicts by limiting employers' access to, and use of, information on criminal
background. The rights and interests of the various parties involved, employers, ex-convicts, and the
general public, are discussed. Approaches to the legal protection of ex-convicts in Australia are
reviewed and legislative changes proposed.
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Gail Hebson/Nathalie Moncel
E-Mail address: gail.hebson@umist.ac.uk
A Multi-dimensional Analysis of Youth Labour Market Trajectories: A case study of young
production workers
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The very different nature of transitions into the labour market for young people across Europe shows
the importance of societal and institutional systems in shaping youth employment (Detzel and Rubery,
2002, p. 107). However the relationship between these social structures and how these are 'lived' by
young people at the micro level is less researched. While it is important to understand the labour
market transitions of young people as structured by societal and institutional systems this also need to
be combined with an analysis of how young people experience these transitions. This approach
recognises that young people's labour market trajectories are not simply mapped out by social and
institutional structures and allows us to explore the ways in which young people shape and negotiate
the limited opportunities available to them.
Using a study of young production workers in a large automobile company, the aim of this paper is to
explore young manual workers' transitions in the world of work in a way that connects the societal
(macro), institutional (meso) and individual (micro) levels of explanation. By taking a 'bottom up'
approach, the paper will use qualitative data collected from interviews with young people as a means
by which to identify the key societal and institutional features that have shaped their labour market
trajectories. This approach demonstrates that it is not possible to interpret young people's trajectories
off their labour market position alone and there is a need to show how these intersect with other
domestic transitions. The study is part of a cross-national research project and although the key focus
of the paper will be the UK case, where relevant, findings will be used from the other countries to tease
out the relative significance of economic, social and political contexts in the shaping of both the
institutional level of the organisation and individual level of working lives.
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Alfredo Hualde (El Colegio de la Frontera Norte, Mexico)
E-Mail address: ahualde@colef.mx
Competencias laborales y profesionales en una region globalizada: un análisis del mercado de
trabajo en la frontera norte de méxico
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The Mexican northern border cities have been considered since the seventies as a Export Processing
Zone; hovewer, since the mid eigthies a number of foreign plants evolved to more complex
organizations that also introduced automated technology. These innovative features opened up the
possibility of transforming the border maquila into a different kind of manufacturing process not
mainly based in low wages as a competitive advantage, but in professional competences developed
by technical strata.
In the paper the analysis of border labor market shows that a strong income gap is detected among
professionals and assembly workers and a deep segmentation of knowledge, education and tasks. It is
argued that the labor market structure constitutes a limitation for transforming the region in a
competitive territory competing on the basis of knowledge advantages. It is also questioned if skills are
enough in a globalised region dominated by foreign investment.
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Jooyeon Jeong (Korea University, Korea)
E-mail: jjooyeon@korea.ac.kr
Rising Relevance of the Socio-Economic Interpretation on Recent Union Developments: The Korean Case from a Comparative Perspective
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In the previous literature on unions (Choi, 1989; Deyo, 1989) in Asian NICs during the
developmental period of 1970s and 80s, their weak leverage in organizations and bargainings
were usually understood by considering the primary role of the state in shaping repressive
political and economic environments. According to recent studies (Kuruvilla, 1986; Kuruvilla
and Erickson, 2002; Kuruvilla et al., 2002), the political economic interpretation was still
treated as an effective framework to explain the declining leverage of unions in those nations
in the 1990s.
By considering the Korean case, this study aims to show that such macro political economic
interpretation is too static and obsolete to consider diverse factors causing declining union
leverages at industry- and firm-levels as well as their dynamic developments in the late 1990s.
For this research goal, this study considers recent developments in organizational sizes and
bargaining structures of entire enterprise unions affiliated to four industrial union
associations. Those associations are metalworking (organizing enterprise unions in auto
assembly, auto supply, and shipbuilding industries), road transport (inter- and intra-city,
highway, and travel buses, trucks, heavy construction vehicles), chemical (cement, paint,
food, paper, and others), and banking (public and private banks). During the last six years
after the outbreak of the Asian financial crisis in 1997, all of those union associations
suffered from serious organizational declines in union members while they commonly pursued to
centralize their enterprise bargaining structures into industrial ones with different degrees
of progresses.
On the basis of interviews with leaders of those union associations in combination with their
annual activity reports, this study finds that recent declines of union organizations resulted
from distinct industry-specific social and economic contexts being highly associated with
recent growth patterns and prospects of the relevant industries. Those contexts include the
radical wave of enterprise restructuring entailing massive discharges in auto assembly and
supply and some chemical industries, a rapid growth of nonstandard employees in shipbuilding,
long-term declining growth patterns in city and highway buses and other chemical industries,
traditionally weak union activities aggravated by employer-led industrial restructuring in
other road transport industries, and government-led financial reforms mainly in private banks.
Similarly, unions' efforts aimed to transform the bargaining structure toward centralized
industrial one made different progresses ranging from a complete transition in banking and
intra-city buses to a partial or little transition in auto supply and others respectively.
Diverse bargaining structures were also accounted for by several industry-specific
socioeconomic factors including the level of maturity in growth of employers' associations,
industrial structures, degrees of solidarities among employees and their histories, and roles
of the governments.
Besides emphasizing the significance of the micro socio-economic interpretation on union
developments in Korea, another goal of this study is to show that the Korean experience
reveals interesting similarities and contrasts in comparison with those in advanced nations.
The movement toward centralized bargaining structure in Korea shows an interesting contrast
to the generally decentralizing trend in advanced nations, which could be understood by
considering the distinct path and stage of growth in Korean union activities. However, the
rising effectiveness of the socioeconomic interpretation in understanding Korean union
organization and bargaining structures is also relevant in advanced nations. This study
highlights that similarity by reviewing some recent English studies on those subjects in
the U.K., the U.S., Germany, Sweden, and Japan. Hence, this study advocates for the needs
of comparing recent developments of union activities in Asian nations with those in advanced
nations rather than separately dealing with them as in most previous studies.
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Alexandra Kalev/Frank Dobbin (Princeton University, USA)
E-Mail address: akalev@princeton.edu
Is Affirmative Action Obsolete?: Anti-Discrimination Measures and the Entrance of Women and
African-Americans into Management
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Equal-opportunity and affirmative-action law have elicited quite different popular responses since the
mid-1960s, when both were forged. Employers argue that diversity is a rational business strategy,
which they pursue regardless of the law. Researchers criticize the ambiguous language of the law and
its weak enforcement. Is Affirmative obsolete? We use a fixed effects analysis of a longitudinal data set
that combines government workforce data with life history data on organizations' practices to examine
the efficacy of anti-discrimination measures in establishments subject to equal-opportunity law, and in
those subject to both equal-opportunity and affirmative action law. We find that despite the wide
diffusion of proactive anti-discrimination measures, when employers are subject to affirmative action
(AA) law they make sure these measures actually work. In particular, four anti-discrimination measures
were significantly more effective in increasing the representation of African-American women and men
in the managerial workforce when used by employers subject to AA law. The measures are (1)
affirmative action plans that include specific diversity goals, (2) performance evaluations that rate
manager's equal-opportunity or affirmative action performance, (3) diversity committees given the
charge of eliminating discrimination, and (4) mentoring programs designed to help women and
minorities move upward in the organization. Unlike the case for African-Americans, affirmative action
law did not mediate the effects of employers' anti-discrimination measures on white women. Our
findings contribute to knowledge about the mechanisms that reduce labor market inequality and to
theory of organizational change.
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Jyh-Jer Roger Ko (National Taiwan University, Taiwan)
E-Mail address: jjko@ccms.ntu.edu.tw
Impact of Partnership, Knowledge Sharing, Institutionalization and HRM function upon the
Performance of Training Outsourcing
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Facing volatile and radical changes in their environments, organizations nowadays have to adapt
flexibly to these changes in order to survive or prosper. Outsourcing, a way to utilize outside expertise,
has become an effective way to improve organization's competitive edge. Particularly, it has become a
common practice for organizations to outsource training.
From the available literature, we infer that building strong partnership with contractors, fully utilizing
knowledge sharing with contractors, and institutionalizing outsourcing practices could be instrumental
in effectiveness of training outsourcing. Yet we also learn that the role of human resource management
function has not been explored yet in research on training outsourcing. Therefore, the main purpose of
this research is to study how the extent of partnership, knowledge sharing, and institutionalization as
well as other organizational characteristics affect performance of training outsourcing. Moreover, this
research also studies how human resource management function moderate the effects of partnership,
knowledge sharing, and institutionalization on effectiveness of outsourcing.
Using a nation-wide sample of firms from Taiwan in 2001, we test sets of hypotheses regarding
effectiveness of training outsourcing. The results show that partnership, knowledge sharing and
institutionalization have significant but differential effect on outsourcing performance. Above all,
human resource management function plays a significant role in moderating the relationship between
institutionalization and effectiveness of organizational outsourcing as well as the relation between
knowledge sharing and firm's outsourcing performance.
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Ove Langeland/Mona Bråten (Norwegian Institute for Urban and Regional Research, Norway)
E-Mail address: ove.langeland@nibr.no
Human Capital and Reward Policies in "Old" and "New" Economy Firms.
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Modern economies are becoming more and more knowledge-based and the economic importance of
human capital is growing. Knowledge and skills has always been central to labour productivity but with
the development of the knowledge-based economy, there has been a renewed interest in the
productivity-enhancing role of human capital. The key role of competence and knowledge in
stimulating economic performance emphasise human capital as an engine of growth.
As a result of this firms in all sectors of the economy increasingly focus on human resource
management, new work practices and flexible reward systems, all endeavours which can improve
workers learning capacities and increase labour productivity and innovation. This includes new work
practices, especially teamwork, a closer link between firms' business strategy and human capital
policies, and more decentralised and flexible wages and reward systems. The latter imply that local
wage bargaining and systems of performance-related pay are on the rise.
This paper focuses on "old" and "new" economy firms in order to examine if and to what extent human
capital and reward policies differ in such firms, and to assess possible impacts of the different policies.
The study is based on data from case studies of 18 firms within traditional manufacturing and
knowledge-based industries in 2001.
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Shangheon Lee (ILO, Switzerland)
E-Mail address: lees@ilo.org
Political Economy of Working Time in Korea: Tensions in the reduction of working hours
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Working hours in Korea are the highest among OECD countries, higher by almost 1,000 hours per year
than Scandinavian countries. To reduce working hours, the Korea Tripartite Commission had discussed
the reduction of legal normal working hours from the current 44 hours to 40 hours in line with the
international standards on weekly working hours. However, the three-year long discussion did not lead
to any agreements, whereas around 80 per cent of Korean people still support the reduction of working
hours. This paper will investigate the structural as well as behavioral factors underlying this failure. In
doing this, the paper will first examine why legal changes are preferred to other methods in Korea,
although there are considerable gaps between legal and actual working hours (the author estimates that
about 25 per cent of employees in Korea are potentially violating the legal provisions on weekly
working hours). It will be argued that, in addition to the advantages of legal approaches in coordinating
interests among workers and among employers (i.e., classical economic discussion regarding how to
address negative externalities related to working hours), they are more effective than other methods
such as individual reductions (e.g., part-time work) and collective-bargaining-based reductions. In a
sense, the legal approach was preferred "by default". This paper will then analyze why the broad-
agreed direction towards shorter legal working hours did not materialize. It will be suggested that the
reasons include (1) the heavy reliance of total wage income (or labour costs) on overtime and unpaid
annual leave; (2) complicated wage structure, which has strong components of seniority; (3) different
interests among workers, particularly between white- and blue-collar workers, and between regular and
non-regular workers; (4) different interests among individual companies with different sizes. All of
these factors resulted in coordination failures among workers and among employers. In light of the
discussions, the paper will try to draw some policy implications regarding the conditions under which
the reduction of legal working hours can be successfully implemented.
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Thomas Liebig (University of St. Gallen, Switzerland)
E-Mail address: thomas.liebig@unisg.ch
How does income inequality influence international migration?
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This paper presents an alternative way of testing Borjas' (1987) much-disputed prediction that
immigrants from countries with a higher income inequality tend to be negatively selected (i.e., less
skilled than the average worker) and vice versa. Empirical tests of Borjas' self-selection hypothesis
generally rely on immigration data, particularly to the US, and may therefore be biased due to host-
country specifics such as network migration and the impact of migration policy. Furthermore, empirical
tests of a theory that deals with migration incentives, such as self-selection theory, should rely on
emigration propensities instead of using immigration data. This paper analyses the relationship between
country-specific emigration propensities and each country's score on the Gini-Index on inequality with
a rich international microdata set. The main result is that a more egalitarian income distribution is
associated with lower migration propensities. The relationship is even stronger for highly-skilled
persons. These results seem to contradict Borjas' prediction that highly-skilled migrants should be
particularly attracted by countries which have relatively high returns to skills. They are thus more in
line with other models of self-selection processes, such as the one proposed by Chiswick (1999).
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Anthony Masi (McGill University, Canada)
E-Mail address: masi@leacock.lan.mcgill.ca
Changes in the role of formal education and training in labour markets
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Hisako Matsuo/Reinous Bosch/Kevin McIntyre (Saint Louis University, USA)
E-Mail address: matsuoh@slu.edu
Transfer of Japanese Human Resource Management to U.S. Subsidiaries: Problems of
Homogeneity and Heterogeneity in the Laborforce
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Japanese corporations are characterized by management practices which have been nurtured in a
culturally homogeneous environment. The transferability of these practices to foreign subsidiaries has
been a subject of debate among management scholars. Drawing on resource dependence theory and
institutionalism, this study examines the impact of cultural homogeneity in management and parent
company control on the degree of presence of Japanese human resource management (HRM) in U.S.
subsidiaries. The study uses Walton and Lawrence's classification (reward, selection and promotion,
employee influence mechanism, and job design) to measure Japanese HRM practices, and a sample
survey of 138 U.S. subsidiaries of Japanese multinational corporations for data collection. A principal
component analysis reveals that three dimensions of HRM (reward system, selection and promotion,
and job design), rather than four, are salient among these establishments. An OLS regression analysis
also reveals that the degree of cultural homogeneity in management in the laborforce, and parent
company control have impact on the transfer of these dimensions of HRM. Some implications for
future study are discussed.
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Mitsuharu Miyamoto/Katsuyuki Kubo (Senshu University, Japan)
E-Mail address: miyamoto@isc.senshu-u.ac.jp
Inter-firm difference in the effect of performance related pay: case in Japan
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Performance related pay(PRP) has been popular among Japanese firms. Our previous studies suggest
that employees are motivated in some firms while they are not in others. The objective of this paper is
to analyse the inter-firm difference in the effect of PRP on employees' motivation and commitment
from the viewpoint of psychological contract.
Performance related pay might fail to motivate employees if they feel that new pay system may violate
existing psychological contract between employees and employer. Alternatively employees may be
motivated if they think that they have new psychological contract under new pay structure. Therefore,
we hypothesize that the difference in the state of psychological contract after the PRP may explain the
difference in their effect. To analyse this hypothesis, we conducted questionnaire surveys to 310
employees in 2 firms that do not introduced PRP and 359 employees in 7 firms that introduced PRP.
These companies include both small and large companies, and belong to various industries including
manufacturing and service sectors. In addition, there is a significant differences in workforce
composition among firms. The difference in relationship between the firm characteristics and state of
psychological contract is analysed.
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Philippe Moguerou (University of Bourgogne, France)
E-Mail address: philippe.moguerou@u-bourgogne.fr
Does the economy need more scientists? A microeconomic study of the employment of Ph.D.
graduates in France and the USA
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Scientists and engineers play a key role in technological change and economic growth. In countries like
France and the United States where Ph.D. is an old institution, Ph.D. graduates in science and
engineering are the core highly qualified scientific manpower. In this article, we show that important
quantitative (increased subsidies for Ph.D. training, increasing number of Ph.D. graduates in some
fields) and qualitative transformations (socio-demographic transformations of the doctorate recipients,
development of post-doc and non-tenured positions in the academic sector) have affected the Ph.D.
labor market since the end of the 1980's in these two countries. Then, with micro data from the Céreq
and the NSF, we try to understand the consequences of these transformations on the labor market for
young Ph.D. recipients. Our conclusion is that public policies have to be carefully implemented to
avoid the waste of public resources devoted to the training of Ph.D. graduates. Th!
e challenge is not to increase the number of Ph.D. recipients, but to increase their employability in the
private sector.
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Jeylan Mortimer (University of Minnesota, USA)
E-Mail address: morti002@atlas.socsci.umn.edu
Working and Growing Up in America
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As Kerckhoff (2002) has recently pointed out, the United States is distinctive among modern post-
industrial societies in the challenges it poses for young people making the transition from school to
work. The general, non-vocationally specific character of educational credentials (e.g., high school
diploma, BA) provides little information to the employer or the job seeker about the kinds of vocational
tasks the job entrant would likely be able to perform. While universities offer job placement services
for the most advantaged young people, those who have obtained BA degrees, most youth rely fairly
much on their own resources to find employment, including informal contacts, direct application to
employers, use of the internet, etc. Given these circumstances, many young people find this transition
challenging, time-consuming, and difficult.
Whereas most adolescents in the United States hold paying jobs while they are attending high school,
the consequences of this experience for their well-being and attainment are much debated. On the one
hand are those who argue that work is a negative experience that detracts young people from school
and should be discouraged. On the other side are those who emphasize the character-building,
vocational exploration, and preparation for adult work that can occur through such early jobs. In
1987, I initiated a longiitudinal study of adolescence and the transition to adulthood, based on a
community panel of 1,000 teenagers entering high school (supported by NIMH, and now jointly by
NIMH and NICHD). This longitudinal study, which surveys the youth annually, is still in
progress. This study is unique in that it was explictly designed to assess the consequences of paid work
for development and attainment.
This paper will provide a synthesis of this work (more fully presented in Mortimer, 2003), highlighting
the implications of adolescent paid work for achievement, mental health, problem behavior, and
vocational development during high school; and its subsequent consequences, during the transition to
adulthood, for educational and occupational attainment, career establishment, and coping with stressors
in the work environment. The findings emphasize the importance of the pattern of labor force
attachment during high school (rather than hours of work at a given point in time), as well as the
quality of work experience.
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Ulrike Muehlenberger (European University Institute, Italy)
E-Mail address: muehlber@datacomm.iue.it
From relational employment to relational contracting: outsourcing and dependent self-employment
in the British and Austrian insurance industry
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Labour relations in business organisations are facing a profound change. This paper focuses on one
specific change in labour relations, namely dependent outsourcing. Dependent outsourcing refers to
contracts over products with little alternative use, where the subcontractor bears the entrepreneurial
risk. From the perspective of the contractor, dependent outsourcing represents a business relationship to
outsource the entrepreneurial risk. The lack or the high costs of an alternative use creates long-standing
ties between the business partners, which allows them to overcome some of the difficulties with formal
contracts and utilise their detailed knowledge of the situation to adapt to new contingencies as they
arise. Drawing on 57 semi-structured interviews in the British and Austrian insurance industry, I
identify the nature and logic of dependent outsourcing, deploying the dimensions control, dependency,
support and incentives. Results reveal that the logic of dependent outsourcing is not straightforward.
Instead, intensive field research shows widespread reasons for and against dependent outsourcing. In
both countries, the changes in the cost structure, the passing of risk, the increase in productivity and the
gains through specialisation are the most important reasons for tied agency. The reduction of control
and mutual dependency are the main problems of insurance companies using tied agents or the key
rationales why they do not deploy them. The paper highlights the hybrid position of dependent
subcontractors between integration and non-integration. It is argued that blurring firm boundaries are
pivotal to understand new developments in organisational governance.
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Johannes Mure (University of Zurich, Switzerland)
E-Mail address: j.mure@uni-koeln.de
Lifelong Learning in Companies in France and Germany – National Institutions and Financial
Incentives for Training
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It is well known that French and German firms use particular and quite different strategies to invest
into the skills of their employees. If we look at individual training careers within companies German
firms seem to train more frontloaded whereas French firms seem to invest more backloaded. Since all
kinds of investments are usually more beneficial if started earlier this is puzzling and needs an
explanation going beyond standard human capital and investment theory. In our paper we will develop
a theoretical model to explain the shape of training careers in companies. We suspect differences in
national education and labour market institutions to be the major driving force and argue that a
particular combination of training specificity and wage compression, which are both induced by
national institutions such as educational standardization procedures and minimum wages or fiscal
incentives, brings about either more frontloaded or more backloaded training careers. We show that the
higher training specificity is and the more compressed wages are, the higher is the incentive for
employers to invest (persistently) in their employee's human capital. A company's training investments
will be more frontloaded if wages are more compressed and specificity is high in an early stage.
Training investments will be more backloaded if wages are more compressed and specificity is high in
a later stage. The paper closes with a broad spectrum of anecdotal evidence supporting our explanation.
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Gina Neff (Columbia University, USA)
E-Mail address: ginasue@panix.com
The Fragility of Social Capital and the Decline of the Internet Industry in New York and Berlin
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Others have shown that workers in the Internet industry during the boom relied heavily on social and
professional networks to buffer the uncertainty faced by start-up companies (Christopherson,
forthcoming; Batt et al 2001; Kotamraju 2002; Pratt 2002; Pratt 2000; Indergaard 2000). We ask in this
paper what happens to these professional networks after the stock market crash that affected the
industry. Although networking structures provided jobs during the industry's boom, were the ties
developed during the industry's growth period flexible and strong enough to work in the face of
industrial decline? Do employees still in the Internet industry use social-capital intensive strategies for
getting new jobs and projects?
What we find is that social capital in and of itself is more fragile and less fungible that perhaps
previously thought. After the collapse of the Internet industry stock valuation, the companies and
employees remaining within the industry understand the burden of risk they face. Through an
examination of the social networks important to freelancer Internet workers in two cities, we find that
they relied heavily on cultural and social forms of capital during the industry's boom, and increasingly
on technical skill and "weak ties" in the downturn. Thus, we pose the question what happens to
"networking" when the network is devoid of resources—and jobs, in particular—to exchange? We
suggest that individual strategies to buffer the risk and uncertainty of one company failing failed to
adequately protect against network collapse. Thus, we look to the possible individual strategies used to
deal with industry collapse. From qualitative interview data, we find that Net Workers in Berlin and
New York think they must somehow outsmart the business; a situation in which they themselves
become business forecasters, evaluating which companies and trends will succeed enough to create
new employment opportunities. They learn to read business plans, and as one says, "ask all the right
questions" of their current and potential employers. We highlight the survivors' strategies and show
that in both New York and Berlin, Net Workers moved from a collective, network approach to the
industry towards an approach that is more highly individualized and entrepreneurial.
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Eduardo Noronha (Universidade Federal de Sao Carlos, Brazil)
E-Mail address: enoronha@uol.com.br
Types of informal labour contracts in a medium-sized Brazilian city
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The paper present results from a qualitative survey carried out with workers in the informal labour
market in Sao Carlos – a city of 185,000 inhabitants in Sao Paulo State. It aims, firstly, to detect the
diversity of formal (here understood as those recognized by law) and informal contracts (the illegal
ones or those not recognized by the legislation) actually practiced. Second, to create a typology of
formal and informal contracts based on both, key conventional variables such as 'subordination', and
empirical findings. Third, to assess the workers' perceptions of formal contracts according to the types
of contract they have in their jobs as well as the degree of legitimacy of the main labour rights. This
survey is part of a broader research which aims to discusses the changing popular notions of 'fair'
labour contracts, contrasting to the juridical notion of "legal" contracts and the economic concerns
regarding "efficiency". The mutual influence between them are discussed in the conclusion.
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Francesca Odella (University of Trento, Italy)
E-Mail address: fodella@soc.unitn.it
Skill provision patterns and strategic organizational practices. The effects of public funded training
projects on SMEs.
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Rebecca Oliver (Northwestern University, USA)
E-Mail address: r-oliver@northwestern.edu
De-Constructing Solidarity: Understanding Change in Labor Market Institutions in Advanced
Industrial Societies, Results from the Italian Case
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My paper studies the following question: How does the increasing difference in the demand for high-
and low-skilled workers in advanced industrial countries affect collective bargaining institutions?
Major technological innovations in production techniques and increasing trade with developing
countries seem to have widened the gap between demand for low- and high-skilled workers in
advanced industrial countries. This growing divergence in the level of demand for different skill-
levels has a potentially critical effect on collective bargaining institutions, particularly those that have
been centralized in the past. This paper hinges on the basic idea that in order to explain why
bargaining institutions in some countries are rapidly changing while others seem quite stable, we need
to understand whether workers most affected by these changes in the relative demand (i.e. low-skilled
workers) are organized in one confederation or divided among multiple confederations. Specifically,
this paper hypothesizes that the way in which union members are grouped into confederations -
referred to as the type of 'confederal groupage - affects how pressures from changes in the relative
demand for differently skilled workers translate into changes in wage bargaining practices. The paper
will present results from recent field work in Italy.
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Richard Paterson (British Film Institute, United Kingdom)
E-Mail address: richard.paterson@bfi.org.uk
Freelance Life - Training and Knowledge
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This paper reviews the experiences of a significant part of the workforce in creative jobs in UK
television industry focusing on the negotiation of the uncertainties of employment for those with less
than ten years practice. Following a comparison of career paths for a number of individual case studies
it assesses the importance of various kinds of knowledge to gain advantage in the competitive
employment market and the desire and demand for training. Some comparison with other sectors will
be made.
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Coralie Perez (Centre d'etudes et de recherche sur les qualifications, France)
E-Mail address: perez@cereq.fr
Les salariés "précaires" face à la formation professionnelle continue. A quelles conditions la
formation continue peut-elle constituer une garantie par delà la discontinuité de l'emploi
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Le "droit à la continuité professionnelle par delà les aléas de la discontinuité de l'emploi" est développé
par la thèse des marchés transitionnels. Il s'agit de prendre acte de l'instabilité de l'emploi et de
reconstruire des garanties statutaires au-delà de celles conférées par un emploi "standard". Dans ce
cadre, la formation continue pourrait constituer une garantie pour les salariés "précaires" (contrats à
durée déterminée, intérim,...). Après avoir caractérisé leurs pratiques de formation, on se focalisera sur
les entraves à leur formation. L'hypothèse est que le contexte professionnel et institutionnel est crucial
dans l'émergence et la concrétisation d'un besoin de formation ; la participation à la formation pourrait
être autant, si ce n'est davantage, conditionnée par cet environnement que par le statut de l'emploi. De
même, la manière dont le salarié précaire se représente sa situation influence probablement sa
participation à la formation.(Données:l'enquête Formation continue 2000 du Céreq, et de l'Insee). Un
traitement par l'analyse textuelle d'une question ouverte sur les motifs de non recours est envisagé.
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Daniel Pop (Central European University, Hungary)
E-Mail address: pphpod01@phd.ceu.hu
The effect of interregional wage differentials on regional ethnic heterogeneity
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Explanations of ethnic composition in mixed regions focus on the role of community, minority policy
and only in a limited manner on economic factors. I propose to contribute to the literature by inquiring
about the effects uneven regional economic development has on the voluntary regional labor mobility
for the case of ethnically mixed sub-national regions. The case study is Transsylvania, Romania's
northwest. The main hypothesis is that if interregional differentials large enough to set off inter-
regional migration and if the type of inward migrating labour with knowledge of the dominant
language spoken by the recipient regional labour market will be a better substitute for native workers
than inward migrating labour lacking this knowledge than there is a market driven territorial
segregation of labour based on language. The direction of the segregation or ethnic labour selection
depends on the interregional wage differentials and the local/national policy response. To test the
hypothesis I use a CGE model with three regions. If the hypothesis verified, it would indicate that
under conditions of sufficiently large interregional wage differentials and linguistic match between
receiving region and a segment of labour in the source region might lead to a powerful segregating
mechanism.
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Marco Rangone (University of Padova, Italy)
E-Mail address:
Institutional design and economic choice: school vouchers in Italy
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The paper deals with the problem of public funding of private school in Italy, by framing it in the
theoretical and institutional literature on the subject.
The paper begins with a brief section that summarizes the public vs. private school debate started by
Milton Friedman as early as the fifties. We shall argue that the main rationale for public provision of
education may lie in the presence high transaction costs. TC seem to dominate more standard motives
such as the externality effect.
The existence of transaction costs in education services rises some doubt on the possibility of
increasing efficiency by supporting competition between private and public school. In principle,
competition and the ensuing process of selection only increase efficiency if the evaluation capacity of
agents is full; yet both information contraints and bounded rationality hamper a correct assessment of
qualitative characteristics of education services.
Where TC dominates, we should expect that simplifying criteria are used. For instance, quality issue
are likely replaced by ideological Ð above all, religious Ð concerns (that may operate at a more general
level of abstraction and generality Ð suchas meta-preferences).
The experience of school vouchers in the US seems to support our view. Recent events show that the
focus is being shifted from increasing opportunities for disadvantaged people to pure freedom of
choice. In Italy, the school voucher policy has been recently endorsed by three northern regions Ð
Emilia-Romagna, Lombardia, Veneto Ð which have designed specific schemes. Though all of them
claim that their schemes is intended to increase real opportunities of education, the local governments
have enacted policies that address different economic and social issues, essentially reflecting a political
and ideological divide. Those issues range from equity (on the one side) to pure support to liberty of
choice (with no attention to equity concerns, on the opposite side).
Original data about how funds have been allocated and distributed will be presented to support
institutional analysis of the schemes.
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Bénédicte Reynaud (CEPREMAP, France)
E-Mail address: benedicte.reynaud@cepremap.cnrs.fr
Operating Rules in an Organisation: A Challenge to the Incentive Theory
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According to incentive theorists, rules produce the same results wherever they are applied. This reason
for this, it is said, is that they are implemented mechanically by actors who are assumed to be identical
and within groups that exist only through the temporary interaction of individuals. When this is not the
case, the only possible explanation must lie in the fact that the groups being compared (work teams) are
not comparable, primarily because their technical and individual characteristics are too heterogeneous.
The Electronic Equipment Maintenance Workshop (AME) of the Paris Métro offers particularly fertile
ground for investigating the effects of identical rules on work groups. Eight years have now elapsed
since the introduction of a team productivity bonus scheme. Subsequent statistical analysis of the
evolution of labour productivity and of work quality indicators among the AME production teams and
examination of the amendments to the team contracts produce two main findings. The first is that teams
adopt different strategies in order to obtain maximum bonus payments. The second is that labour
productivity emerges as a negotiated variable that is a collective construction. Finally, before
immersing ourselves in the intricacies of team strategies, we need briefly to trace the evolution of
productivity before and after the introduction of the productivity bonus.
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Karen Robson (University of Essex, United Kingdom)
E-Mail address: klrobson@essex.ac.uk
Language as a determinant of earnings in Switzerland
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This paper examines the language as a determinant of earnings in multilingual Switzerland using the
first wave of the Swiss Household Panel Survey. The role of language in social stratification in other
officially multilingual countries such as Canada and Belgium is discussed. The analysis focuses on the
German, French, and Italian speakers in Switzerland, and considers the effect of minority status within
dominant language areas, as well as multilingual ability.
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Sam Rosenberg (Roosevelt University, USA)
E-Mail address: srosenbe@roosevelt.edu
The labor market experiences of those women receiving Welfare in 1998 over the period 1999-2002
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Jill Rubery (University of Manchester, United Kingdom)
E-Mail address: jill.rubery@umist.ac.uk
Breaking borders and disordering hierarchies
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The model of a single employing organization with well-defined boundaries and considerable control
over its internal policies has traditionally provided the starting point for analyzing the organization of
employment and for identifying lines of responsibility and authority within the employment
relationship. This model certainly underpins the current system of employment law and individual
employment rights and is still pervasive in debates on human resource management and occupational
psychology. It is the case that there has been an evolution of approaches, within each of these fields, to
take into account the increasing complexity of employment relations on the one hand and the
'decentring' of organizations on the other. These adjustments have allowed for more internal flexibility
in how employment practices are aligned to meet business and productivity objectives that may vary
across internal units but they have stopped short of introducing into the analysis the notion of multi-
employers and the potential need to align human resource policies with the interests of clients as well
as those of the legal employer. Moreover there has been increased emphasis on the need for employees
to enter into strong psychological contracts, a concept dependent upon a notion of a known and
identifiable employer.
Perhaps most importantly there has been no general assessment of the potential consequences of
pressure to move away from the notion of coherent, transparent and consistent employment policies
and practices, even though most policy development in this area- whether found in employment
legislation, codes of practice or trade union demands- is predicated on internal coherence. The trade
union campaigns in the UK against a two-tier or multi-tier workforce in the public sector, as a
consequence of public-private partnerships, has clearly resonated with public perceptions of the
appropriate and fair way to organize employment- that is to aim at internal coherence and consistency.
This paper draws on five case studies of employment sites involving multiple employers to explore to
what extent we find evidence of employment policy and practice being subject to competing and
potentially conflicting influences from 'multi-employers' or 'multi-agencies'. We do not of course
assume that organizations that do not have inter-organizational relations necessarily achieve or aim at
internal coherence and consistency; the problems of viewing organizations as unified entities or of
assuming that policy objectives are fully implemented and without perverse effects are well-
documented in the literature. Our purpose here is to consider a relatively unexplored and additional
source of complexity and confusion- that is influences on employment policy and practice that extends
across organizational and employer boundaries, cross cutting internal policies and hierarchies.
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Paul Ryan/Hiro Nohara/David Marsden (Cambridge University, United Kingdom)
E-Mail address: paul.ryan@econ.cam.ac.uk
Youth employment patterns in post-war Japanese industry
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In advanced economies, the scale of youth employment typically differs markedly across sectors. High
wage industries -- i.e., those that pay high wages to adults -- employ proportionately fewer young
people than do low wage ones. An inverse relationship between adult pay and youth employment was
present in west European countries and in the US in the 1960s and 1970s (Marsden and Ryan 1986,
1989, 1990; DeFreitas, Marsden and Ryan 1991). It can be interpreted from a segmentationist
standpoint in terms of the exclusion of youth from 'good' jobs and their crowding into 'bad' ones,
associated with 'rate for the job' pay structures and cost-minimising hiring policies in the primary
segment of the labour market.
The analysis might be expected to apply with particular force to Japan, given that the inter-sectoral
segmentation of pay structures has been particularly pronounced there. Post-war Japan may however
not have fitted the mould, as a result of the prominence of lifetime employment in company-specific
internal markets (Sako 1991). The school-to-work transition pattern associated with lifetime
employment has been the extensive hiring of school-leavers, rather than experienced workers, by large
employers (Ryan 2001). The implications of labour market segmentation, and the inter-sectoral pattern
of youth employment, in Japan may therefore differ from their counterparts in the west.
The issue is investigated with an empirical analysis of patterns of pay and youth employment in post-
war Japanese industry. Data are taken from the Annual Survey of Wage Structure, available from 1958.
The panel nature of the data permits the inclusion of sector- and year-specific fixed effects.
The paper also considers (i) the role of relative youth pay as a secondary influence on youth
employment shares in Japan, as in the west; and (ii) structural change in the functioning of the Japanese
youth labour market, associated with the development of formal school-employer linkages in the 1950s
and 1960s.
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Dieter Sadowski/Oliver Ludewig (University ofo Trier, Germany)
E-Mail address: sado@iaaeg.uni-trier.de
Organizational Capital: The Power of an Economic Metaphor
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The concepts of social and organizational capital seem to offer great potential for intertwining
economic and sociological theories on organizations, but despite some recent popularity in the
economic and sociological literature there is no clear understanding of the differences between them.
Economically, capital is generally defined as the result of investments that sacrifice present utility in
favour of future utility, in other words, it is the net present value of the costs and earnings of the
investment. From an organization's point of view "human capital" is the capital embodied in the
knowledge and skills of people, and "social capital" is – following Coleman and Bourdieu – the capital
embodied in individual's social relationships, which allow these individuals to access resources from
the organization, its environment and its members. It "… is created when the relations among persons
change in ways that facilitate action." (Coleman 1994: 304) Examples for social capital of such
relationships are obligations, norms, sanctions and the information potential. While the relational
character of social capital distinguishes it from human capital, they are both linked to individuals and
both leave the organization together with the person to whom they belong.
A more specific concept of organisational capital includes only that type of capital that rests within an
organisation and that stays with the organization even if people leave. Economically, it is the present
value of income generated by the organizational structure and the organizational practices and
combinations of these practices. The value of an organizational investment, or synonymously
organizational change, can be measured by the resulting change in the organization's market value.
(Brynjolfsson, Hitt, Yang 2001). In this view, organizational practices are decision making rules,
norms, policies or behavioural patterns that form stable expectations for the organization's members.
Consequently, practices are characterized by their lasting nature and should not be confused with single
decisions.
In order to grasp the meaning and dimension of organizational capital in specific organizations, we
make use of the theory of the firm as a system of complementary organizational or human resource
management practices, where the organizational practices are configured in a way to create lasting
strategic organizational and idiosyncratic advantages. Especially complementarities among
organizational practices create a surplus and can consequently be interpreted as embodying substantial
organisational capital. (Milgrom, Roberts 1994, 1995; Huselid 1995; Ichniowski, Shaw, Prennushi
1997; MacDuffie 1995)
Using our concept of organizational capital we reread a substantial part of the literature and
demonstrate the power of the metaphor by interpreting organizational change and its costs as
investment in organizational capital, the costs of ongoing practices as maintenance costs and the
devaluation of the organizational capital by a changing market environment as obsolescing capital
stock.
In the end, complementarities between human, social and organisational capital will be empirically
identified. For example, the improved information flow due to the high social capital of some members
of the organization is further enhanced by flat hierarchies and teamwork and, in turn, high social capital
fosters the functioning of these practices. As a further example, computers increase the value of a firm
dramatically if they are combined with the use of complementary organizational capital, as
Brynjolfsson et al. showed. Using the IAB-establishment-panel (the IAB-Panel started in 1993 and it is
still conducted containing information about 5 000 West German and 4 500 East German firms) we
attempt to identify organisational capital in and its importance for German firms. We measure its
influence on the firms' return and productivity.
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Boguslawa M. Barszczak Sardinha (Escola superior de ciencias Empresariais, Portugal)
E-Mail address: bsardinha@esce.ips.pt
To be Volunteer - aplication of the utility function
The objective of this work is to show that choice to be a volunteer depend from an individual choice
based on utility.
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The objective of each people is to be happy. We may to achieve this objective making right choices.
The choice problem is one of the most essentials in economics. In consumer theory the choices are
made based on preferences. We may order that preferences in order to construct a utility function for
everyone. Analysed that individual utility function; we may guess what that individual preferred more.
We assumed that grated utility gave us more pleasure and that made us happier. And this is objective of
our live.
And what about the volunteering?
An individual spent his time into two ways: to work or to leisure, so when he choice to be volunteer he
sacrifices a work time or leisure time. When he chose be volunteer we affirm that his utility function
indicated him to do that.
We may assume that the individual has a grater willing to volunteering when he satisfies his other more
basic necessities, (earning money and rest).
Making decision based on utility function has an objective to increase our utility/pleasure and definitely
increase our happiness.
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Hedva Sarfati (ISSA, Switzerland)
E-Mail address: hsarfati@iprolink.ch
EU-enlargement - socio-economic challenges to CEEC accessing candidates
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Using the analytical framework developed in the ISSA project (and 2002 book) on the interactions
between labour market shifts and social protection reforms, the proposed paper will look at some of the
policy implications of accession for the eight central and eastern European candidate countries for
accession to the EU in 2004 face. The paper will examine some of the socio-economic challenges
facing these countries given their current stage of development, employment/unemployment situation,
the differing approach to reforming their social protection systems, the level of social expenditure as a
proportion of GDP, the current predominance of agriculture and manufacturing and the still slow
development of the services sector, the gaps in social dialogue particularly at sectoral level, the likely
impact of globalization and of European integration (e.g. of adherence to the "acquis communautaires"
and to the Stabiity and Growth Pact).
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Maria Smirnova (University of Paris I, France)
E-Mail address: marie_smirnova@hotmail.com
Inefficiency of the basic contract in the Russian economic university through lens of multitasking
and common agency approaches
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While during last decade in Russia impotent investments were realized to prepare a new generation of
professors in economics, the problem of poor teaching quality in economic public universities has
become much more serious. We are inclined to believe that the basic cause of existing situation lies in
the imperfections of standard contractual system usually framing the relations between public
universities and its' teaching profession. In this paper we propose some formal analysis of situation as
well as the basic reflection on the possible contract transformation to resolve the central problems of
adverse selection and moral hazard in the sector of high economic education in Russia. The theoretical
framework we use to analyze contractual problems and to give some predictions concerning possible
ways to resolve them consists in combining the multitasking and common agency approaches. Indeed
from one hand, university professors usually distribute their time between several tasks. From other
hand, the work of most of Russian professors has the second dimension: the existence of professors'
external activity that gains an important weight and competes for professors' time and efforts with
internal university tasks.
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Stefan Speckesser (University of Mannheim, Germany)
E-Mail address: speckes@rhein.vwl.uni-mannheim.de
The aggregate impact of Active Labour Market Policy in Germany and the UK: Evidence from
administrative data
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This contribution compares the macroeconomic employment effects of the biggest ALMP programmes
in Germany – the further training (FbW) and Job Creation programmes (ABM) – and the United
Kingdom – the New Deal for Young Unemployed People (NDYP). The starting point of the empirical
analysis is the discussion of ALMP effects on the wage setting and employment schedule in the
framework by Layard, Nickell and Jackman (1991) and the effects on matching of unemployed and
open vacancies. Both theoretically and due to the institutional design, clear macroeconomic effects
cannot be derived. In the empirical part, employment effects are estimated with fixed effects panel
models, instrumental variable and dynamic panel models. In both countries, the macroeconomic
impact of the programmes is hardly significant: In Germany, reduction of aggregate unemployment is
caused by further training which does not increase matching of job–seekers and vacancies. In the UK,
matching tends! to be improved by the employment option. However the effects are not robust with
respect to the specification of the model and are supposed to be weak in general.
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Katherine Stovel (University of Washington, USA)
E-Mail address: stovel@u.washington.edu
Hearing about a Job: A Simulation Model of Differential Information Flow and Job Matching
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Which people end up in which jobs is not merely a matter of the individual and human capital
characteristics of workers and the requirements and rewards of jobs, but is also a function of the
process by which persons and jobs are matched with one another. A poorly understood component of
the matching process is how workers and employers find information about each other. We propose a
framework for analyzing the dynamics of labor market behavior that emphasizes the potential effects
of different information structures on the two-sided matching problem. The framework is flexible
enough to represent common types of labor markets including spot markets for labor and vacancy
competition regimes. Through micro-simulation, we use this framework to explicitly vary the structure
of information flow between workers and employers, allowing us to explore how different recruitment
strategies influence labor market performance in different institutional environments. Preliminary
resul! ts suggest that full information is the most efficient and egalitarian information regime.
However, socially structured networks produce macro- level and individual-level outcomes quite
similar to those observed in the full information regime. In contrast, unstructured limited information
produces more egalitarian outcomes than either full information or social networks, by giving workers
equally bad opportunities.
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Lenita Maria Turchi (Brazilian Planning Ministry, Brazil)
E-Mail address: turchi@ipea.gov.br
Unions Reponses to a TQM Intervention: A case study of the Oil Workers Trade Unions in Brazil
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This paper examines how the national Oil workers' Federation and its affiliated unions perceived,
assessed and reacted to a Quality Programme being developed since 1991 in the main Brazilian oil
company. Analysis of the union's evaluation of the Quality Programme are based on interviews
conducted with union's leaders at local level (two refining plants) and national level in 1994 and 1997,
union Newsletters and documents disclosed by the Unified Oil Workers Federation. The reason for
focusing on unions reaction to a quality Programme is two fold. First, although TQM is understood as
an organisational change intervention depending a great deal on employees' willingness to participate
and commit themselves with the aims of the proposed changes, the prescriptive literature on quality
does not contemplate how organisations representing these employees perceive and react to this kind of
intervention. Second, most of the literature on TQM is based on managers and companies' assessment
of the impact of the intervention in Anglo Saxon context.
The paper, aims to contribute to a better understanding of how TQM is assessed by trade unions in a
non Anglo- Saxon context. It is developed as follows. First it discusses the role of employees on TQM
interventions and the effects of this kind of Programme on employees' working conditions taking into
account quality proponents writers and the critical literature on this issue. This is followed by a
description of the company and its quality Programme. The third section presents unions views and
assessment of the impact of the Programme implemented in their working lives.
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Florian Turk (Institute of Labor Law and Industrial Relations in the European Union, Germany)
E-Mail address: turk@iaaeg.de
Employer financed health benefits – an O-ring approach of educational and health capital
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In spite of a strong and uncontroversial presumption that such a trade off should exist, there is a
puzzling dearth of evidence in the literature and theoretical approaches supporting a negative
relationship between health expenditures and wages. Against the background of employer health
expenditures and this puzzle, the focus of the paper is on the reasons for employer investments in the
employees' health-capital.
The point of reference for the investigative approach is a concept of multiplicative quality of
educational and health capital. This project develops the model by letting the depreciation rate depend
upon the level of health, the conditions of employment and the employees' consumption. There is
randomness in the exogenous determinants of depreciation. Incidence rate and the gravity of illness are
uncertain. There are an infinite number of health states. The employer and the employee are assumed
to interact strategically in the production of health.
Two substantial coherent threads become evident: Health capital is prerequisite for the use of resources
and thus complementary to other elements of human capital, e. g. specific knowledge or further
training. Health investments increase the probability that the employee is healthy and is able to work,
and thereby reduce the uncertainty of the earnings from complementary investments.
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Svetlana Tvogorova (State University- Higher School of Economics, Russia)
E-Mail address: tvorogova@mtu-net.ru
Gain Friends, Make Money, or Learn More? Decision-making mechanisms of students choosing
whether to work or not.
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Work and study combination became a popular practice among the students all over the world. The
most frequently tested hypothesis explaining such phenomenon is the intention to increase disposable
income. Some other interpretations of students' employment started to come up recently. The paper
demonstrates the way for analysing the decision-making process of a student choosing whether to
combine studies with work or not. Three potential explanations are brought together: the influence of
endowment in human, social and economic capital on the final decision is compared. The set of
empirical indicators for verifying the proposed model is discussed. The data on students of several
Moscow Universities illustrates the possibilities such an approach opens and the challenges in
measurement and interpretation it provokes. The final question raised is whether Russian case is really
unique: despite young labour market where some institutions and practices are still being developed,
and specific system of tertiary education, generated during the Soviet period and struggling for survival
under market conditions, students' employment in Russia has many common features with that in the
other countries.
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Mauro Zilbovicius (University of Sao Paolo, Brazil)
E-Mail address: mzilbovi@usp.br
The Spread Of Eva And The Implications For Management Of Non-Financial Companies
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Economic Value Added is a technique for controlling companies that has been widely spread since its
publication in 1991, by Stewart. A lot of bibliography has been produced since then, and many
companies have found it a useful tool for tackling the problem of evaluation of projects, business units
and companies. Stewart and others stress that traditional accounting methods could not show the
amount of economic value a company is creating – or destroying. Value measurement has, since the
80´s, become a central issue for management. This is strongly related to the huge development of
financial global markets. The opportunities of investment are, since then, so wide, that every asset and
operation has to be evaluated in relation to the value the financial market attributes to it. Economic
value added is, in this sense, the economic value a company represents for its shareholders, whom can
change positions almost instantly in the financial global arena.
The adoption of this view has tremendous implication for management itself, especially for non-
financial managers. The traditional physical indicators, like productivity, do not work as indicators of
value creation. The EVA has become a model for embedding, in all areas and levels of management,
the idea of value creation, and, in this way, a financial view. Thus EVA is a mean of changing
worldviews all around the company, including workers that assume more autonomy and act as "value
creators".
Our aim in this paper is to discuss the whole array of problems that arise from the incorporation of this
technique and, with it, a financial view of management by managers that used to evaluate their work
and to take decisions using other frameworks. This movement is generating frictions between
production and finance in completely new terms, up to date with the broad global financial picture.
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Evgueni Zouev (Central European University, Hungary)
E-Mail address: eugmind@mail.ru
Investment In Human Capital In Transitional Russia
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Previous studies of Russian labor market found that the return to a year of schooling increased
following the price liberalization of 1992-1994, and declined by 1996. This decline in returns was
interpreted as a negative trend that predicted dreary prospects for educated Russians. In my project I
investigated this problem using a more recent set of data. The results are as follows.
1. The most important result of the paper is that the returns to schooling and experience increased over
the course of transition for the majority of Russians. Thus the decline in returns observed in the mid-
90's was short-term.
2. There are substantial differences in the returns to schooling and experience between men and women
in Russia. Women face higher returns than men, but their wages are lower due to the growing gender
differential.
3. The returns to schooling are still lower than they are in some developed countries but they are rising.
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Thomas Zwick (Centre for European Economic Research, Germany)
E-Mail address: zwick@zew.de
The Impact of Training Intensity on Establishment Productivity
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This paper measures the impact of training intensity on establishment productivity in a production
function using the IAB establishment panel set. This data set is representative for the German economy
and contains several thousand establishments every year. The share of trained employees in 1997 has a
significant productivity impact on productivity in 1998 (but not in 1999) and on average productivity in
the period 1997 - 2000. The paper simultaneously corrects for unobserved time-invariant heterogeneity
of establishments by using a fixed effects panel regression and for selectivity of training by
instrumenting the training intensity variable. In addition, it includes a broad variety of control variables
for establishment and employee characteristics as well as several personnel management methods in
order to reduce omitted variable bias. The innovative estimation approach demonstrates that the
estimation results are sensitive to the three sources of estimation bias. Unobserved heterogeneity and
selectivity both lead to an underestimation, while omitted variable bias leads to an overestimation of
the productivity effect of training intensity.
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