Employment Decisions Research Articles

Financial Experts on the Outside Boards, Financial Stress in Foreign Exchange Markets, and Firm Employment

ABSTRACT This study examines the role of financial experts on the outside boards on firm-level employment decisions under financial stress in foreign exchange markets (FSIFX). Using firm-level data from the manufacturing industry in South Korea from 2001 through 2019, we observe in the Korean FSIFX a negative relationship with employment. We also find that including a financial expert as an outside director plays a significant role in varying the FSIFX-employment relationship. Specifically, the presence of a financial expert on the firm’s outside board contributes to reducing the negative effects of FSIFX on employment. Moreover, these findings are particularly noteworthy for firms that carry steep export ratios.

Internal Information Quality and Corporate Employment Decisions

AbstractPrior studies argue that high‐quality internal information improves forecasting and reduces internal information asymmetry, and hence facilitates firms’ decision‐making. Consistent with this argument, we find that internal information quality (IIQ) is positively associated with employment efficiency. Furthermore, we find that better IIQ leads to an improvement in employment efficiency primarily by improving demand forecasts. The baseline finding is robust to using a setting that exploits time‐series shocks to IIQ (i.e., the adoption of SFAS 158) and other sensitivity analyses. Our findings add to prior studies on the role of IIQ in decision‐making.

The dark side of asset redeployability through the lens of corporate employment decisions

This study examines how U.S.-listed firms' asset redeployability affects their labor investment efficiency and documents a negative relationship between asset redeployability and labor investment efficiency. Asset redeployability increases overinvestment in labor in the forms of over-hiring and under-firing and provides managers more opportunities to conduct earnings management, which reduces financial reporting quality, readability, and comparability, thereby harming labor investment efficiency. Furthermore, our additional results indicate that the negative impact of asset redeployability on labor investment efficiency is mitigated for firms that have a higher degree of unionization, employ more skilled labor, or implement better corporate governance practices.

THE EU PRIVATE INTERNATIONAL LAW FRAMEWORK FOR THE ACKNOWLEDGMENT AND EXECUTION OF JUDGEMENTS IN EMPLOYMENT MATTERS

This study seeks to examine the recognition and enforcement of EU employment judgements under private international law (PIL). The objectives are to examine the legal framework regulating the recognition and enforceability of employment decisions and to assess the influence of Brexit on EU-UK employment-related rulings. The methodology includes a comprehensive review of applicable EU legislation, case law, and employment-related regulations. This will reveal the conditions for recognising and enforcing employment decisions, the function of the EU Regulation on jurisdiction and judgements, and the scope of the EU Directive on judgement enforcement. The findings will elucidate the complexities and difficulties of PIL in employment matters, including the implications of Brexit. They will promote legal certainty and safeguard employee rights in the EU. Policymakers, legal practitioners, and stakeholders in cross-border employment disputes will gain valuable insights. Based on the results of future research, legal framework reforms may be proposed. Comparative studies of PIL frameworks in other jurisdictions could contribute to the expansion of employment law knowledge internationally.

Novice nurse practitioners' employment decisions and role transition experiences during COVID-19.

While it is known how the COVID-19 pandemic affected providers already employed and working in health care settings, there is little data about the effect it may have had on novice nurse practitioners (NPs). The purpose of this study was to describe novice NPs' employment decisions and role transition experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic. Via an online survey, novice NPs were asked open-ended questions about how the pandemic influenced the decision to take their first position and their role transition experience, as well as what employers did well or could have done better to facilitate this transition. Participants described employment challenges that included a difficult job market with limited employment opportunities, decreased pay and benefits, fewer onboarding and mentorship opportunities, and less primary care experience. However, NPs reported the pandemic positively influenced their role transition experiences with decreased patient workload and greater use of telehealth. Novice NPs were impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic in making employment decisions and transitioning into the NP role.

To moonlight or not to moonlight: The role of organisational commitment dimensions in secondary employment decisions among higher education teachers

AbstractThis study aims to explore the relationship between organisational commitment dimensions and moonlighting intentions. Using a sample of 189 teachers from various higher educational institutions (HEIs), the study employs Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) to examine the impact of organisational commitment dimensions (affective, continuance, normative) on moonlighting intentions. The results of the study indicate a negative relationship between organisational commitment dimensions and moonlighting intentions, suggesting that higher education institutions can reduce moonlighting intentions among faculty members by fostering a positive work environment that promotes organisational commitment. The findings of this study have implications for organisations, as they suggest that increasing employees' affective and normative commitments decrease their intentions to engage in moonlighting. Additionally, the study highlights the importance of understanding the antecedents of moonlighting intentions, as it can help organisations to implement policies and practices that reduce the likelihood of employee moonlighting.

Newsroom Ideological Diversity and the Ideological Sorting of Journalists

In efforts to curb ideological bias in the news, citizens, academics, and journalists have highlighted the importance of newsroom ideological diversity. Using a large-scale survey of newspaper political journalists in the United States, we examine the diversity of ideological perspectives of political journalists across newspapers and communities and how ideological misalignments with the newsroom and the local community relate to those journalists’ employment decisions. We find political newspaper reporters regularly work for newspapers and in communities that do not mirror their own ideological perspectives. However, by following newspaper political journalists’ employment decisions over a three-year period, we also find that the ideological differences between those journalists and the newsroom where they work (but not ideological difference with the local community) are related to an increase in journalists’ desire to change jobs and in the likelihood they will actually seek other employment, either within journalism or outside of the profession.

What HR decisions are crucial in turbulent times? An analysis of differences in manufacturing and non-manufacturing companies

Manufacturing and non-manufacturing companies are represented to varying degrees in the structure of advanced economies. Their business success in turbulent times depends on smart business decisions, including decisions concerning human resources (HR) that affect the companies’ ability to survive and compete. However, such judgments may differ in manufacturing and non-manufacturing companies. The paper aims to reveal potential differences in HR decisions between analyzed manufacturing and non-manufacturing companies and bring suggestions for challenging employment and compensation decisions that affect the companies’ economic and social position. The analysis uses the HR Analysis in Companies 2023 survey conducted by Gi Group/Grafton Recruitment Czech Republic at the end of 2022. The survey covered responses from 478 manufacturing and non-manufacturing companies in all fourteen regions of the Czech Republic regarding employment and compensation decisions in 2022 and plans for 2023. The analysis revealed tendencies of manufacturing companies to change the total number of employees and the offer of benefits more often than non-manufacturing companies to more flexibly change the labor demand and labor costs depending on the demand for final production. On the other hand, regardless of manufacturing or non-manufacturing companies, the overall findings revealed tendencies of surveyed companies to follow certain HR decisions from the past in the future and confirm the necessity to concentrate on effective HR decisions related to employment and compensation in turbulent times to manage the labor demand and labor costs efficiently. AcknowledgmentThe authors thank Gi Group/Grafton Recruitment Czech Republic for providing the HR Analysis in Companies 2023 survey and the Internal Grant Agency of Ambis College for financial support to create this article.

Discrimination against academics and career implications of student evaluations: university policy versus legal compliance

Across the international higher education sector, existing studies highlight that student evaluations of courses and teaching are biased and prejudiced towards academics and can cause mental distress. Yet student evaluation data is often used as part of faculty hiring, firing, promotion, award and grant decisions. That a data source known to be prejudiced and biased is used for employment and career decisions raises questions around whether these university policies are discriminatory towards university staff. This paper investigates these questions via an analysis of: a) what are the common university policies relating to evaluation data collection and its use, b) are these policies leaving academics exposed to discrimination, and c) what types of policies may be leaving universities liable to legal ramifications due to non-compliance with anti-discrimination and workplace health and safety laws? The work demonstrates why most institutions are operating outside the bounds of the law, highlights to academics what types of policies may fail to meet discrimination and workplace laws, and informs university leaders of the actions that may be exposing their universities to legal implications for failing to protect their staff.

Is Chief Executive Officer optimistic belief bad for workers? Evidence from corporate employment decisions

AbstractUsing a behavioural approach, we investigate how Chief Executive Officer optimism, defined as a personality trait where a person has optimistic beliefs about the outcome of future events, influences corporate employment decisions. Using data of publicly traded firms in the U.S. from 1995 to 2017, we show that firms with optimistic CEOs have higher employment growth and exhibit less pronounced employment sensitivity to declining sales than firms with non‐optimistic CEOs do. We also find that the impact of optimistic CEOs on employment decisions is larger in financially constrained firms. We deal with potential endogeneity issues with the entropy balancing method, propensity score matching and two‐stage least squares regression. Our findings have important implications for the design and implementation of Human Resource Management policies.

일본의 COC+정책에서 지역지향교육이 지역애착과 지역정착에 미치는 효과

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to find the educational effects of ‘the community-oriented education’ using the data of follow-up surveys of local university students. Japan’s MEXT had promoted the community-oriented education through twice COC and COC+ projects by mobilizing all local resources. It was consistent with the direction of educational reform at local universities. Korean society can obtained some important implications from this research results for the local youth settlement policy.
 Research design, data, and methodology: The existing studies on local settlement were used to cross-section data, so dynamic changes could not be confirmed. This study can confirm the attitude changes in the local attachment and the local-employment settlement between those who received and did not receive the community-oriented education by using data from two times: May of freshmen, November of third grade. This study used DD analysis.
 Results: According to this study, the educational effect only appeared to be limited to the students coming from other regions rather than those within the region. Rather, we find out that local experiences such as volunteer activities and club activities increase the attachment to the local community. According to the estimation results on local-employment of local youth, local industrial structure and job opportunities variables were more significant. The local employment opportunities were a direct factor in local employment decisions of local university students.
 Implications: The community-oriented education is not only a classroom-based local studies, but also a new approach to opportunities to contact the local community, such as volunteer activities in the region. The conclusions that regional experiences such as solving local problems, internship activities at local companies and local volunteer working increase local attachment are also meaningful in Korea’s regional policy. At the same time, it can be said that community-oriented education has a greater effective meaning in the elementary and secondary school curriculum than in universities.

Career Choice Factors and Clinical Performance among Health Sciences Students

The issue of youths’ employment decisions has piqued the curiosity of many people because it could shape future life. The study explores the association between career choice factors and clinical performance among 112 final-year health sciences students. An online questionnaire found that educational qualifications, lifestyle, ability to interact with others, job availability, and parental advice significantly correlated with clinical performance. The career choice factor is crucial because it impacts academic achievement and future career prospects. Institutions of higher learning should provide information on job descriptions and career opportunities to aid career decision-making, particularly for the health sciences profession.

High readership on academic social platforms could poorly reflect conservation interest

AbstractSocial media are being used increasingly by the science community to share research output with a wide audience and to seek feedback. They are also used as alternatives to the traditional citation-based assessment of the impacts of scientific products and even to inform employment decisions in academia. One of these media platforms, ResearchGate, is a popular application with more than 20 million users who share and discuss scientific products. We report on a remarkably high level of interest in one of our publications on ResearchGate about the Eurasian wild pig Sus scrofa in Iran, a poorly studied species in a conservation priority region. The number of reads of our publication was c. 1,500 times higher than the mean per publication for scientists from a range of American and Asian universities. Comparison with other ResearchGate statistics and reader feedback indicates these reads resulted from data-gathering processes unrelated to the details of the research. Although this raises questions regarding the ability of ResearchGate and similar platforms to measure research interest and impacts reliably, we use the popularity of our article as an opportunity to advocate for conservation research in an understudied region and on an understudied species.

Robot Imports and Employment Location Choice

As the “pearl at the top of the manufacturing industry,” the widespread use of robots is affecting the employment decisions of individual workers. This paper contributes to our understanding of this subject by analyzing the impact of imports of industrial robots on employment location choice at the inter-provinces level in China. The analysis applies a logit approach to microdata from the China Customs Database and China Labor Dynamics Survey. The results suggest that robot import positively affects employment location choice, supporting the theory of “coexistence” between intelligent robots and the labor force. Specifically, industrial robots attract skilled workers via the creation effect and drive away routine labor via the substitution effect, but the creation effect is greater than the substitution effect. Finally, the authors discuss the channels from the perspectives of “skill-biased” and “routine-biased.”

Regulating algorithmic employment decisions through data protection law

The regulation of algorithmic management falls under the purview of multiple legal domains including but not limited to labour law, non-discrimination law and data protection law. While labour law does not have explicit provisions to adequately protect workers from algorithmic harms, existing non-discrimination and data protection laws can address some aspects of these harms. This article examines the extent to which the GDPR offers the necessary tools to protect workers from harm stemming from algorithmic management. It argues that while the provisions tailored to automated decision-making (ADM) and the rest of the GDPR provide workers with some limited protections, significant gaps remain. It then suggests some policy options on how the existing protections under the GDPR can be further complemented, particularised, and strengthened through a combination of legislative and non-legislative measures.

Natural Resource Booms, Human Capital, and Earnings: Evidence from Linked Education and Employment Records

Using administrative panel data on the universe of Texas public school students, I analyze how shocks to local economic conditions affect education and employment decisions. I find that high school students at the bottom of the academic ability distribution worked and earned more in response to the fracking boom and that these earnings gains persisted through ages 24–25 despite the fact that the same students also became less likely to attend classes and graduate from high school. My results suggest that the opportunity cost of education is large for these students. (JEL H75, I21, I26, J24, J31, R23)

Race and Ethnicity in Pulmonary Function Test Interpretation: An Official American Thoracic Society Statement.

Current American Thoracic Society (ATS) standards promote the use of race and ethnicity-specific reference equations for pulmonary function test (PFT) interpretation. There is rising concern that the use of race and ethnicity in PFT interpretation contributes to a false view of fixed differences between races and may mask the effects of differential exposures. This use of race and ethnicity may contribute to health disparities by norming differences in pulmonary function. In the United States and globally, race serves as a social construct that is based on appearance and reflects social values, structures, and practices. Classification of people into racial and ethnic groups differs geographically and temporally. These considerations challenge the notion that racial and ethnic categories have biological meaning and question the use of race in PFT interpretation. The ATS convened a diverse group of clinicians and investigators for a workshop in 2021 to evaluate the use of race and ethnicity in PFT interpretation. Review of evidence published since then that challenges current practice and continued discussion concluded with a recommendation to replace race and ethnicity-specific equations with race-neutral average reference equations, which must be accompanied with a broader re-evaluation of how PFTs are used to make clinical, employment, and insurance decisions. There was also a call to engage key stakeholders not represented in this workshop and a statement of caution regarding the uncertain effects and potential harms of this change. Other recommendations include continued research and education to understand the impact of the change, to improve the evidence for the use of PFTs in general, and to identify modifiable risk factors for reduced pulmonary function.

The Geography of Unemployment

Abstract Unemployment rates differ widely across local labor markets. I offer new empirical evidence that high local unemployment emerges because of elevated local job-losing rates. Local employers, rather than local workers or location-specific factors, account for most of the spatial gaps in job stability. I propose a theory in which spatial differences in job loss emerge in equilibrium because of systematic differences between employers across local labor markets. The spatial sorting decisions of employers in turn shape heterogeneity across locations. Labor market frictions induce productive employers to overvalue locating close to each other. The optimal policy incentivizes them to relocate toward areas with high job-losing rates, providing a rationale for commonly used place-based policies. I estimate the model using French administrative data. The estimated model accounts for over three-quarters of the cross-sectional dispersion in unemployment rates and for the respective contributions of job-losing and job-finding rates. Inefficient location choices by employers amplify spatial unemployment differentials fivefold. Both real-world and optimal place-based policies can yield sizable local and aggregate welfare gains.

The effects of political connections on entrepreneurial venture operations, employee productivity and investment decisions

PurposeThis study aims to examine the effect of political connection on operational efficiencies in the case of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and to discover the channel through which political ties affect a firm's decision-making process.Design/methodology/approachFollowing the scope of the study, panel fixed effect has been adopted to explore the impact of political connection on a firm's operational efficiencies. The data were collected every two years from 2005 to 2015 from SMEs in Vietnam under the collaboration of the Central Institute for Economic Management (CIEM), the Institute of Labor Science and Social Affairs (ILSSA) and the Development Economics Research Group (DERG) of the University of Copenhagen (Denmark).FindingsThe results suggest that political connection has a significantly negative effect on both investment efficiencies and employee productivity. Significantly, the impact of political connections on employment decisions is more significant than it is on investment decisions. Furthermore, the findings also indicate that high-growth firms experience the interference of political connection in the decision-making process less often than their low-growth peers.Originality/valueThis paper provides some empirical evidence of the negative impact of political connections on a firm's operational efficiencies. It analyzes the channels through which political connection influences a firm's operational efficiencies. Providing empirical evidence demonstrates a dimension to capture the negative side of the political link to small and medium enterprises in developing economies.

Public-sector employment, wages and education decisions

We set up a search and matching model with a private and a public sector to understand the effects of employment and wage policies in the public sector on unemployment and education decisions. The effects on the educational composition of the labor force depend crucially on the structure of the labor market. An increase of skilled public-sector wages has a small positive impact on educational composition and larger negative impact on the private employment of skilled workers, if the two sectors are segmented. If there are movements across the two sectors, it has large positive impacts on education and on skilled private employment. We highlight the usefulness of the model for policymakers by calculating the value of public-sector job security for skilled and unskilled workers.