SASE 2005: Abstracts Network G

Abstracts Network G - Labor Markets, Education, and Human Resources

Marina Adshade (Dalhousie University, Canada)
Ian Keay (Queen's University, Canada)
E-Mail address: marina.adshade@dal.ca; ikeay@qed.econ.queensu.ca
Enabling the Visible Hand: Female Labor Force Participation and Industrial Concentration in the Early 20th Century

This paper investigates the relationship between the adoption of a new organizational structure, associated with the movement toward more concentrated industries, and the movement of women into clerical positions. Using industry specific data from a sample of Ohio manufacturing industries for six years in the period 1923 to 1937 we find that the standard approach, with all types of workers (male and female, clerical and production) measured as a single labor input, masks considerable idiosyncratic detail. By disaggregating the data by both gender and type of employment we find that female clerical workers were substitutes for physical capital and that technology adoptions saved on the employment of capital, male labor, and female production labor, and increased their use of female clerical labor. This evidence suggests that technological change in the U.S. during the early 20th century may have been biased in favor of female clerical labor. The results presented in this paper are consistent with the view that U.S. manufactures responded to the increase in educated female labor in a way that simultaneously expanded the demand for those workers.

Faten Baddar Al-Husan (Middlesex University, United Kingdom)
Phil James (Middlesex University, United Kingdom)
E-Mail address: s.baddar@mdx.ac.uk
Multinational HRM in Privatized Jordanian Enterprises: An Exploration of the Influence of Political Contingencies

Over the last two decades there has been an emerging literature on the international human resource management (IHRM) strategies of multinational corporations (MNCs). Within this literature, it is recognized that a range of 'host country effects' can influence how MNCs approach the management of human resources within overseas subsidiaries. This article seeks the further knowledge of these effects by using the findings obtained from three case studies conducted in companies that had come under the control of French MNCs through the Jordanian government's privatization program, to explore how subsequent processes of human resource reform were shaped by governmental policies and wider political considerations. The findings reported show that such policies and considerations did exert an important influence. The implications of this for future research and for the policies of MNCs are consequently explored.

Hubert Amarillo (Facult des Sciences du Sport, France)
E-Mail address: hubamar@hotmail.com
Shortage of Skilled Workers and White Collar Workers on the Dole : A Societal Effect on the Original Socioprofessional Composition of Unemployment in Russia

On the Russian labor market, after the fall of the soviet type system (STS), the majority of the registered unemployed people were ITRs (employees, engineers, and technicians), while the firms' demands for labor was focused on skilled manual workers. Our hypothesis is that the original socioprofessional composition of unemployment in Russia is explained by a societal influence inherited from the STS: the preference for skilled manual work. In the soviet economy, the workers constituted a central core in the work process, and keep control over the shop floor. The central aspect of this labor force came from the creation of a social and professional category "skilled work" and from the social relationships which founded it. These social relationships were drawn up from the productive system, the educational system, and the system of industrial relations. These relationships were quite consistent within one another and had a societal effect on the labor market, shown by labor shortage and the lack of skilled workers. In today's Russian economy, reproducing the ancient societal features, the firms get rid of unskilled administrative employees and rely on productive processes prioritizing skilled work, favoring its scarcity on the labor market.

Juha Antila (University of Helsinki / Ministry of Labor, Finland)
Pekka Ylostalo (University of Helsinki / Ministry of Labor, Finland)
E-Mail address: juha.antila@mol.fi
New Forms of Work Organization and Quality of Work

"New Forms of Work Organization" refers to a wide range of changes like introduction of teamwork, new participative work culture, new training programs, new HRM policies etc. The aim of this paper is to discuss the impact of the new forms of work organization on daily workplace practices. Introduction of a successful combination of the new practices brings many benefits to a workplace. Despite this, many workplaces continue to use traditional methods. What kind of obstacles do these organizations face? Why do some organizations not want to introduce new methods? Organizations are not the only target group of our study. We also examine employees and their experiences of daily working life. Quality of working life includes many questions. Here we emphasize empowerment, meaningfulness of work, feedback, atmosphere at work, feeling of security and home-work relationship. In the paper we analyze whether there are differences in quality of working life which are to some extent related to new forms of work organization. The study is based on fresh and representative empirical data, which covers both the private and public sectors of the Finnish society. On organizational level Finland is also compared with the other Nordic and several European countries.

Gabriele Ballarino (Milan State University, Italy)
E-Mail address: gabriele.ballarino@unimi.it
Social Capital of Italian Entrepreneurs: Measures, Mechanisms, Effects

It is well known that social capital is a controversial concept: there are many definitions and operationalizations of the concept on the macro, meso and micro level. The paper focuses on the role of social capital in firms' performance, measuring the effect of different forms of entrepreneurs' social capital on their firms' economic performance. Five groups of Italian entrepreneurs of small and medium enterprises of two sectors have been interviewed, and many dimensions of their social capital have been measured, by means of network measures, from both working and private life, as well as by measures of associational activity and of trusting behavior. How do those measures correlate? Which kind of effect do they have on economic performance? Is this effect the same? What do these results tell us about the theoretical discussion about the different dimensions of social capital?

Isil Celimli (Columbia University, USA)
E-Mail address: ic225@columbia.edu
Post-Industrial City and Bifurcation of Labor: The Case of New York City Restaurant Industry

This paper looks at the composition of labor force in the restaurant industry in New York City, and it aims to uncover the nature of restaurant work. The expansion of the restaurant industry in NYC coincides with the changes in the urban form in the post-industrial social order. One of the significant incarnations of post-industrial economy on the urban form is the polarization of labor between high-end and low-end service occupations. In this paper, I explore another type of bifurcation that takes place in the restaurant kitchens. Work at restaurant kitchens has a peculiar character as it appeals to different social groups with different class and ethnic status. This paper will analytically identify different pools of labor power that cater to restaurant trade. Data on career trajectories, self-perceptions and attitudes toward service careers will come from an ethnographic study in two restaurant kitchens in New York City.

William Chan (University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong)
E-Mail address: wchan@econ.hku.hk
Investing in Reputation: Strategic Choices in Career Building

In many occupations, reputation or past performance affects the demand for a worker's output, creating an incentive to invest in reputation early in a career. This results in a tendency for superior workers to start their career in the mainstream market. The intuition is that, for high ability workers, the returns of investing in reputation is larger in the mass market, while less able ones would avoid the more competitive mainstream by developing their specializations in the fringe market. Some mainstream workers may enter the fringe market once the motive to invest in reputation diminishes later in their careers, but less able workers who start in the fringe are seldom able to return to the mainstream. These results are empirically testable and have potential implications for product markets as well.

Flore Chappaz (University Paris - X / IDHE, France)
E-Mail address: flore.chappaz@u-paris10.fr
Some Effects of Students' Part-time Employment in France, Measuring Youth Employment and Unemployment Rates Through the ILO Standards

The contribution aims at analyzing how national youth employment and unemployment levels are calculated according to the International Labor Organization's criteria in France. It will first envisage the standards of the ILO employment rates. According to which orders of worth are young people labeled as "employed"? More specifically, what happens with students who work part time? How are students in the labor process counted? How has this method changed since the adoption of the ILO standards in 1982? The paper will finally lay stress on the impact of labor market participation of students on youth employment and unemployment rates in France from 1982 to 2000.

Sabrina Colombo (Università degli studi di Milano-Bicocca, Italy)
E-Mail address: sabrina.colombo@unimib.it
Personnel Selection Criteria and Social Inequality Reproduction

Labor market dynamics are usually focused in sociology on the supply side, concerning particularly job seekers behaviors. This paper presents an empirical analysis regarding demand side of labor market. How, and to answer which firm's needs, personnel selectors choose labor force? Which are the most important individual characteristics considered in the choice? Did and how this change over time, or better, in which way this process is bound up socio-economic contingency? And in which way is it bound up firm's type (dimension and sector)? To answer these main questions the research has been designed using two methods. First, to avoid empirical distortions, it has been necessary to simulate a real selection process. The factorial survey approach has been particularly useful for this. We submitted to 40 Italian personnel selectors 2400 curricula and they have chosen among them the most correspondents on an hypothetical large dimension, firm's needs. Second, we met some of those personnel selectors for a qualitative interview to help us on commenting factorial survey's collected data on selection criteria. The most important research outcomes are that personnel selectors have an active role in labor market dynamics and selection criteria are bound up reproduction mechanisms of social inequalities.

Amanda K. Damarin (Georgia Institute of Technology, USA)
E-Mail address: amanda.damarin@hts.gatech.edu
Reconstructing a Classical Concept: Alienation and New Ways of Organizing Work

Though often implicit, the concept of alienation animates current debates over how workers are affected by new forms of work organization-flexible technologies, customization, collaboration, network organizations, and the like. In this paper I use interview data with workers in New York City's web industry (1993-2003), an exemplar of several new practices, to interrogate existing concepts of alienation, especially Marx's formulation of alienated labor. I argue that his theory rests on assumptions about product fixity and standardization, about the control of technologies, and about the impact of social relationships on work that do not hold in the case of website production. It and other instances of new work practices may produce alienation, but it is not the same alienation of which Marx speaks. In particular, I focus on how the use of flexible technologies and collaboration dis-links ownership of the means of production from control over labor processes, and on how the combination of product customization and industry production standards creates new tensions between autonomy and constraint for workers. I conclude by suggesting some alternative questions about alienation that may be more appropriate to new work contexts.

Ursula Daxecker (University of New Orleans, USA)
E-Mail address: udaxecke@uno.edu
Political Shocks and the Logic of Coalition Formation

The formation of coalition governments is common in parliamentary democracies with proportional representation. Early research argued that size considerations should be the main determinant of coalition formation, predicting that minimum coalitions are likely to emerge (Riker 1962, Leiserson 1968). Subsequent studies acknowledged the importance of parties' policy preferences, adding policy closeness or viability as an additional constraint for coalition formation (Axelrod 1970, Leiserson 1966, De Swaan 1973, Laver and Schofield 1990, Laver and Shepsle 1996). Yet, both sets of theories result in multiple or incorrect predictions. Especially, they have difficulty explaining the frequent formation of oversized coalitions or minority governments. I argue in this paper that historical shocks and the subsequent institutional changes need to be included in models of coalition formation. Following wars or economic crises, political elites have incentives to form oversized coalitions to reduce uncertainty and limit the risk for defection. In addition, elites may decide to institutionalize cooperation through mechanisms such as corporatism. I test these expectations by analyzing patterns of coalition formation in Germany and Austria for the post-WWII period. The empirical section shows that oversized coalitions dominated the years immediately after 1945 in both cases, confirming the importance of shocks posited here. Coalition formation in Germany thereafter conformed to the predictions made by existing theories. The extent of corporatism in Austria, however, led to a series of grand coalitions that dominated its post-WWII era. The incorporation of two additional constraints, therefore, leads to a significant improvement in predictive accuracy.

Sônia M. Draibe
Manuel Riesco
Latin America: A New Developmental Welfare State in the Making?

The paper focuses on the development of the Latin America Welfare States. Drawing on long time series of empirical data, concerning select countries (Argentine, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Cuba, Mexico, Peru and Uruguay), it reviews the evolution of the regional social policies systems, emphasizing the different historical configurations and welfare regimes, as well its changing conditions, and institutional legacies that may favor or limit the creation of a new inclusive, pattern of development. The nuclear concept is that one of Latin American Developmental Welfare State (LADWS), a peculiar form of developmental welfare state which played, in the period 1930-1980, a strategic role in the process of industrialization of Latin America countries, favoring the incorporation of masses of peasants to the dynamics and structures of urban market economies. Since the 1980s, in the framework of globalization and pro-market reforms, substantial alterations have promoted the transformation of LADWS and a new pattern of socio-economic development. Pointing out the success and limits of both moments, the paper explores the possibilities of the emergence, in the XXI Century, of a Neo-Developmental Latin America Welfare State, supporting by new pro-growth and progressive democratic collisions.

Richard Duhautois (Centre d'études de l'emploi, France)
Sébastien Delarre (Lille I University, France)
Francis Kramarz (Crest, France)
Email address: richard.duhautois@cee.enpc.fr
Networks of Mobility

This paper belongs to the new wave of studies based on longitudinal matched employee-employer data. It uses a unique combination of person-level information (over a period of 9 years) matched with firm-level information to examine the origins and destinations of a representative sample of French workers in the private and semi-public sector. In particular, we examine the trajectories of workers between firms, regions, departments (equivalent to the American counties), industries, firm size, and more originally, between and within financial groups of firms. The goal of the paper is essentially descriptive. It tries to identify, in a loose sense, the main directions of mobility or, put differently, the main threads that tie a person with her environment. As we all know, an environment is most often constructed by a worker or (and) her firm. For instance, for some the local environment is most important whereas for others the skill component is essential. In other cases, loyalties (or career concerns) go to the employing firm.

Giovanna Fullin (University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy)
Anna Ferro (University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy)
Ivana Fellini (University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy)
E-Mail address: giovanna.fullin@unimib.it; anna.ferro@unimib.it; ivana.fellini@unimib.it
The Recruitment of Foreign Workers in Some European Countries. A Comparative Analysis on the Construction Sector

Foreign workers EU and extra-EU citizens - represent a big part of the labor force in the construction sector in several European countries. Labor and skill shortages for medium and low skill occupations are relevant problems for employers and immigrants are or could become an important resource. But the characteristic of sector (i.e. dimension of firms, use of subcontracting, presence of foreign firms and posted workers) and the condition of labor demand and labor supply differ from one country to another. The paper aims to make a cross-country comparison, analyzing a) how foreign workers are recruited by construction firms, b) to what extent their presence is linked to subcontracting strategies and/or irregular work and c) what influence the regulation systems of national labor markets have on this. The research has been carried out by the authors inside a three year International research project (named PEMINT) financed by European Community, that started in October 2001. The countries involved are Italy, Great Britain, Germany, Switzerland, Portugal and Holland. During 2002 and 2003 several employers and human resource managers in big and medium size construction firms were interviewed and statistical data were collected, if available.

I. R. Gabor (Budapest Corvinus University, Hungary)
Unionized Firm versus Producer Co-operative: A Scholastic Tale

By way of presenting an ahistorical fictitious story, the paper is meant to illustrate that trade unions, in their symbiosis with capitalist firms, may further rather than impede price-mediated self-regulation in the labor market via their involvement in wage-setting. This view of trade unions is then contrasted to conventional views, and a revision of some untenable assumptions of those conventional views is called for.

Francesca Gambarotto (Universita di Padova, Italy)
Sieglinde Walter (University of Bremen, Germany)
E-Mail address: francesca.gambarotto@unipd.it; swalter@uni-bremen.de
The Role of Social Preferences in the Recruiting Process: Differences and Similarities of the Italian and German Labour Markets

In this paper we present an empirical evaluation of the role of social preferences in the process of worker recruiting. In labor economics, recruiting is described as a puzzle process both because of asymmetric information between employer and employee, and because of a symmetric ignorance of the worker's potential productivity. Moreover, the standard models of employment relationships assume that the productivity is only marginally affected by the interaction between workers. To overcome these limitations and to describe recruiting in an alternative way, we assume that the employer is a rule-following adaptive agent that searches for employees able to fit into the firm's organization. Moreover, we assume that the employer evaluates the candidates using a classification rule which is based not only on individual preferences but also on social preferences and beliefs. We believe that the latter are basic requirements for labor productivity because they favor reciprocity, social learning, and imitation behavior on the job place. We have tested these hypotheses by carrying out a comparative qualitative analysis on a sample of engineering firms in Padova (Italy) and Bremen (Germany) to determine the social preferences that affect the recruiting process and at which extent they influence the decision process.

Amynah Gangji (ULB - Université Libre de Bruxelles), Belgium)
Robert Plasman (ULB, Belgium)
E-Mail address: amgangji@ulb.ac.be; rplasma@ulb.ac.be
Micro-economic Analysis of Unemployment Persistence in Belgium

This study investigates the causes of unemployment persistence in Belgium at the micro-level. The underlying issue is to determine the impact of past unemployment spells on future labor market opportunities. Some European papers have demonstrated the existence of a true causal relationship between successive unemployment spells- implying a stigmatization effect for the unemployed. This state dependence can occur through a reduction in human capital or through employer recruitment and labor retention practices. The model used is a dynamic random effects profit model controlling for unobserved heterogeneity and the initial condition problem and is applied on the Panel Study on Belgian Households, covering the years 1995 to 2002. The results suggest the influence of the stigmatization effect to be strong. All else being equal, an individual who experienced unemployment will be between 14% and 23% more likely to relive this experience one year later than a person still in employment. This study also examines how the stigmatization effect varies with education levels. The results show that the lower the education level, the stronger the stigmatization effect, the degree of primary school being particularly prejudicial. Therefore, there is a huge breathing space for public intervention which should particularly focus on young and low educated individuals.

Sarah Ghaffari (Ecole des mines de Nantes, France)
E-Mail address: Sarah.Ghaffari@emn.fr
The Professional Calling Card, Revealing of Tension

In our communication, we will report an analysis on the judgment which the French graduate engineers carry on their training when they work elsewhere than in France. These testimonies are significant of the difficulty that there is to consider the existence of a completely open labor market where the information, summarized in the Curriculum vitae or the calling card, is enough to identify the competence of a person. Several points of friction are thus approached. The engineers speak to us successively about the "value" of the diploma and the judgment related to them, of the ratio which can exist between the training and the diploma, of the relation which can be built between a title and a job and relative weight of the experiment, as many elements which can support coordination between the contracting ones. We can then identify dimensions of the category which, having to be the subject of an agreement. These various features lead to a better comprehension of the recognition of a title on the labor market. In a general way, testimonies encourage us to question the place of the diploma in the professional organization of the group.

Estrella Gualda (University of Huelva, Spain)
Marta Ruiz García (University of Huelva, Spain)
Eva Sánchez Bermejo (Centro de Estudios Andaluces, Seville, Spain)
Angeles Arjona Garrido (University of Almeria, Spain)
Juan Carlos Checa Olmos (University of Almeria, Spain)
E-Mail address: estrella@uhu.es
Spanish Women's International Emigration and Their Returns to Andalusia

During the twentieth century Spain was a country of overseas and continental emigration. It is very surprising that the Spanish transformation in an immigrant country had gone parallel with the loss of interest in the returns of Spanish people from abroad. Somehow this is due to the recently increased interest in the new immigration processes in which Spain is immersed. In Andalusia, in this particular moment, some interesting processes can be observed of return migration: returns of aging people, of young and qualified students and workers and some very recent returns from Latin America, due to the severe economical crisis taking place in some countries historically tied to Spain. This work, based on interviews carried out in Almeria and Huelva (Andalusia), offers some results of the research sponsored by the Dirección General de Igualdad e Inclusión Social - Junta de Andalucía: "Social Needs and Social Integration Processes of Returned Spanish Emigrants to Andalusia". In this paper we focus our work in the experience of returned women. One of the main findings is the subordinated role (to their husbands or partners) played by the women in the emigration and also in the return.

Frederick Guy (Birkbeck College, University of London, United Kingdom)
E-Mail address: f.guy@bbk.ac.uk
Power-Biased Technological Change: An Efficiency Wage Approach to the Rise of Earnings Inequality

In many countries, earnings inequality has increased in recent decades. Economists have generally explained these increases in terms of the supply of, and demand for, human capital. In particular, they have argued that skill-biased technological change (SBTC) has bid up the relative price of skilled labor. We propose that technology affects relative earnings more through its effect on the power of different groups of employees, than through its effect on the demand for skill. This is the power-biased technological change (PBTC) hypothesis. Information and communications technologies (ICTs) have two kinds of effect on the discretion, and hence the power, which employees have on the job. They facilitate organizational flexibility and flattening of hierarchies, increasing formal discretion ('empowerment') for many employees. And they improve the monitoring of employee actions, and also the fit between prescribed actions and organizational needs, and so reduce informal discretion. Most employees are subject to both effects, but if the first is more important for the higher ranks and the second for the lower, then increased earnings inequality results. We review empirical evidence on the link between technology and earnings, and identify a number of anomalies which are better explained by PBTC than SBTC.

Wilbur C. Hadden (US Centers for Disease Control, USA)
E-Mail address: WHadden@cdc.gov
Occupational Characteristics and Mortality

This paper is set in an evolving stream of research on how best to understand and ameliorate social inequalities in health. It is clear that on a wide variety of measures health is unequally distributed along all of the common measures of social stratification, including education, occupation, and income. A great deal of work remains to be done, however, to understand how health is stratified and to identify the points where interventions might be possible. This paper advances our understanding by taking the distribution of health by occupation and disaggregating it by dimensions of occupation. Health is indexed by mortality in this study. The underlying data are from employed adult participants in annual health surveys. These adults have been followed up through a national death index to determine their vital status. The occupational dimensions are substantive complexity, people versus things, physical demands, and bureaucracy. These are created from a factor analysis of a large number of items describing occupations in the US Bureau of Labor Statistics' O*NET and matched to the person data. The results show that each of these dimensions is related to mortality. Insofar as both the occupational data and the health data are collected by government statistical agencies, a subtext of the paper is an exploration of one possible way of presenting mortality differentials by social class to interested publics.

Mark Harcourt (Waikato University, New Zealand)
E-Mail address: mark@waikato.ac.nz
The Impact of Workers' Compensation Experience-rating on Discriminatory Hiring Practices

Experience-rating is a common pricing mechanism in workers compensation systems, which is used to encourage employers to adopt better safety measures. Prior research has suggested possible side effects to it, such as aggressive claims management with respect to injured workers. This study extends this line of research by specifically exploring the relationship between experience-rating and discrimination against the disabled at the job application stage. The positive relationship found suggests that employers are proactive in claims management to the point of discriminating at the time of hiring. To limit claims, they ask not just lawful questions, but also unlawful questions. Further, the study identifies a hitherto unrecognized group of potential victims of experience-rating, the disabled. It is hoped that this will prompt serious attention to the potential secondary effects of experience-rating as an injury prevention approach, and the need to protect the unintended victims such as the disabled.

Martin Kahanec (Tilburg University, The Netherlands)
E-Mail address: M.Kahanec@uvt.nl
Minority-Majority Earnings Inequality: Is Minority Labor Scarce?

A significant body of literature, including Frisbie and Neidert (1977) and Tienda and Lee (1987), suggests that minority-majority wage gap as measured by the difference of wages per unit of efficient labor between minority and majority social groups is increasing in minority relative size. Some authors, e.g. Kahanec (2004), suggest that this finding is due to the scarcity effect: efficient labor of large minorities sells cheaper on the labor market than efficient labor of small minorities. In this paper I test this hypothesis using the NCES data set that contains information about 14,405 US school districts. Controlling for all available measures of effective labor and discrimination, the null hypothesis that there is the scarcity effect and that minority percentage reduces minority relative wage per unit of efficient labor cannot be rejected. This finding supports the original theory and suggests that minority and majority effective labors are not perfect substitutes on the labor market. It also supports the idea that segregation in human capital acquisition protects minority individuals from competition of majority individuals on the labor market.

Gungor Karakaya (Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium)
E-Mail address: gungor.karakaya@ulb.ac.be
Overeducation on the Belgian Labour Market: Evaluation and Analysis of the Explanatory Factors Through Two Types of Approaches

This paper aims to test empirically a series of theoretical results generally treated in the economic literature relating to overeducation. Two different approaches are used to define overeducation in Belgium by means of data relating to the characteristics of employees and employers. The constitution of a binomial profit model having like binary endogenous variable overeducation and as exogenous variables the factors which we want to test such as the sex, the seniority, the type of job contract, the size of the firm, the type of firm, the area where the firm is established and the branch of the economic activity of the firm, enables us to affirm that the competences acquired thanks to the experience on the labor market replace a weak or insufficient education and thus support the existence of a trade-off between education and seniority. The size of the firm has only a very weak (negative) and negligible effect on overeducation. This last result contradicts the assumption supported by Van der Meer and Wielers according to which the largest companies, which generally have great difficulty in controlling the productivity of the workers, engage more strongly educated workers granting them more autonomy.

Hannah Kiiver (Utrecht School of Economics, The Netherlands)
E-Mail address: h.kiiver@econ.uu.nl
Intergenerational Transmission of Education and Budget Constraints

Most European education systems are to a great extent financed publicly, with the explicit goal of providing similar opportunities to children from diverse backgrounds. However, when comparing the degree of intergenerational educational mobility (i.e. the degree to which parents' education is transmitted to their children) of European countries to the US (which has to a great extent privately financed higher education) we cannot find that the public financing of higher education is translated into higher mobility with respect to educational attainment. One possible explanation of this puzzle is that also in Europe, financing constraints in higher education still exist. In order to investigate that question, we use German micro-data to test empirically for the determinants of a child's educational attainment. We find that higher household incomes are still significantly associated with higher educational attainment of the child, even when all other factors relating to the family background are controlled for. This finding points out that the opportunity cost of pursuing higher education are not taken into account in European educational policy, and that the reluctance of many to pursue higher education may be due to these indirect cost of education.

Vilmante Kumpikaite (Kaunas University of Technology, Lithuania)
Algimantas Sakalas (Kaunas University of Technology, Lithuania)
E-Mail addresses: vilmante.kumpikaite@ktu.lt; algimantas.sakalas@ktu.lt
Coordination of the Organization and Employees Development Interests in the Evaluation of Human Resource

Human Resource development has become one of the most important conditions of the society development. As Becker and Rother (1998) state: "European Union, while increasing its competitiveness, has to develop as effectively as possible and use its qualified employees potential, standing on social compatibility". Modern and moreover future society is society of information, continually learning, a knowledge society. Formation of such society is impossible without its constituent elements, such as public and governmental institutions, science and educational organizations and business enterprises human resource development systems re-orienting according to the new requirements. Therefore very much attention is paid to human resource development in the world. In this article we would like to introduce the human resource development system's evaluation model, which would allow evaluating human resource development system in accordance with the requirements raised to it and to take into account the consistency of organization and its employees' interests.

Byoung-Hoon Lee (Chung-Ang University, Korea)
Jung-Hyang Yoon (Chung-Ang University, Korea)
E-Mail address: bhlee@cau.ac.kr; jhyoun@ms.cau.ac.kr
Welfare Segmentation in the Korean Labor Market

In Korea, labor market segmentation is a critical social issue and has been worsened under the context of globalization. Over recent years, people of the working poor, marginal jobs, and social exclusion, have proliferated, while the middle working class has been remarkably shrunken. In this light, this paper aims to examine labor fragmentation by lens of welfare and, in particular, what makes welfare segmentation in the country's labor market. Our analysis use three welfare indicators - national welfare programs, statutory labor standards, and corporate infringe benefits - as dependent variables, which are analyzed by two sets of labor market variables (supply- and demand-side). This study draws upon the Korea Labor Panel Survey data sets, conducted by the Korea Labor Institute, and use multi-variant regression analysis. Given the results of this analysis, we try to offer some policy implications as well as academic discussion comparable to other countries.

Hyun-Jung Lee (London School of Economics, United Kingdom)
Riccardo Peccei (Kings College London, United Kingdom)
E-Mail addresses: h.lee@lse.ac.uk ; riccardo.peccei@kcl.ac.uk
Organizational Sex Composition and Employee Commitment

This paper explores the effects of organizational level sex composition on employee commitment. Using national-level data from the British 1998 Workplace Employee Relations Survey (WERS98), the research sample consisted of 11,847 men and 11,277 women from over 1700 workplace across the Britain. The results show that sex asymmetric effects exist. While the relationship between organizational level se diversity and employee commitment exhibited an inverse J-shape for men, it was U-shaped for women. In addition, for women, the size of the work unit that individuals worked in was found to moderate the effect of sex diversity on organizational commitment. The sex diversity effect tended to be stronger for women working in smaller workplaces.

Sangheon Lee (International Labour Office, Switzerland)
E-Mail address: lees@ilo.org
Working Life in European Integration: The Dimension of Working Conditions

While European Union policies on the improvement of quality of work are expected to have considerable impacts on EU new member and candidate countries, research is scant on the quality of work in these countries. This paper attempts to contribute to filling the research gap by examining working conditions in these countries relying on a harmonized dataset. For a systematic evaluation of working conditions, a set of indicators are developed which captures the potential presence of working-condition risks, workers' subjective feelings and the possible outcomes of working-condition risks. The result shows that workers' dissatisfaction with working conditions in these countries are largely explained by high working-condition risks, and such poor conditions are reflected in health and safety, work-family life, and work capability. The findings of this paper confirm the need for social investments on working conditions in EU new member and candidate countries.

Fabrizio Maimone (Libera Università Maria SS Assunta, Italy)
E-Mail address: fabrizio.maimone@tin.it
The "European" Organization: Culture Diversity, Communication and Knowledge in Pan-European Organizations

I propose a study that intends to contribute to understanding the relationship among culture, communication and knowledge in pan-European organizations. The focus of the first part of the paper is on "europization" processes, cultural diversity and organizational knowledge. In the second part this paper highlights various results from an exploratory study, based on case study methodology, that analyzed a European company located in Bruxelles and the Italian establishment of European Space Agency, located in Frascati (Rome). They are knowledge-intensive organizations and I selected them for they employ workers of different nationalities, interact with a regional/global environment, adopt multicultural policies and procedures (selection, team working, communication, etc, etc), cope with a very competitive scenario. In the third part of the paper I argue that diversity management and intercultural communication are strategic for the development of knowledge capital in transnational organizations. However, only a small proportion of European organizations have introduced a wide range of practices that refers to diversity management and intercultural communication. We can assume that this has specific implications for the success and quality of working life of organizations of the "Old Continent".

Teo Matkovic (University of Zagreb, Croatia)
E-Mail address: teo.matkovic@pravo.hr
Different Ways of Being One's Own Boss: Exploring the Strands of Self-Employment

Self-employment and entrepreneurship are oft-invoked as the engine of growth and development. Yet, typologies of self-employment are often selected ad-hoc, with little analytical effort to verify whether they have an empirical foundation in substantially different patterns of actual work-life realities. Policymaking or further research efforts based on such unverified assumptions might be substantially flawed. In this article, the Croatian LFS data is used to test a classification based on the extended O.E.Wright's class scheme. Namely: employers, self-employed business owners, self-employed without their own business and self-employed in the agriculture. All four types of self-employment can be discerned by the substantially different patterns of work, different worker characteristics and family structure, as well as imminent career paths. In general, the former two groups stand for the "good self-employment", being better-off than the general working population, while the later two effectively capture the low productivity precarious/marginal self-employment segments.

Patrick McGovern (London School of Economics, United Kingdom)
Colin Mills (University of Oxford, UK)
Stephen Hill (University of London, UK)
E-Mail addresses: p.mcgovern@lse.ac.uk; colin.mills@sociology.ox.ac.uk; stephen.hill@rhul.ac.uk
Inequality at Work: Individualization, Harmonization and the 'Death of Social Class'

Differences between the employment conditions of manual and non-manual workers, notably in such areas as pay, fringe benefits and discipline, were once considered to be symptomatic of the class-ridden nature of British industry. By the close of the twentieth century, however, a number of authors claimed that such class-based forms of inequality had either attenuated, or else, been replaced by more individualized forms of inequality. One version of this argument, which originates in the literature on industrial relations and human resource management, proclaims that class-based inequalities in employment conditions have been rendered insignificant by the introduction of 'harmonization' and 'single status' practices. Another version acknowledges that substantial inequality remains within capitalist economies but insists that this is increasingly determined by personal characteristics, such as human capital, rather than structural factors in the form of social class. To evaluate these claims, we draw on evidence from major nationally representative employee surveys, namely Employment in Britain 1992 and Working in Britain 2000. We find, somewhat unsurprisingly, that social class is still an important source of inequality in employment conditions and, rather more surprisingly, that the impact of social class has, if anything, become more important over time.

Kevin Mellet (University of Paris 10, France)
E-Mail address: kevin.mellet@u-paris10.fr
Internet and the Labor Market. Relevant Information in the Matching Process

Since Internet opens an easy and cheap gate to job opportunities, it is supposed to improve the dynamics of information flows on labor markets. This paper aims to explore this hypothesis. In particular, it deals with the following questions: what is the relevant information that job seekers need in order to get matched with jobs? Furthermore, what are the effects of the enlargement of the market induced by the emergence of this new medium? This study relies on the statistical analysis of a database of 30,000 queries made by job searchers on a French Internet search engine (Keljob.com) specialized on employment opportunities. It also relies on a semantic analysis of the key words involved in most of the queries, which play a crucial role in the matching process. Based on the evidence stemming from these empirical sources, the paper intends to provide an alternative view to the Search Approach. The job seeker's behavior seems not to be driven by price incentives: if she/he calculates, she/he does it with words. Moreover, labor market intermediaries and the matching tools that they incorporate contribute to shape interactions between demand and supply. To this end, they are involved in the production process of the relevant information that connects men with jobs. Finally, unlike the traditional economic analysis, it is found that market mechanisms are not cleared by equilibrium prices, but by the procedures of selection driven by recruiters.

Rebecca Oliver (Northwestern University, USA)
E-Mail address: r-oliver@northwestern.edu
Reference Points and the Lines that Divide: Understanding Changes in Wage Inequality in Italy, Sweden and Across Advanced Industrial Democracies

My paper examines the following question: How do bargaining institutions effect developments in pay inequality? The basic finding of this work is that bargaining institutions which affect the nature and extent of distributional conflict decisively impact developments in wage inequality. The paper, based on extensive field research in Italy and Sweden, investigates the effects of wage scales. When wage differences between workers of all skill types have been established in an industry-wide wage scale, a wage increase which maintains these differentials is considered a neutral outcome. Given the neutral status of the differentials, they are often used to guide firm-level negotiations. This use of the scales tends to anchor wage differentials and slow developments in inequality between workers of different skill levels.

Hiroshi Ono (Stockholm School of Economics, Sweden)
E-Mail address: hiroshi.ono@hhs.se
Organizational Structure and Labor Market Stratification: Evidence from Foreign-owned Firms in Japan

We examine how organizational environments affect labor market processes in Japan. Our distinction in organizational structure concerns foreign ownership. We hypothesize that labor market inequality is conditioned by workers' being "positioned" in either domestic or in foreign firms. Our theoretical analysis applies the concept of social versus economic exchange to highlight distinctions in the nature of transactions between domestic and foreign firms. We argue that foreign firms operate under an institutional context that is conducive to the economic mode of exchange, which has significant consequences for their personnel practices and reward systems. Using an individual-level dataset of Japanese workers collected in 2000, we examine the extent to which employment practices in foreign firms deviate from the benchmark features observed in the Japanese labor market. Our results confirm that employment in foreign firms significantly affects worker attitudes and labor market outcomes. We find little evidence of Japanese employment practices (e.g. seniority and lifetime employment) operating within foreign firms. Further, workers in foreign firms trust their employers less, and have higher propensity to quit their jobs than do their domestic counterparts. Our findings suggest that the high-commitment culture commonly associated with the Japanese workforce is an outcome of the organizational environment of the Japanese firm.

Heloise Petit (Université Paris I Panthéon Sorbonne, France)
Damien Sauze (Université Paris I Panthéon Sorbonne, France)
E-Mail addresses: heloise.petit@univ-paris1.fr; sauze@univ-paris1.fr
The Employment Contract as a Risk Sharing Device: A Theoretical and Historical Perspective

Since the 1980s, a renewed focus has been put on the concept of risk in analyzing the transformation of social organization (Beck, 1995, Gazier and Shmid 2001). In this context, our paper will focus on the risks at stake in employment relations. Our thesis is that the dynamics of employment systems can be best understood as changing forms and levels of risks supported by workers and employers. Firstly, in a Knightian (1921) perspective we specify the employment relation as a risk sharing device. In doing so we refer to economic studies (Simon, 1951, Coase, 1937, Williamson, 1985, Mardsen, 1999, Salais, 1989) as well as legal ones (Lyon-Caen, 1996, Morin, 1999). In an economic perspective two types of risk are defined: one regarding internal organization of the firm, the other the selling stage of products. Further, the reference to legal studies enables us to represent the employment contract as a risk sharing device between employers and workers. Secondly, this analytical scheme is applied in a historical perspective to interpret the transformation in French employment relations. A period of nearly two centuries is studied through the analysis of the legal framework as well as individual practices.

Robson Rocha (Copenhagen Business School, Denmark)
E-Mail address: rr.cbp@cbs.dk
The Dynamics of Participation and Work System Transformation in Multinational Corporations: The Case of a Danish Company

The paper explores the development of partnership agencies (PA) in Multinational Corporations (MNC's). It investigates how actors through PA's affect the dynamics of participation in two sites of a Danish MNC, at the headquarters and in a subsidiary in Brazil (empirically through a qualitative research). Special attention is given to the institutionalization of ongoing systems of negotiations and how they can affect the way in which the work is divided and organized. The paper investigates how translations and negotiations related to work systems transformation take place: what is negotiated and how? The paper shows that in the Danish firms, PA's may be able to innovate in different organizational areas. PA's are able to move their firms toward highly elaborated versions of flexible, high performance work systems. Through such partnerships work organization have transformed, spreading qualification to skilled as well as non-skilled workers through continuous education and upgrading their skills. The paper also shows what happens when a Danish company goes abroad and starts a new factory in Brazil. In the Brazilian case the absence of an institutionalized ongoing system of negotiation is seen as an important factor which prevents the implementation of the continuous improvement system and organizational innovation.

Sean Safford (London School of Economics, United Kingdom)
Forrest Briscoe (Pennsylvania State University, USA)
E-Mail address: s.safford@lse.ac.uk; fbriscoe@psu.edu
Agency in Diffusion

This paper examines how social activism and inter-organizational imitation interact to explain the adoption of a novel-and contentious-organizational practice by analyzing the diffusion of domestic partner benefits among Fortune 500 companies. We employ a uniquely well-suited dataset containing information on the companies that firms use as benchmarks for evaluating their health care benefits and generate a near-complete "attention network." Combined with information on the presence of activist employee groups inside companies and the dates of companies' adoption of domestic partner benefits, these data are analyzed to unpack how social activism and diffusion interact to explain the rate and pattern of diffusion. Our results show that activist networks are important as far as introducing the practice early in the diffusion process. In addition, while direct company-to-company observation of adoption accounts for a remarkable 50-fold increase in the likelihood that a focal firm will also adopt, activism plays an important supplemental role. Surprisingly, we do not find that multiplexity of activist and attention networks heighten the effect of observation. Rather, the data suggest the possibility that different kinds of firms are more influenced by activism and others by imitation. Our data do not allow further exploration of this provocative point, but we discuss how future research might do so.

Olah Serban (University of Oradea, Romania)
E-Mail address: serbanolah2002@yahoo.com
The Low Education and the Labor Market in Romania

The research investigates the causes and the results of the school dropout in Bihor County. The first part of the paper analyses the international specialty literature in this field and also works of Romanian authors. The second part of the study consists of the analysis of the data obtained through qualitative techniques, i.e. the use of the half-structured interview and of the focus group interview. The qualitative research shows that the most affected by the school dropout is the Roma population, the most frequent causes of this phenomenon being : the poverty, the low educational level of the parents, their indifference toward school, the tradition and the pupil's group of friends (his/her company). The school dropout leads to youth delinquency and to a low level of integration on the job market. The research is an exploratory one and it is the first stage of a larger project of study on school dropout and its results in the North-Western part of Romania.

Elena Sirvent Garcia del Valle (University of Basque Country, Spain)
Jesus Ferreiro Aparicio (University of Basque Country)
E-Mail address: ebbsigae@bs.ehu.es; ebpfeapj@bs.ehu.es
Female Part-time Employment in the Year 2002: Spain and The Netherlands Compared

Part-time workers have achieved legal equality in all of Europe, but concerning real equality, the situation is rather different. In some countries this equality exists, in others it does not exist at all. While in the Netherlands part-time employment is strongly developed and discrimination toward part-time workers is very low, in Spain the share of part-time employment is well below the European Union average and part-time workers are strongly discriminated. The situation of part-time employment in these two countries is radically different. The aim of this paper is to analyze and compare the situation of part-time employment in The Netherlands and Spain. The nature of the existing relationship between the branches of activity and the reasons for choosing a part-time employment is explored for the year 2002, using data from the European Labor Force Survey. We find that there is a relationship between these two variables and we characterize it by means of Correspondence Analysis and Cluster Analysis. Is the relationship between the branches of activity and the reasons for choosing a part-time employment different in Spain and the Netherlands? Does it present any point of coincidence?

Svetlana Tvorgova (State University - Higher School of Economics, Russian Federation)
E-mail Address: tvorogova@mtu-net.ru
Imitating Development? Management Strategies of Russian Universities

Nowadays universities are booming in Russia: their number is rapidly increasing, current level of enrolment in university education (6455.7 thousand) exceeds more than twice that of 1995/96, the share of those who pay for their education increased almost 500 (!) per cent during 8 recent years. Yet the universities should anticipate the dramatic decrease in amount of school-leavers coming in two years. Current prosperity might be used by the universities for re-arranging their strategies: finding new niches, focusing on particular services, thus getting prepared to the future changes. The leading universities participated in a special programme on raising their management effectiveness and efficiency. Top management of the leading nine of those universities was interviewed in order to find out, what strategies the leaders of the field elaborated, and what examples the rest could follow. It was found out that there are no real goals and objectives, no attention to the external conditions and no regard of the resources available in most of the cases - two thirds of them reproduce the earlier strategies of extensive development. Nevertheless networking among the leaders in the field might be a useful tool for coping with the future difficulties.

Axel van den Berg (McGill University, Canada)
Daniel Parent (McGill University, Canada)
Claus-Henning von Restorff (McGill University, Canada)
Anthony C. Masi (McGill University, Canada)
E-Mail addresses: axel.vandenberg@mcgill.ca; daniel.paren@mcgill.ca; Claus_von_restorff@yahoo.com; Anthony.Masi@mcgill.ca
Labor Market Transition Patterns in Canada: A Preliminary Assessment

'Labour market flexibility' is widely touted as the inescapable requirement of the new, knowledge-based, globalized economy. European researchers have begun measuring it longitudinally by constructing 'transition matrices' depicting flows of transitions between various labour market statuses over time based on high-quality panel data. The principal purpose of this paper is to replicate and extend this kind of analysis to the Canadian case. In this paper we will use data from the Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics in order to, first, generate labour market transition tables covering the period 1993-1998. We will then compare the resulting patterns found with those found by European and Australian researchers, in order to evaluate the degree to which the Canadian reputation for being a 'liberal' welfare state is justified. In addition, we will estimate the effects of a variety of individual attributes on transition probabilities between different statuses which will enable us to begin to assess claims about low-paid employment traps, segmentation, the role of training and education, etc., with respect to transition patterns in a comparative perspective.

Katrin Vitols (University Duisburg - Essen, Germany)
E-Mail address: Katrin_vitols@web.de
Reforming the German Labor Market: The Case of Temporary Agency Work

Germany is known as one of the countries where the collective representation of interests through associations ('corporatism') is particularly strong. However, after the tripartite Alliance for Jobs, Training and Competitiveness failed to agree on solutions for combating high unemployment, an independent commission established by the government (the 'Hartz commission') has currently set the agenda for labor market reform. This article addresses the question of whether these events signal the end of corporatism in labor market policy in Germany. An analysis of temporary agency work, an atypical form of employment addressed by the Hartz reforms, shows that fundamental reform in Germany must be initiated outside the system of tripartite interest negotiation. However, the implementation of such reforms depends on the traditional structures of interest negotiation between the social partners.

Valery Yakubovich (University of Chicago, USA)
Daniela Lup (University of Chicago, USA)
E-Mail address: valery@ChicagoGSB.edu; dlup@ChicagoGSB.edu
Hiring on the Internet: Do Social Networks Matter?

The paper explores hiring through personal contacts in the context of the Internet. We explore whether novel community-based hiring channels on the Internet undermine the role of social networks. The analysis of unique comprehensive data on on-line hiring of sales agents in a virtual call center suggests that in comparison with community websites, personal contacts deliver more motivated applicants who more likely to complete the application process. At the same time, community websites attract as good candidates as those who are referred by the employer's current sales agents and both these channels do better than relatives and friends unaffiliated with the employer. After selection mechanisms at the application and testing stages of the hiring process are accounted for, there is no difference in the likelihood of getting a job offer among candidates recruited through personal contacts versus community websites. We conclude that virtual communities offer a new promising avenue for the dissemination of labor market information which can compete with personal channels in delivering qualified candidates. However they do not motivate their candidates to the same extent that personal channels do. The study's contributions to the literature on social networks in labor markets are discussed.