John Angle (Economic Research Service, Department of Agriculture, USA)
E-mail: jangle@ers.usda.gov
Lawlike Dynamic Patterns in Nonmetro Wage and Salary Distribution
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A gamma pdf mixture model that fits the distribution of wage and salary income in the nonmetro U.S., 1961-2001, shows that major long term patterns in inequality statistics of wage and salary income in the nonmetro U.S. occur in an apparently lawlike response to: 1) a mean of wage and salary income rising in real terms, and 2) a rising level of education in the labor force. Five empirical dynamic patterns are accounted for by inspection of the model's algebra; several other dynamic patterns require numerical analysis for explanation. A literature asserts that there has been a "hollowing out" of the U.S. wage and salary income distribution, a splitting of the labor force into haves and have-nots, perhaps a matter for government intervention into the labor market. This paper shows that the dynamic patterns in inequality statistics that caused alarm are aspects of how the wage and salary income distribution adjusts in lawlike fashion when mean wage and salary income and education levels in the labor force increase.
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Juha Antila/Pekka Ylostalo (University of Helsinki / Ministry of Labour, Finland)
E-mail: Juha.Antila@pt2.tempo.mol.fi
Diffusion and impact of new forms of work organization
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The aim of this paper is to discuss about new forms of work organisation and their implications for productivity and for quality of working life. The term "New Forms of Work Organisation" is used to refer to a wide range of changes like introduction of teamwork, new participative work culture, new training programs, new HRM policies, new reward systems etc. Many studies have showed benefits of this kind of developing activities. Despite the benefits many workplaces continue to use traditional methods or they have only implemented new methods in a partial way. We can assume, that this has implications both for the economic success of an enterprise and the working conditions.
In the first part of the presentation workplaces are classified into groups, based on the progress that an organisation has made towards implementing these new workplace practices. Although there is no single "right" combination of new practices, it is possible roughly compare the Nordic countries and several other European countries with Finland. Further aim is to explore reasons why organisations are in a particular group. What kind of obstacles organisations face when they try to introduce new workplace practices?
Most workplaces are using modern and fashionable ways of organising work. However, only a small proportion of workplaces have introduced a wide range of new working practices. Obstacles for better utilising and wider use are linked with difficulties to change everyday practises and workplace culture.
In the second part of the paper different workplace groups are compared with each other by economic success and quality of working life. There are two economic measuring instruments: productivity (value added / number of personnel) and profitability (value added / payroll + side costs of pay). Quality of working life includes such questions like meaningfulness of work, feedback, atmosphere at work and feeling of security.
The research data comes from three sources. 1) Data concerning Finnish private sector workplaces employing at least 10 people. All sectors are represented in a random sample. Data was collected in December 2003 using CATI method. Persons from managerial level were interviewed. 2) A representative data concerning employees in private sector companies. The data was gathered by a mail questionnaire in October-November 2003. 3) Productivity and profitability records from Statistics Finland of the workplaces under research.
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Nadya Araujo Guimar (University of São Paulo, Brazil)
E-mail: nadya@uol.com.br
Welfare Regimes, Social Networks and Occupational Trajectories: São Paulo, Paris and Tokyo
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The risk of unemployment is particularly high in situations where changes in firm strategies occur under welfare regimes characterized by low levels of social inclusion and restricted benefits (among others D.Gallie, S.Paugam and A.Supiot have recently produced findings on this). Under these circumstances, labor processes restructuring modifies either the nature of employment relations prevailing in the working places, or the pattern of individual trajectories expressed in the labor markets, which become fragmented as an effect of unemployment recurrence (P.Elias, T.DiPrete, D.Démazière, C.Dubar, M. Maruani and J.Freyssinet have already documented specificities for European and US cases).
The paper will compare three metropolitan labor markets (São Paulo, Paris and Tokyo), embedded in three different forms of welfare regimes, in order to go further addressing two issues. First: how different types of employment regimes and unemployment institutionalization conduce to various patterns in occupational trajectories and transitions, and to various forms of unemployment recurrence. Second: how variation in citizenship (and workers) rights perceptions, in its local and gendered aspects, explain differences in the job search and in patterns of social networks mobilization.
Longitudinal information on transitions and attitudinal data come from three articulated surveys conducted in each metropolis as part of a comparative project.
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Uschi Backes-Gellner (University of Zurich, Switzerland)
E-mail: ubg@isu.unizh.ch
Team Size and Effort in Start-Up-Teams - another Consequence of Free-riding and Peer Pressure in Partnerships*
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Start-Up-Teams are almost always small and very often consist of no more then three members. Why is this? We argue that founders choose the size of their start-up-team in order to reach a maximum level of effort. We develop a model to analyse the relationship between effort and team size. Free-riding and peer pressure, both have an effect on the effort level, however in different directions and their magnitude depends on the size of the team. The theoretical implications of our model are twofold. First, given the particular business situation of a start up we expect an optimal team size with regard to effort and second, this optimal team size should usually be small in numbers. We test these implications of our model based on a large data set on start-ups in the Cologne area. All implications are borne out in the data.
Individual effort of the founders varies significantly with team size and we clearly identify a maximum which is on average given with three team members.
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Faten Z. Baddar and Philip James (Middlesex University, UK)
E-mail: s.baddar@mdx.ac.uk
Multinationals and Human Resources: Is a Distinction Drawn Between Developing and Developed Economics
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Over the last decade a substantial body of literature has developed on how multinationals approach the management of human resources in overseas subsidiaries. Notwithstanding this, evidence relating to subsidiaries based in developing countries remains limited. One consequence of this is that it remains far from clear how far multinationals choose to adopt approaches towards the management of people in such countries that differ from those that they utilize in developed ones. The present paper seeks to address this issue in two ways. First, by means of a review of the available literature on the subject. Secondly, via the presentation of findings obtained from three case studies conducted in Jordanian companies which had come under the control of French multinationals following their privatisation. In summary, the paper will conclude that, in contrast to the views of some authors, the findings from the case studies suggest that multinationals do not adopt fundamentally different human resource strategies in respect of their subsidiaries in developing economies. At the same time, however, it may well be that the way in which they pursue them, notably in terms of the speed with which reforms are introduced, may differ as a result of weaknesses in local expertise, surrounding infrastructures and cultural barriers.
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Avner Ben-Ner (University of Minnesota, USA)
E-mail: ABenner@csom.umn.edu
For-Profit, State, and Nonprofit: How to Cut the Pie among the Three Sectors
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This essay examines the circumstances that lead to violations of the conditions for optimal provision by for-profit firms, and investigates key corrections in the form of government regulation and provision, as well as provision by nonprofit organizations.
Such violations, small and large, are ubiquitous in the modern economy. The reason that correctives are not applied as pervasive as they should be is because they are not costless. The costs associated with the establishing and running government and nonprofit organizations stem from problems with governance, muted efficiency of operation, and difficulties raising capital, which frequently put them at a disadvantage relative to for-profit firms. Employing a cost-benefit analysis, I suggest tentatively an allocation of economic activity across the three sectors for different goods and services.
There are many issues connected to the question of distribution of economic activity, including income redistribution, social welfare and social insurance, the pursuit of macroeconomic policies through government employment and spending, the political power attendant to economic power, employment and work issues, and so on.2 However, the scope of this essay is restricted to just one question: What is the optimal distribution of economic activity across the three sectors relative to the objective of maximizing consumer well-being?
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Luigi Bonaventura (University of Milan, Italy)
E-mail: luigi.bonaventura@unimi.it
The Underground Labour Market between Social Norms and Policy Incentives.
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This paper analyses the underground economy. I study the choice for firms and workers between carrying out their own activity within the official economy, or outside it, within the underground one. I assume the existence of two types of labour markets, the official and the irregular ones; and show that coordinated interaction between the actors is necessary for the system to select which market is going to operate.
The coordination game (2x2) proposed is designed to model a pre-contractual interaction between the actors in order to define in which type of labour market they will meet each other. By means of applying an evolutionary dynamics on the game it is possible to explain the mechanism that selects an equilibrium and how it takes up the character of a social norm.
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The fundamental proposition of this paper is that the analysis of the irregular labour market does not take into account the social norms that determine locally the choices of the actors. The paper puts forward an explanation of the social norms within a individual choice theory.
In the model there is an exogenous parameter (ï´) of policy that represents the effects of legislative policies in the labour market. We can have positive or negative effects associated to policies that increase or reduce the incentive (payoff) for the regular market.
I will also show that the effects of policies (ï´) do not change the dynamics of the strategies of the actors and that there is a positive probability of having dynamics that push the actors in the underground labour market even with strong incentives to regularity.
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Isabelle Borrras (LEPII CNRS, CEREQ, Université Pierre Mendès France, France)
E-mail: isabelle.borras@upmf-grenoble.fr
Should unqualified young job-seekers receive training? How the State intervene on external labour market by training in France.
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This article explores the idea that the public actor tries to construct a
legitimacy in the organization of the external job market by training low-skilled
job-seekers. From this point of view French consensus on a minimum level of
vocational training makes sense. Economic actors are largely absent from the
process. The public actor bases its legitimacy primarily on the function of
selecting manpower on individual criteria of motivation and career plans, rather
than on the function of transmitting knowledge through training. This brings to
mind the situation in firms, i.e. the individualization of labour relations
in the context of developing skills management. The political challenge is to
achieve a trade-off between a social logic of assistance and an economic logic
of adjustment to employment in the short term, at the expense of an
educational logic of preparation of labour force mobility in the long term.
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Martin Brussig (Institut Arbeit und Technik, Germany)
E-mail: brussig@iatge.de
Enterprise Age and Staff Age Structure: Theoretical Considerations and Empirical Evidence
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Germany as many other developed economies has an increasing number of elder people; their share of the active population is growing. It is therefore necessary to understand the influence of age on labour market processes. Labour market research has shown that old age is one of the great risks that leads to (sustained) unemployment . This has been explained by the assumption that older employees are less productive (due to diminishing physical efficiency and obsolete qualifications) compared to younger employees. However, recent research (e.g. about lifelong learning) has contested these explanations. Research about enterprise dynamics in the 1980s and 1990s has emphasized the influence of newly founded businesses on labour market dynamics, but this stream of research has largely neglected possible relations between the enterprise age and the age structure of the staff or age-specific recruitment policies.
Against this background my contribution explores relations between the age of enterprises and the age structures of the workforce from a theoretical and empirical view. The significance of this topic for labour market research is, that the labour market on its supply- and demand-side is segmented for age. However, the dominant concepts do neither consider the relations between enterprise age and staff age structure nor the effects of age structures on employment opportunities.
My contribution is structured in two parts. In the first step, the theoretical part, I will examine some concepts, such as human capital theory, population ecology, organizational demography with regard to their "age sensitivity". In the second step, the empirical part; I will present some findings about the relations between enterprise age and staff age structures from the German enterprise panel.
A recent survey in SMEs' in a French region, Auvergne located in the centre of France, known as a region of decreased population, shows interesting results on the topic "employment of elder workers" we would like to present and discuss .
First, according to a large debate in the French context, we have a very limited knowledge of such a question in the SMEs' context. Many studies have been provided for large firms, but few results or surveys relate SMEs'.
Second, the major result conclude to the stability and permanence of elder workers in SMEs', which defeat or contradict the general result which plead for early retirement of workers about 55 or more in Large French firms.
Third, such a result seems have a strong or dominant regional explanation: because the region is largely decreasing (population and employment), the managers are reluctant to lay off their workers, except in case they have general qualification supplied by the regional vocational system. More the jobs and qualifications are specialised or specific for the small firms, more the workers are stable and stay employed till their final retirement at 60 years.
Fourth qualifications and competencies are dependent of the management policies the firms apply to save their manpower, and to reinforce their core competencies. Many examples should be detailed which concludes to strong relationships between activities, management of the workers and the strategy of firms. Fifth, a special attention would be stressed on the various ways the SMEs' manage their workforce and reinforce the capability of knowledge competencies through the workers.
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Alex Bryson (Policy Studies Institute, London, UK). Co-authors Rafael Gomez and Paul Willman.
What determines employer choice of voice regime?
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In this paper we seek to explain why voice regimes differ across firms. In particular we treat the emergence of different voice regimes as a contracting problem; a "make" or "buy" decision on the part of the employer. A unique feature of the model is that the firm, having chosen its particular employee management regime, faces switching costs if it attempts to alter its original make or buy decision. A particular dimension of the employee management regime decision to buy is the use of the union as agent or supplier of voice, or elements thereof. We argue that there are circumstances in which the employer may, on grounds of returns, cost or risk, seek to subcontract aspects of the management of labour to a union (or at the very least not actively oppose a union organizing drive) and, further, that this (along with the presence of switching costs) helps explain the continued recognition of trade unions in many firms which would otherwise be non-union. In other circumstances, however, the employer may seek to construct voice mechanisms without union involvement, what we refer to as the "make" decision. Workplace data from Britain are used to test these and other implications of the model.
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Beverly Burris (University of New Mexico, USA)
E-mail: bburris@unm.edu
The Privatisation of Public Higher Education
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This paper will analyze recent changes in public higher education and the academic workplace. It will critically examine the literature on the "corporatization" of higher education so as to reveal both similarities and differences between corporate realities and public universities. The implications of changing revenue sources for university organizational structure and governance will be discussed. Such issues as the decline in the numbers and influence of tenure-track faculty, the growth of administrative positions and administrative costs, and the rebureaucratization of public universities in the name of "accountability" will be explored. Post-bureaucratic flexibility for educated workers in the corporate sector will be contrasted with ongoing bureaucratic rigidity and control of professionals in the academic workplace.
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Andy Charlwood (Centre for Economic Performance and Leeds University Business School).
Making Sense of Union Decline in Britain and the USA: Kaufman's Supply and Demand Revisited.
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This paper utilises a neo-classical supply and demand framework to analyse union membership decline. It differs from Kaufman's (2001) analysis using the same framework in two respects. First, it places more emphasis on changes to the supply curve for union membership. Second it distinguishes between changes on the demand side, which have changed the shape of the slope of the union membership demand curve, and changes which have altered the position of that curve. I argue that increased employer opposition to unions has changed the shape and position of the supply curve and the position of the demand curve. Meanwhile long run social, economic and political changes have changed the shape of the demand curve so that demand for union membership is more price sensitive. This analysis helps to clarify the circumstances in which union revival might be possible.
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Bruno Courault (CNRS, Centre d'Études de l'Emploi, France)
Retail Transformation and the Survival of Garment Districts in France
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The French apparel industry is in a long term crisis. After three decades of postwar growth and prosperity, the industry has steadily lost market share resulting in widespread factory closing and sharply falling employment. Large firms have almost entirely disappeared and the only small and medium-size firms that survive are those that belong to local production systems or districts", such as the Sentier in Paris and those in the cities of Roanne and Cholet.
The proximate causes of the crisis are cost pressures from low cost foreign suppliers and the substantial delocalization of domestic production. However, these supply side competitive pressures can be traced to the demand side of the market and the enormous transformations in the French retail sector that have hastened import penetration and delocalization.
Large specialty clothing chains, and other modern retailers, have been the leaders in replacing domestic sources of supply with global supply chains. Their cost and marketing advantages have enabled them to displace the independent retailers that have traditionally sustained the French apparel industry and these large chains now have account for over 40% of the retail clothing market in France. The specialty chains, in particular, have gained market share by pursuing design and product strategies that have been incompatible with the comparative strengths of domestic suppliers that specialized in high quality, relatively fashionable products. In place of the traditional seasonal collections sourced in France, specialty chains favor short-cycle products that are continually renewed and that can be sold in larger quantities at lower prices.
Meanwhile, dramatic changes are also occurring in high end fashion products where French manufacturers have had a strong market position. Brand-name fashion houses that built their reputations on the quality of their designs are still the major customers of the small and medium suppliers that survive in Roanne and Cholet. However, these fashion house are evolving into more commercialized fashion conglomerates and are, in turn, being acquired by even larger and more concentrated super-brand luxury conglomerates, such as LVMH (Louis Vuitton Moet-Chandon Hennesey) or PPR (Pinault Printemps Redoute). As these luxury and super-brand conglomerates expand their global market reach, it remains to be seen whether they will continue to rely on their French supply chains.
This paper will examing the responses to the apparel industry crisis in two fashion garmentcenters, Roanne and Cholet. Both remain devoted to high end products and production standards, but they have different specializations and have responded to retail restructuring and globalization in different ways. Cholet invested early and heavily in training in new skills and methods and it now has a network of small firms that support a diversified set of product specializations. Roanne's response is more recent, but represents a unique approach in which small firms are seeking to preserve the district's traditional specialization through a collective plan to rebuild their markets. The comparison of these two survival strategies provides instructive lessons for the future of small firm garment districts and networks.
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Jeff Davis (California State University, Long Beach, USA)
E-mail: jdavis@csulb.edu
Uncertainty and Adaptive Learning as Evolutionary Mechanisms of Persistent Poverty
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Persistent poverty involves several microsociological processes. Recent directions in quantitative research on poverty, however, has had limited success modeling micro processes. In this paper, I apply evolutionary theories of behavior and institutions to derive a model of persistent poverty. Evolutionary theories have several attractive features. Most importantly, evolutionary models focus on dynamics through which individual behaviors aggregate up into stable patterns of interaction â€" or interdependencies â€" that sustain poverty at a microsociological level. The central mechanism in the model is uncertainty â€" situational uncertainty in particular â€" because it catalyzes adaptive behaviors and interactions that lead to interdependencies. I used data from the National Educational Longitudinal Survey (1988-2000) to estimate the effects of uncertainty and interdependencies on educational attainment among youth in near-poverty households. Preliminary findings indicate, asexpected, that situational uncertainty and subsequent interdependencies reduce educational attainment among youth from poor households over a period of several years. I conclude with a discussion of setting policy goals on the basis of evolutionary theories.
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Vanessa Di Paola/ Eric Cahuzac (LEST, France)
E-mail: dipaola@univ-aix.fr
Over-education and Wages Downgrading: Conditions of a Spatial Differentiation
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The economic literature dealing with the gap between training and employment is not a new field. It is well known as overeducation phenomenon. It usually exists three measures of overeducation: the normative approach, the statistical approach, and the subjective approach.
In this paper we investigate in an empirical way the effect of densely populated labor markets on relationship between diploma and employment. Indeed, on densely markets, the plenty of job offers increases the probability of finding an employment but decreases the chances to find a job matching his skill due to competitions between workers. Yet, in the small size labor markets, the too few job offers combined with a less professional mobility, seems to involve overeducation problems and women would be more sensitive to this phenomenon. From a wage point of view, overeducation can also be apprehended. Indeed matchings of worse quality in small size labor markets lead to weaker wages than in urban spaces. On the other hand, on large labor markets, firms should remunerate above the equilibrium wages to avoid turnover.
Do these different measures overducation overlap? Who takes advantage from densely populated labor markets, and/or from skills or wages downgradings? We attempt to answer to these questions using a French survey, "98 Generation" (from the French Center for Research on Education Training and Employment), which consists of a sample of 55.000 young people who had ended their initial education in 1998. This sample is very appropriate to deal with downgradings, especially in the subjective way.
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Peter Doeringer (Boston University, USA)/Sarah Crean (Garment Industry Development CorporationUSA)
E-mail: doeringe@bu.edu
Can Fast Fashion Save the U.S. Apparel Industry?
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The U.S. garment industry, which employed over 1 million workers as late as 1980, has lost two-thirds of its jobs to imports from labor abundant countries with no end to this decline in sight. The thesis of this paper is that high labor costs do not inevitably mean the end of the U.S. apparel industry and that there are options for redefining comparative advantage in the industry's favor.
Reducing labor costs has always been central to the competitive strategy of the U.S. apparel industry and this trend has continued as large retailers have assumed greater control over global supply chains. The one exception was during the late 1980s and early 1990s when large retailers discovered that the inventory savings from "quick response" just-in-time supply were as important as low product costs. The pursuit of speed advantages from "lean retailing, however, was conceived within a larger strategic framework where the main elements of profitability were thought to be technological superiority, scale economies of production and marketing, and specialization in mass fashion products. This framework initially led retailers to use their market power over manufacturers to create new "quick response domestic supply chains composed of large domestic manufacturers that offered scale economies, short supply lines, and the capacity to adopt high speed logistics technologies. However, these same advantages were soon approximated by large-scale suppliers in nearby, labor abundant countries at much a much lower cost and the domestic apparel industry continues to decline.
By focusing on information technology, mass production, and mass fashion products, large retailers overlooked an opportunity to tap the even stronger advantages of speed and flexibility of small manufacturers and the possibilities of bringing just-in-time supply and lean retailing to short-cycle fashion products where markups are higher and where demand uncertainty means even greater advantages from speed and proximity to fashion centers like New York City.
Ignoring "fast fashion" in favor of mass fashion products ultimately accelerated import penetration while marginalizing quick and flexible suppliers and weakening related sectors such as independent designers, small textile mills, and small retailers. Nevertheless, the U.S. apparel industry is increasingly comprised of small suppliers that survive by serving various niche markets where speed and flexibility matter more than labor costs. Yet traditional comparative advantage continues to take its toll on these surviving firms as their capacity for high quality, high value added, fashion production is utilized less and less and their niche markets are dwindling as large retailers continue to move production offshore.
Three possibilities for reversing this decline are examined in this paper. One is to compete on the basis of cost by improving management skills, raising labor productivity, and streamlining supply chains. A second is to develop new market niches for high value "fast fashion" products by cultivating the independent designer and boutique markets, by rebuilding the traditional role of manufacturers as the innovators and marketers of new fashion products for smaller and more flexible retail chains, and by promoting domestic fast fashion brands. The third possibility is that large retailers, anticipating that consumers are tiring of mass fashion and seeing examples of successful marketing of short-cycle products, will redirect their priorities from large-scale global supply chains to small-scale domestic suppliers of fast fashion.
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Ariel Ducey (CUNY Graduate Center, University of Calgary, USA)
E-mail: aducey@gc.cuny.edu
The Promise of Mobility: A Union's Take on Training
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This paper examines how one particularly powerful union-1199 SEIU, which represents over 230,000 health care workers in New York State-has strategically responded to a political and economic environment hostile both to unions and the health care system. 1199 SEIU has made the promise of mobility-embodied in the programs of its joint labor-management training and upgrading fund (TUF)-a linchpin of its claims to legitimacy and necessity. Initially a minor part of the union's activities, the TUF has become in recent years both the recipient and broker of hundreds of millions of dollars in state and federal grants for training health care workers. I discuss how this funding came about and assess its importance in underwriting the collective bargaining process. In addition, I describe the joint labor-management training initiatives that have emerged from this funding, which include an emphasis on "soft skills" training like customer service and communication skills. Finally, I discuss the significance of the fact that these training grants were obtained by recourse to atavistic political deal-making between the union and government elites. Indeed, this case represents a significant return to the state in an era of seemingly relentless privatization (in this case of both education and the health care sector), unstable industrial relations, and vanishing opportunities for social and economic upward mobility.
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Nicola Duell/Kurt Vogler-Ludwig (Economix Research & Consulting, Germany)
E-mail: duell@economix.org; vogler-ludwig@economix.org
The socialisation of labour market related risks - the case of Germany
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Germany has been known for many decades for its generous welfare system. The "German model" has been characterised by a comparatively low degree of wage dispersion and, in contrast to Anglo-Saxon countries, the "working poor" phenomenon does not appear to shape the labour market. However, the persistently high level of unemployment in Germany consumes much of the advantages of social protection. Recent social and labour market reform measures are targeted at re-individualising labour market related risks and the cost of social protection.
In a first step, this paper is going to analyse the distribution between individual risks and "socialised risks" and will ask for the interrelationship between stable jobs, "insecure" or "precarious" jobs and unemployment in Germany and the political management of these risks. An overview on the incidence and the distribution of labour market risks in Germany by taking a comparative (European) approach will be given. It will also look at the dynamics and the flexibility at the labour market in terms of transitions between these categories.
The second part of the paper will analyse the institutional and political context as well as the economic rationale for delivering the specific distribution between individual and socialised labour market risks. It will then concentrate on recent reform debates concerning both the welfare State and the regulation of the labour market and discuss the balance between labour market flexibility, job quality and social security. A basic question for the political debate is the presumed trade-off between quantity and quality of jobs. Thus, the search for a new "flexibility - quality - security regime" needs to make reference to both, the Anglo-Saxon and the Scandinavian model. Finally, it needs to be asked whether the current German reforms can be looked at as representing a social compromise being able to solve the unemployment problem.
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Verena Eggert (London School of Economics, UK)
E-mail: v.a.eggert@lse.ac.uk
Shareholder Value Orientation and HRM in Germany: Will the German Production
Model Prevail?
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The impact of Shareholder Value Orientation and its accounting practices on the German approach to HRM Within the context of debates over "varieties" of capitalism, especially the complementarities of corporate governance systems and national production regimes, this paper addresses the consequences of increased shareholder value orientation in Germany on investment in human capital and employee job security, both underlying pillars of the German production model. In this view it is evaluated whether changing behaviour in human capital investment and employee retention on the operative level could pose a threat to the success of shareholder value orientated German companies in producing high quality goods based on incremental innovations.
The discussion focuses on the operational dimension of shareholder value orientation by analysing the effect of shareholder value orientated management control and incentive systems on investment in human capital and employee job security. For these theoretical connections two explanations are presented. Firstly, the influence of accounting standards and ownership structures, as reflections of corporate governance systems, on company's management control is outlined. Secondly, the relationship between shareholder value orientated incentive structures, investment in long-term and qualitative assets and job security is illustrated.
Empirical evidence is based on case study research of medium sized pharmaceutical companies differing according to their degree of shareholder value orientation and ownership structure. Further empirical evidence is drawn from a database of the biggest 100 German companies from the Max-Planck Institute as well as the IAB-establishment panel.
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Luigi Frey/Gabriella Pappada (CERES, Roma, Italy)
E-mail: capit@mclink.it
Knowledge Economies/Societies, Learning Strategies and New Relationships among States, Markets and Societies
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Developments of Knowledge Economies/Societies are showing the crucial importance of non-formal and informal learning. This means that the development of learning strategies for the potential labour suppliers cannot be realised only by participation of firms, social institutions and individuals. This opens remarkable espaces for the labour markets, as channels of information that can incentivate those strategies. In fact, by the market we can get indicators, useful for the various segments of labour supply, organised or non-organised by trade unions, about the structural characteristics of labour demand and about the working conditions that can be obtained from various segments of labour demand.
The available empirical evidence, mainly about the Italian experience, would show that those information are very important for the realization of learning strategies from both the public and private actors.
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Markus Gangl (WZB, Germany)
E-mail: gangl@wz-berlin.de
Institutions and the Structure of Labour Markets: Reemployment Dynamics in the United States and West Germany
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The paper examines the impact of institutional factors on the structure of matching processes in external labour markets. Drawing on 1984-1995 employment history data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation and the German Socio-Economic Panel, the paper describes reemployment dynamics for unemployed workers in the U.S. and West Germany. Consistent with earlier research that has emphasized the strong skill stratification of the German labour market, the data show lower rates of occupational mobility among unemployed workers in Germany. Using a two-sided probit model, the paper tests for two key generative mechanisms: More comprehensive labour market regulation potentially implying risk-averse hiring by employers, and more comprehensive social security that may induce more selective job search by workers. The empirical data support both predictions, so that both low levels of labor market regulation and low levels of welfare state support are conducive to higher levels of occupational mobility, higher churning of specific skills and loose linkages between individual and job skills in the U.S. labor market.
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Sarah Ghaffari (Ecole des Mines de Nantes, France)
E-mail: Sarah.Ghaffari@emn.fr
The French graduate Engineer's labor market : A Judgment's Market.
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In our communication, we shall speak about the French Engeneer's labor market. We focuse our work about the role of the Engeneering School in the regulation of this specific market. Whereas, in France, the Engineers cannot be considered as legally underwritten professional group, they benefit from a good intergration into the labour market as if they are an organized profession (in terms of salary, power, status…). Our paper addresses the question of the market closure. The monopoly control on an exclusionary shelters is not a consequence or a intentional project. It is a way to remove the incertainty which exists on the quality of the workforce. We think that the incertainty is not a problem, it is the solution. To allowing the differents actors (workers, recruitings…) some latitude, it's possible to put differents interpretations on conventionals rules. This incertainty about the engineer's quality permits, between the concerned persons, to product some social conventions based on the reputation and the trust in diploma. This construction allow the exchange on the labor market. That's why, the Engineering School are at the centre of the process which permits the easy integration of the graduate Engineer into the labor market. They act as middleman actor capable of making a judgment based on the diploma relevant
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Paul J. Gollan (London School of Economics, UK)
A live case - Employer strategies and outcomes of Employee Voice at Eurotunnel Revisited
Email: p.j.gollan@lse.ac.uk
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The recent introduction of the European Directive on information and consultation and its forthcoming implementation into UK law has increased the focus on workplace representation arrangements. This paper examines management strategies towards non-union consultation and representative arrangements at Eurotunnel and assesses their effectiveness in representing the needs of employees over a five-year period. This period has also allowed a review of consultation arrangements before and after union recognition and an examination of the outcomes from such arrangements. The findings show that the effectiveness of non-union structures as bodies representing the interests of employees in filling the lack of representation is questionable. However, union recognition through an employer-union partnership agreement has also raised important issues regarding the impact and legitimacy of unions at Eurotunnel. The challenge for Eurotunnel management and for the union is that the employees' perception of a lack of effective union voice can potentially impact negatively on the influence that unions can have on management decisions. This perception of the lack of effective voice is particularly important given the recent introduction of the European Directive on information and consultation and its forthcoming implementation into UK law. The implication from this research is that a mechanism for communication between management and employees at the workplace may not be enough. Effective voice with a greater say over workplace issues may be essential for achieving greater employee satisfaction and commitment.
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Alexandra Kalev (Princeton University, USA)
E-mail: akalev@princeton.edu
Cracking the Glass Cages? Team-Based Work Organization on the Entrance of Women and African-Americans into Management
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The organization of work in American workplaces has radically changed in the last two decades, from a rigid hierarchical division of labor to a cross-functionality based on teams and skill upgrade. Many sources of the gender and racial segregation are rooted in the hierarchical organization of work. This study therefore asks: Does this reorganization help women and minorities crack the glass cages in which their career are enclosed? The analysis uses a fixed-effects estimation of longitudinal data on workforce composition and work organization from a representative sample of American work establishments. The results show that reorganization of work affects managerial diversity. Controlling for a host of other factors, when employers adopt self-directed work teams, women and African-Americans enter management at a higher pace. Unlike the isolation imposed by segregation, team work structures provide more opportunities for forming networks and demonstrating skill. However when only superficial changes in the work organization are introduced they have an adverse effect on racial diversity. Also, opportunities for skill upgrade had only a minor effect on diversity. These unintended, positive and negative, consequences of the reorganization of work present new lessons for effective pursue of workplace equality in research and practice.
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Jyh-Jer Ko (National Taiwan University, Taiwan)
E-mail: jjko@ccms.ntu.edu.tw
Labor Dispatching Industry in Taiwan: The Activities of Staffing Agencies and Industrial Dynamics
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Dispatched workers of Taiwan are similar to the so-called ‘agency temporariesâ€TM in that there is a triangular relationship among dispatched workers, staffing company and the client company, which is the defining feature of the temporary help industry. Studying this relationship is essential for us to understand how temporary employment operates and how traditional employment relationship has been reshaped in the process. In this paper, we study this relationship from two angles of this triangle, i.e. from the dispatching agents and from the client firms. In particular, we research how staffing agencies have facilitated and mediated client firmsâ€TM use of temporary employment.
Data used in our research are from several sources including interviews with employers of the labor dispatching industry and nation-wide surveys regarding the labor dispatching industry. We combined both qualitative and quantitative methods to conduct research.
We discussed some recent developments in using temporary employment including using staffing agencies as the screening mechanism, adopting long-term contractual arrangements between staffing agency and client firms, and having an agency manager in residence, etc. Meanwhile, we try to analyze how the labor dispatching industry has reshaped the traditional employment relationship and human resource management practices within organizations.
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Katsuyuki Kubo, N. Abe, N. Gaston (Waseda University, Japan)
E-mail: kkubo@waseda.jp
Executive pay in Japan: the role of bank-appointed monitors and the main bank relationship
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A feature of tournament models is that executive compensation is not independent of the wages paid at lower levels of the corporate hierarchy. Agency models show that compensation based on firm performance is a means by which incentives can be provided to executives once a promotion tournament has been resolved. In this paper, we combine elements of both models and show that the existence of an outsider who monitors the firm's activities will lower the sensitivity of pay to firm performance for top executives and reduce the importance of tournament-based incentives. Using panel data for 55 Japanese electronics firms, we find support for the notion that bank-appointed Board members help monitor top executives and that tournament considerations are a particularly important feature of executive compensation in Japan.
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Vilmante Kumpikaite (Kaunas University of Technology, Lithuania)
E-mail: vilmante.kumpikaite@ktu.lt
Problems of Human Resource Education, Training and Development in Nowadays Organizations
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The demographic situation, globalization processes, development of international relations, and fast development of technologies condition the activity of organizations.
As far back as in 1997 by the research conducted in Europe Community it was defined that even 80 percent of used technologies in 2007 will be obsolete and unused or replaced by the new ones. The same fate is forecasted for the human resources as well, 80 % of employees will be working on the basis of formal education and training received more than ten years ago. It determinates that educated employees with high qualification and competence is one of crucial factors of competitiveness of organizations. And only those organizations, which efficiently improve knowledge and skills of their Human Resource, have real chance to adopt in the changing environment and to survive.
The objective of the paper: to show particularities of Human Resource training and development in the nowadays organization, to introduce methodology of evaluation of Human Resource Development efficiency provided by the author and some results of empirical research.
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Alexandra Manske (TU Berlin, Germany)
E-mail: alexandra.manske@tu-berlin.de
Patterns of Individualization in Berlin´s New Media Industry. "Unternehmer" - "Dienstleister" - "Künstler"
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Based upon more than 20 in-depth interviews with free lancing Net Workers within the Berlin Internet industry, I ask for their individual strategies to cope with the open market and entrepreneurial conditions (flexible, portfolio-centred, networking structured, project oriented) within the industry which reflect a new relation between market and individuals.
However, there are different ways of digesting the conditions. Using a metaphor for how they handle the market pressure, I group these strategies into three categories to highlight the different approaches to the entrepreneurial conditions undertaken by workers within the industry.
· "Unternehmer" (entrepreneur),
· "Dienstleister" (service oriented Net Worker) and
· "Künstler" (creatives).
These strategies are mainly differenciated by three criterias:
· Variety of the field - since the Internet Industry includes as well industrial oriented as service sector oriented jobs (contentional criteria),
· Individual normative expectation on work (relational criteria),
· Subjective demands on work (satisfying work-life-arrangements).
In short, it can be said that while those categorized as "Unternehmer" aim to climb up the social ladder, the "Dienstleister" are occupied with stabilizing their individual social position and those categorized as "Künstler" aim for autonomy - and have the littlest income within the sample. In the talk, I would elaborate on these strategies.
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Petra Moog/Uschi Backes-Gellner/Guldem Demirer (Zurich University, Switzerland)
E-mail: petra.moog@isu.unizh.ch
On the origins of Low Entrepreneurship-rates in Germany - The Influence of Labor Market Regulations and Their Perception.
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Many studies provide convincing evidence that highly educated individuals, particularly academics, most successfully start up businesses. Survival rates are higher, growth is faster and innovation more widespread. However, many talented people do not even consider starting a business, but rather restrict their occupational choice on being an employee. We argue that this reluctance is due to a systematically distorted occupational choice decision. We develop a model of becoming an entrepreneur based on prospect theory and test it's implications with a rich data set covering 5,000 students in and around Cologne, Germany.
We regress the willingness to become an entrepreneur on individual entrepreneurial competence, institutional knowledge (particularly about labour market flexibility or restrictions) and risk aversion. Our empirical results confirm firstly, that individual perception can be explained by institutional knowledge and secondly individual perception determines the affinity to become an entrepreneur.
To summarize, a higher level of institutional knowledge increases the probability to become an entrepreneur, independently of the actual institutional environment. Thus, academic education aiming to increase entrepreneurship should not only concentrate on analytical tools but have a strong emphasis on institutional details, too. At the same time, less skeptical media coverage on institutional constraints and hurdles might as well boost entrepreneurship because it fosters positive perceptions.
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Douglas McCabe (Georgetown University, USA)
E-mail: mccabed@georgetown.edu
Issues in the Employment Relationship: Recent Trends in the Family and Medical Leave Act
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The Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 requires that firms with fifty or more employees grant unpaid leave to employees (up to twelve weeks) who have at least one year of service with the company for purposes of adoption, childbirth, or for the care of a spouse, child, or parent with a serious health condition that would limit that employee's on-the-job work performance. This paper will analyze and assess some of the recent trends emanating out of the FMLA from a strategic ethical perspective. For example, research studies will be examined to determine whether employers are unethically flaunting the requirements of the law. How are employers dealing with work-life issues from a values perspective? Are selected best practices in this area cost-effective and do they raise morale and productivity? The paper will conclude with policy recommendations for executives and human resource managers and with recommendations for future research.
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Eduardo Noronha (Universidade Federal de Sao Carlos, Brazil/Lenita Turchi (IPEA, Brazil)
E-mail: enoronha@uol.com.br
Cooperation in Local Industrial Arrangements.
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Brazilian governmental agencies are planning to develop new programs to promote Local Industrial Arrangements (LIA) or ALP Arranjos Produtivos Locais, as it is named in Brazil. Although there is not any agreed definition of LIA the use of this new concept reflects the governmental and entrepreneurial interests in local, small and specialized productions such as garments, honey, and furniture, besides the traditional focus on commodity chains and consolidated clusters. As part of a series of studies sponsored by IPEA (a governmental agency linked to the Planning Ministry) on LIA this research focuses on 2 Local Industrial Arrangements located in non-traditional industrial areas that produce mainly garments and which have been pointed out as successful cases in many aspects, including job creation. Through an institutional approach this research aims to evaluate how successful the LIAs have been as well as the reasons which explain their performance. The challenge of this research is to build a framework able to assess the role of institutions and local organizations in the building or development of LIAs, especially those with positive local economic and social impacts. The identification of the existent links among institutions and organizations in one region or local market reveals a coordinated market dependent on diverse cooperative institutions and actions. Therefore, this research aims to identify the institutions and organizations which at the same time give rise to the LIAs and explain its success.
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Francesca Odella (University of Trento, Italy)
E-mail: francesca.odella@soc.unitn.it
Well Connected or Stuck in the Net? The Role of Entrepreneurs' Relational Capital in Changing Economic Practices
In the last decade important modification in Italian society such as changes in the structure of families and in the education system, together with the growing activity of supranational institutions and the exacerbation of international market competition had an impact on industrial district social organization. National and international investigations showed that institutions and culture have an important role in supporting specific forms of interaction among entrepreneurs and between them and the local community (such as local governance of the territory). These aspect a had a clear relevance to explain the economic performance of an area and in particular, the rise of different forms of economic organizations (small firms, larger corporations and co-operatives) and the whole setting of industry development in Italy. Much is still to know, however, on the interaction aspects that could act as triggering factors for economic development and those that might represent an obstacle to innovation and reproduction of past successful experiences. Change in economic practices, specifically, could to be connected with the relational social capital of entrepreneurs. Relying on empirical data from case studies and social network data collected by means of a quantitative survey among entrepreneurs of industrial district situated in different areas of Italy, the proposed paper analyses the role that social and institutional can have in optimizing instrumental resources of the entrepreneurs.
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Richard Paterson (British Film Institute/University of Stirling, England)
E-mail: richard.paterson@bfi.org.uk
The Peculiarities of the Labour Market in UK Television
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British television has undergone a major organisational transformation in the last fifteen years with the upsurge of unregulated competition from satellite broadcasting. With the previously dominant public service ideology in retreat - and with a regulatory regime now favouring market solutions, and prioritising the consumer over the citizen - a new institutional context for those who work in television production has emerged.
This paper will examine the changes in the UK television labour market which first began to take place in the 1980s with the advent of a vigorous independent production sector encouraged by government intervention. The ensuing rise in freelancers as a proportion of workforce and the removal of obstacles to entry to the labour force led to increased uncertainty and began to change the anchorage of workforce. Technical, ethical and quality standards came under pressure as the inherent public service values were challenged. Using data gathered in the BFI's longitudinal tracking study of a panel of 500 creative workers in television the paper will explore the complex differences which emerged between and across workers in the different production sectors.
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Glenn Patmore
E-mail: g.patmore@law.unimelb.edu.au
Can Works Councils Make Employees Happy? Considerations on the Role of Happiness as a New Objective for Labour Law
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For years, job satisfaction has been a recurrent theme in newspapers and other popular media. Yet its promotion through the regulation of the workplace remains elusive. While efficiency and power balancing are widely accepted as twin objectives of labour law, this paper will argue for the introduction of a new third objective: the promotion of workplace happiness. Special attention will be paid to the promotion of employee satisfaction through the legal system.
The paper falls into two parts:
First it will explore how happiness might become a new distinct objective of labour law. In particular, it will address the following questions:
What is the meaning of personal happiness?
Can the law promote a highly subjective state such as happiness?
If labour law can promote happiness at work, what are its capabilities and limitations?
What are the benefits of this mode of legal regulation?
Secondly, the paper will examine how works councils might provide one manner in which this objective could be implemented in a concrete way. The paper will refer to the Dutch system of works councils as a case study. Legislative purposes and topics discussed by works councils will be evaluated in the light of the happiness objective.
Official legal documents and empirical data from Holland will be examined.
The paper will adopt a critical methodology by critiquing existing approaches and providing an alternative way of approaching labour market regulation.
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Lee Pegler (Institute of Social Studies, The Hague, The Netherlands)
E-mail: c.vink.pegler@inter.nl.net
Modes of Insertion in Global Value Chains and their Impacts on Production and Labour: White Goods in Brazil - a Case of "High Road" Development?
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Many recent analyses of globalisation argue that economies and localities which are part of a Global Value Chain (GVC) will gain if they can upgrade to higher value added parts of that chain. Moreover, an implicit assumption of many of these studies is that this will also significantly increase the chances of improvements in employment conditions and employee relations within such situations. A greater role in the governance of the value chain will thus maximise the chance of "high road" labour rights and conditions.
This paper takes a critical look at these debates within the context of the International White Goods Industry and using specific data on a number of Brazilian White Goods firms and locations gathered between 1993 - 2003. Against the background of White Goods globalisation and the strategies of key players, the paper presents a typology of how different economies have "been inserted" within this value chain. Within this scenario, while Brazilian firms do not dominate the sector, the unique position of this industry in Brazil does suggest that this may be a case where labour could benefit from both higher skill opportunities and better conditions than apply in other sectors and the same sector in other countries. Specifically, the importance of Brazil as a key producer of compressors would appear to open up the possibility of "high road" outcomes for labour.
At the level of the firm and in terms of some workers, analysis and interviews do suggest that some workplaces and workers (e.g. in compressor production) enjoy considerably better conditions. However, final product workers conditions still lag behind this and workers in other supplier firms still work under very fordist, low wage and pressurised conditions. Moreover, even for the better off workers it is a more a case that the nature of labour control has changed rather than been reduced. The wage-effort bargain that "modern" firm workers offer their workers, while more implicit and softer, is still all too apparent. The minimal level of substantive new benefits that firms offer are greatly appreciated (in this slack labour market and context) but this still leaves "modern" firms with a "time bomb" of unfulfilled expectations.
The fact that independent, combative unions have been sidelined or removed in key locations of white goods production further underlines the continuation of low trust, hierarchical industrial relations. It is also relevant to note, in respect to these labour rights-upgrading debates, that in recent years there have been progressive moves by the international firms involved in Brazilian white goods production to reduce the pivotal role of (and thus their dependence on) Brazilian (compressor) production within the chain. Within such a local and international situation, the prospect of further and more dispersed "high road" developments in labour rights in this industry in Brazil probably remains quite uncertain.
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Dominique Redor (Marne La Vallée, France)
E-mail: redor@univ-mlv.fr; dominique.redor@wanadoo.fr
Pension reforms in the private and public sectors in France : a convergence under State control
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In France the pension system for employees of the private firms was reformed in 1994 (Balladur reform), and it was also reformed for civil servants in 2003 (Fillon reform).
One of the aims of these reforms was to promote equality and equity between the two categories of employees.
Even if trade unions had a small participation in the final decisions, the reforms have not changed the basis of the traditional " pay as you go system " which was strongly supported by them. Curiously, private pension funds have been introduced by the Fillon reform with important tax deductions following provisions of the previous public sector system.
Our paper focuses on three main issues.
1. Has the objective of equality and equity between both categories of employees been met ?
2. Will these reforms help to meet the European Union objective to increase the rate of employment of senior workers set in Lisbonne and Stockholm , while France was under the European average before the Fillon reform ?
3. Has the convergence resulted in an increasing individualisation and furthermore in a growing privatisation of the pensions systems in France?
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Anthonette Rodriguez (Howard University, USA)
E-mail: a_rodriguez@howard.edu
Rural Adolescent Migrant Farm Workers and Substance Abuse.
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This proposed research attempts to fill the gap in the intervention literature by employing qualitative and quantitative research methods to increase our knowledge of the relationship between rural adolescent migrant workers and substance abuse. Within the United States, the majority of rural adolescent migrant farm workers experience a myriad of substandard environmental conditions and psychosocial variables that places this subgroup at-risk for substance abuse. There is a need to assess the well being of the rural adolescent migrant farm worker and their psychosocial behavior relative to substance abuses. The three aims of this proposed project are: (1) To determine if a relationship exists between substance abuse (i.e., illegal drugs, alcohol and tobacco) and the rural adolescent migrant farm workers; (2) To examine the correlates of rural adolescent migrant farm workers and substance abuse; (3) To compare rural adolescent migrant farm worker substance abuse behavior with that of their non-migrant peers. The overall goal of this study is to fill an important gap in intervention literature and to provide empirical evidence for theoretical foundations related to problems of rural young migrant farm workers. Thereby, helping improve the quality life for one of the most exploited subgroups in our society.
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Paul Lewis (University of Cambridge) and Paul Ryan (King's College, London)
Problems of Contracting for Quality in Public Services: Apprenticeship Training Programmes in the UK
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The British government, like those of many advanced economies, wishes to expand apprenticeship, i.e., occupationally-oriented vocational education and training. It differs from most other governments in the way in which it seeks to do so. Its approach combines public subsidies with contractually-oriented provision, within a labour market programme currently termed Advanced Apprenticeship (AA). A range of training providers, including employers, post-secondary colleges, charities and for-profit companies, compete for contracts to deliver the training and assessment services that are stipulated as the price of public subsidies. These mechanisms make the contemporary 'training market' the kind of quasi-market that has lately become familiar health and care services, but which actually emerged in the youth market as long ago as the 1970s. The British approach contrasts sharply to the reliance of other European countries on social partnership and institutional development.
The British training market has produced persistent evidence of low service quality, in terms of apprentice completion and qualification rates, educational content, the validity and reliability of work-based qualifications, the results of provider inspections, and limited participation by employers. The widespread nature of low quality is officially recognised by government.
Several sources of low quality can be hypothesised. The first is contractual incompleteness. When training quality is costly to produce, and can be observed only imperfectly by the buyer, whether a public funding body or a trainee, but is well known to the provider, a multi-task principal-agent problem is present. Training contracts are incomplete; clauses concerning quality cannot be enforced by an impartial third party. Market mechanisms can then elicit high quality only under restrictive conditions. Fixed-price contracts written on volume indicators, of the type widely used in AA, encourage providers to provide low quality. Potential antidotes to the problem include cost-sharing contracts, quality-demand feedback (including reputation effects), and professional motivation on the part of providers, but all three may involve limited availability or efficacy.
A second hypothesis involves technological stagnancy and fiscal restriction. If training is a labour intensive activity with little scope for productivity growth through investment and innovation, its relative unit costs show are trended upward (Baumol's 'cost disease'). If the service is traded in a quasi-market, public spending restrictions may prevent the growth in the service's share of GDP, as occurs in a standard market. If the quantity of output grows, its quality must decline.
Thirdly, low quality may result from low willingness on the part of employers and trainees to invest in skills, e.g., as part of a wider 'low skills equilibrium.' Employer investments may be constrained by training externalities in occupational labour markets and by the adoption of product and production strategies geared to low rather than high quality; those by trainees, by financial constraints or short-sighted appraisals of the benefits of skill acquisition.
Finally, political incentives to politicians and civil servants to fund and require high quality may be weak - in the sense that the prospective benefits for both party election success and individual ministerial career may be greater for running large programmes than for running high quality ones. Moreover, politically grounded obligations for auditing and accounting for the use of public funds may deter employer participation in the first place.
Our paper discusses these hypotheses in the context of the Advanced Apprenticeship programme, arguing that all four factors play an important role.
A role for informational asymmetries is suggested by the low external observability of training, particularly in work-based programmes such as AA. Such market failures are indeed potentially offset by the information provided to the quasi-market by a public agency: the Adult Learning Inspectorate, charged with inspecting and grading the services offered by private sector training providers, both for-profit and non-profit. The informational failure hypothesis is consistent with the lower inspection grades attained by for-profit than by non-profit providers (both charities and public colleges) - as the latter are presumed to be able to draw more on professional rather than on narrowly economic motivation in providing the service. Moreover, as the validity and the visibility of inspection results are both limited, there remains considerable scope for informational effects on service quality.
Nevertheless, the quality problem cannot therefore be viewed as simply a matter of market-failure, let alone of asymmetric information. A role for the cost disease is suggested by trends during the past two decades in unit costs and prices in labour market programmes relative to those in private education. A role for private willingness to invest in skill is suggested by the high average grades attained by the few large employers that choose to participate in the programmes and invest in it themselves. A role for political incentives is suggested by the evolution of AA's immediate predecessor, Modern Apprenticeship, from a programme geared to the production of intermediate (craft and technician) skills into one geared to combating social exclusion by producing lower level skills.
Our research is limited at this stage to the elaboration of these hypotheses and the analysis of descriptive evidence. It will in future take in both statistical analysis of inspection grades and fieldwork on the quality-related attitudes and policies of key players (training providers, public funding bodies, apprentices and employers).
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Salimata Sissoko/Robert Plasman (Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium)
E-mail: nsissoko@ulb.ac.be
Learning From Experience: Gender Mainstreaming in Public Policies in France.
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The main objectives are: to analyse the implementation of policies for equal opportunities in two main policy areas: on a national level and in education; to identify if policies for equality affect the quality of public policies; to compare the case of France to that of Europe; and to highlight and analyse good practice in women-friendly and gender-sensitive policy-making.
On a national level, the policy of equal opportunities we analysed was the projected national policy for equal opportunities. The policy in the area of education was the national convention (and its regional derivatives) for promoting equal opportunities between girls and boys, women and men.
Our analysis is based on four methods. First, we analysed the contents. We then conducted a qualitative analysis of the action taken in the various “académiesâ€. These two analyses enabled us to determine the coherence between discourse and action. An analysis of the stakeholders helped us to identify the effects of these policies on their own interests, their importance and influence in relation to the policy-making process and their involvement in each stage of this process. Finally, we analysed the various perceptions held by the key actors, as revealed through their interviews.
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Alfonso Sousa-Poza (University of St. Gallen, Switzerland)
The Influence of Taxes on Migration: Evidence from Switzerland
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With decreasing migration costs and fiscal decentralisation on the policy agenda in various OECD countries, the impact of taxation on migration is of emerging interest. Empirical studies on this topic have been limited due to a lack of comparable data in an international context and a lack of variation in tax burdens within countries. A notable exception to the latter is Switzerland, which is the OECD country with the largest within-country variation in tax rates. Prior empirical studies on tax competition in Switzerland (e.g. Feld and Kirchgässner) had to rely on macro-level data and were generally supportive of the notion of tax competition, i.e., high earners tend to relocate to low-tax regions. We use an alternative panel approach based on micro-data from the first three waves of the newly-established Swiss Household Panel.
Despite communities' active tax policies aimed at attracting new residents and despite the significant increase in the tax burden dispersion among communities in the past decade, we observe no tax-induced migration. These results hold even after controlling for numerous factors that determine the migration decision. Instead, migration decisions are strongly influenced by accommodation-related factors, pointing to important housing-market effects.
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Ilan Tojerow (Free University Of Brussels, Belgium)
E-mail: itojerow@ulb.ac.be
Rent Sharing and the Gender Wage Gap in Belgium
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This study investigates, on the basis of a unique combination of two large-scale data sets, how rent sharing interacts with the gender wage gap in the Belgian private sector. Empirical findings show that individual gross hourly wages are significantly and positively related to firm profits-per-employee even when controlling for group effects in the residuals, individual and firm characteristics, industry wage differentials and endogeneity of profits. Our instrumented wage-profit elasticity is of the magnitude 0.06 and it is not significantly different for men and women. Of the overall gender wage gap (on average women earn 23.7% less than men), results show that around 14% can be explained by the fact that on average women are employed in firms where profits-per-employee are lower. Thus, findings suggest that a substantial part of the gender wage gap is attributable to the segregation of women is less profitable firms.
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Daphne Taras (University of Calgary, Haskayne School of Business, Associate Dean (Research) and Professor, Industrial Relations).
Determining Employer Intent: When is a Voice Forum Found to Be Unlawful?
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This paper concerns itself with how labour boards in Canada determine whether a non-union system is an unfair labour practice or not. In the United States, it is fairly easy, because non-union systems tend to be illegal, per se. But in Canada, where they are legal, the question is how adjudicative bodies can determine an employer's intent and when does the employer cross the line into illegality? For example, when are certain non-union management systems a tool to thwart legal collective bargaining and when are they a legitimate human resource management tool? These questions raises some very important issues for both public policy and the field of industrial relations. The paper will rely on a data set of Canadian cases.
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Lenita Maria Turchi (IPEA, Brazil)
E-mail: turchi@ipea.gov.br
Unions Reponses to a Total Quality Programme: 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 1994,1997 and 2000 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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Svetlana Tvorogova (State University - Higher School of Economics, Russia)
E-mail: tvorogova@mtu-net.ru; sv-t@nm.ru
Re-Invention of a Wheel: Individual Labour Strategies of Students Bring Back the Meaning to a Dying Institute of Pre-Diploma Internships in Post-Soviet Russia
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The combination of studies and job has become quite popular among the students all over the world since recently. In Russia the demand for tertiary education is booming, education and work go together very often - a share of full-time students holding a job while studying at the university exceeds 40%, resembling the international trends.
And nevertheless the situation in the country seems quite peculiar: the individual practices responding to the lack of mechanisms for transition from university to work brought the new meaning to the remnants of old system of university graduates' distribution still hidden in the curricula.
The data from national survey demonstrates stable increase in students' involvement in labour market activities and its independence from the family background. The focused interviews with the students of two leading technical universities offer interpretation of individual utility of working while studying, which is presented as a formal model.
Individual behaviour strategies produce the norms that could be easily integrated into the currently useless and dying institution of so called 'pre-diploma internships' in case it starts serving students' needs - the intention declared by most of the leading universities in the country.
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Aline Valette (LEST/CNRS, France)
E-mail: a.valette@univ-aix.fr
Internal and Occupational Labour Markets in France and Britain
About the French and English labour market regulation in the 80's, Eyraud, Marsden and Silvestre (1990) explained that internal labour markets characterise French position and occupational labour markets the English one. But what is the situation fifteen years later? The goal of this paper is to take stock of the situation using rather the same indicators they have used to enlighten evolutions and to launch a reflection about the relevance of such a typology to explain current labour market regulation in France and in England. Using the Enquête Emploi for France and the LFS for England, we study, in manufacturing sector, interactions between length of service and pay, skills and labour turnover, job changing and occupational status… Between the mid 80's and present day, significantly different changes occurred in French and British labour markets and training systems. The growth of qualified people in the labour market and the pressure of competition on firms are likely to have impacted on labour market situation. The main hypothesis is that with structural changes in wage's, employment's and industry's structures and in training systems, the respective weight of each regulation must have change in the two countries.
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Emmanuelle Walkowiak and J.F. Jacques (Université Paris IX-Dauphine and CEE and Paris XI, France)
E-mail: manuwalko@club-internet.fr
Segregation in the Labour Market: an Organizational Approach of Matching within the Firm
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In this paper, we try to analyse why different types of workers have different wages and unemployment rates, in spite of having homogenous skills, which are perfectly observed. The main argument is based on "social interactions" between workers within the firms as defined by Glaeser and Sheinkman (2002). We assume that interactions within a specific group, and between groups, play a crucial role in determining the productivity of each type of worker. Because there are frictions on the labour market, firms may not manage to hire the most productive workers. Consequently externalities within the firm and on the labour market, determine the proportion of each type of worker within the firms and their unemployment rate. The model is simulated using French occupational data.
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Emmanulle Walkowiak and Nathalie Greenan (University Paris IX-Dauphine, IRIS, France)
E-mail: manuwalko@club-internet.fr
Computerization and Work Organization: Beyond the Complementarities, Social Interactions
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We propose an analytical framework to understand both the complementarity between Information Technology (IT) and innovative organizational practices and the selection principles that guide their diffusion at the work post level. We show that these selection principles are connected with the network configuration of social interactions within the firm, which is analysed with reference to the concept of social capital. We then identify in the complementarity between technology and organization, what comes from the pure coordination of choices in these two dimensions and what comes from the selection of workers. The econometric tests, based on the survey on "Organizational Change and Computerization" of 1997, allow us to verify four propositions. Firstly, we show that social capital of workers favours their access to IT. This selective allocation of equipment seems specific to IT since it does not drive the allocation of automated machines. Second, the same selection mechanism drives the access of employees to work posts with innovative productive and informational characteristics. Third, the correlations between ITs and innovative organizational characteristics are not uniform within different occupational groups. Finally, innovative organizational characteristics involving a relational dimension generate a complementarity with IT which results mainly from a selection mechanism.
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Chris Warhurst (University of Strathclyde, UK)
E-mail: chris.warhurst@strath.ac.uk
'Soft' vs. 'Hard': Employers' Skill Demands in Interactive Services
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This paper reports research into skills and training in the retail and hospitality jobs. It seeks to address the types of skills demanded by employers in interactive service work. The shift from manufacturing to services involves quantitative and qualitative shifts in jobs. The quantitative shift is well recognised but the qualitative less systematically analysed. Analysis of the 'soft' aspects of the service encounter focuses on social or interpersonal skills. We argue that such analysis provides only a partial understanding. The survey reported in this paper assesses employers' skills demands and training provision, distinguishing between hard skills related to technical aspects of the job and soft skills related to face-to-face (or voice-to-voice) interaction between employee and customer. The findings emphasize that soft skills are more important than hard skills at the point of entry to employment and that both hard and soft are important within work. The findings also reveal that the current understanding of soft skills is too narrow. Employers not only demand social skills but also aesthetic or self-presentational skills. As a consequence, the paper provides empirical evidence that what is conceived and explored as soft skills needs to be expanded to include what the authors term 'aesthetic labour'.
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Paul Willman/Alex Bryson/Rafael Gomez (Oxford University, Said Business School, UK)/.
The Sound of Silence: When Do Employers Want Worker Voice?
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Freeman and Medoff [1979, 1984] identified voice as one outcome of trade union activity beneficial for the firm. Although innovative in the study of employment regimes, the formulation is essentially that of Hirschman [1970] introduced in the analysis of consumer organisation. In both formulations, the benefits of voice are contingent. In Hirschman, voice generates benefits for the firm in terms of a reversal of product quality decline where the costs of collective action for consumers are greater than exit costs. For Freeman and Medoff [1979], voice is one of two faces of union activity, and the beneficial effect of voice depends on its returns exceeding the costs of the monopoly activities of unions. This latter recognition has led to a wider conception of employee voice, embracing circumstances where unions are absent. Nonetheless, even on this wider definition, there remain "voice free" firms, defined as those where no union-based or employer initiated mechanisms exist. One recent estimate for the UK puts this at approximately 16% of establishments over a long time period [Willman et al 2003]. Little work has been done to establish why such firms remain "voice-free". This paper is primarily concerned to understand and to model the employer's decision about whether to opt for voice or not. The majority of establishments in the UK contain voice mechanisms but a durable minority do not.
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