Competitive Labor Market Research Articles

Happy home at Adform – corporate culture as a tool to attract and retain talent

Subject area Social science, Organizational behaviour. Study level/applicability The case is intended for bachelor or master level students as a part of HRM and OB curriculum and in particular organizational culture and change management topics as well as talent selection and innovation issues in the organization. Case overview Adform, a fast-growing global ad-tech company, is well-known in the market as a workplace that nurtures creativity and innovation. Recently recognized as the Aon Employer of the Year 2016 in the Baltic States by OVC, the company strives to maintain the position and remain an attractive place to work at. However, when both the sector and the company is growing fast, it becomes a challenge to sustain corporate culture and implement shared values in daily activities. Creative and innovative employees are in high demanded in the whole ad-tech sector and competition for the best professionals is inevitable. The key issues Anna, head of HR Strategic initiatives, is facing to present are as follows: How to attract and retain the best talent in a highly competitive labour market? How to maintain corporate culture that promotes innovative thinking when the company is growing fast and the sector is developing even faster? How to manage conflicts between personal and corporate values when employees are in high demand in the market? The case is structured from three different perspectives – newly employed professional Simon, experienced Adformers Ingrid and Martin, and Human Resources department specialists Anna and Sandra – everyone has different challenges and issues to solve; however, they share common values and beliefs, which form a sound base for decision-making and prove the importance of corporate culture as a strong management tool at Adform. Expected learning outcomes Expected learning outcomes are as follows: to understand major components of corporate culture and its role in an organisation, to gain practice in assessing corporate culture and its types; to understand the role of corporate culture in attracting and retaining talented employees to help company grow and develop; and to recognize challenges a company may encounter sustaining a strong corporate culture in a fast-growing sector and to analyse means of strong culture maintenance. Supplementary materials Teaching Notes are available for educators only. Please contact your library to gain login details or email support@emeraldinsight.com to request teaching notes. Subject code CSS: 6: Human Resource Management.

When Students Become “Prisoners”: A Game Theory Analysis of Internship by Beijing College Students

Purpose —The oversupply of college graduates and increasing competition in the Chinese urban labor market have forced college students to undertake internships much earlier and to a greater intensity in the hope of boosting their employment prospects. It may be argued that the considerable time and energy thus spent on internships is deleterious to their university studies. The paper considers the factors that determine the intensity of an internship experience. Design/Approach/Methods —Building on a Cobb-Douglas utility function, the paper constructs a Prisoners’ Dilemma game to model the internship behavior of Chinese college students, and then examines the determinants of internship using data from a 2011 survey of approximately 10,000 Chinese college students from 47 higher education institutions in the Beijing metropolitan area and multivariate regression analysis. Findings —Empirical results confirm three key hypotheses derived from our model: first, students’ perceptions of higher differentials across available jobs in the labor market entice them to intern excessively; second, the improving quality of college teaching and the consequent benefit for knowledge acquisition mitigates the need for excessive internship; third, student preferences for fundamental knowledge acquisition also tilts the balance towards more study and less internship. Originality/Value —These findings suggest that in the context of a tight graduate labor market, improving the quality of college teaching provides a viable alternative to excessive internship by students.

Knowledge Management of the Esp Class Using Technology

Abstract The present study aims at analyzing the benefits and drawbacks of knowledge management of the ESP class through the use of technology. Being in constant contact with technology, it is unavoidable to use it for teaching foreign languages. For this reason, both CALL (Computer Assisted Language Learning) and mobile apps prove useful in the demarche for better teaching and learning process. Nevertheless, managing blended learning ESP class implies a different approach to technology that goes beyond the classic use of Web 2.0 tools and proposes a new generation of mobile technology that facilitates and even simplifies the acquisition of all the four competencies (for ESP): reading, writing, listening and speaking for students ranging A2 to C1 (usually few students are absolute beginners and other few have native-like English level) in compliance with the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages whose guidance aids instructors prepare students for the competitive labor market

An Assessment of Architecture Students’ Perception on the Soft and Practical Skills Integration into the Curriculum Structure for Sustainable Development in Nigeria

Graduates’ unemployment is a critical issue in Nigeria. The government and Higher Learning Institutions (HLIs) emphasis on the soft and practical skills integration in the curriculum structure is to turn out graduates with balanced capacities, diversities and flexibilities to survive the competitive labour market. Even though, little empirical findings are available on the level of soft and practical skills integration in the Nigeria public universities, particularly architecture programmes, the construction industry is seen as a major contributor to national economic development. Contemporary skills requirement for the graduating architects’ self-empowerment is still contentious in the academic circle. This paper aimed to propose Architects’ Career Skills Development (ArCaSD) assessment model and ten hypotheses were postulated to test the model. It is premised that the architecture students’ perception on the level of infusion and acquisition of the entire range of soft skills and practical workshop practice embedded in the architecture's curriculum structure for self-empowerment be evaluated. Quantitative research methodological approach and structural equation modelling were employed to analyse the data collected from 153 students. The finding showed that all the ten hypotheses were supported and positively significant. In addition, the perception of the students on the soft skills integration is substantially positive and above average. The findings further indicates that, despite the practical skills acquisition, there is need to focused more on the architectural design rather than combining it with practical training in entrepreneurship and pragmatic workshop practice. In conclusion, students’ narrow-mindedness on the importance of entrepreneurship and practical skills development call for innovation in architecture’s curriculum structure and pedagogical approach to facilitates capacity building for employment creation and national economic development in Nigeria.

Immigration and Self-Reported Well-Being in the UK

Much recent research suggests that immigration has had little, if any, negative impact on the labour market outcomes of natives. In this study we focus on ascertaining the effect of immigration on subjective as opposed to objective indicators of native well-being. Our analytical approach exploits spatial and temporal variation in the net inflows of foreign-born individuals across local areas in England. We find using both a fixed effects and instrumental variable specification that net inflows of foreign-born individuals are associated with modest negative subjective well-being effects for the population as a whole, but that there is a notable degree of heterogeneity in this relationship. Specifically, relatively older individuals (60 ), those with below average household incomes, the unemployed and finally those without any formal educational qualifications experience much more pronounced well-being losses than their younger, financially better-off and employed counterparts. These observed well-being differentials across social groups are similar to voting patterns evident in the recent UK referendum on EU membership. We put forward perceived labour market competition as one of the mechanisms underpinning these results. In support of this premise, we find that the negative relationship between inflows of foreign-born individuals and the subjective well-being of the native-born population in England is much more substantive when macroeconomic conditions are relatively less favourable.

On the wage–productivity causal relationship

In a perfectly competitive labor market, wage rates are determined by labor productivity, so that wage dispersion reflects the marginal contribution to product of the different workers. Accordingly, wage inequality cannot be treated as an independent variable in a model of productivity, and thus economists have paid little attention to this relation. This paper studies the effects of wage inequality on labor productivity. We claim that wage inequality can lead to lower effort among workers who receive lower wages and hence lead in turn to lower aggregate labor productivity because of the lower aggregate effort level. To guide the empirical analysis, we look at aggregate panel data to investigate whether there is a relationship between wage inequality and average labor productivity. We use data for 34 OECD countries in the period 1995–2007, and by allowing country fixed effects, we exploit the longitudinal dimension of the data. We find that large wage inequality is associated with lower labor productivity. So the results suggest that higher levels of the Gini index of wage inequality are associated with lower labor productivity. Moreover, we study the question of whether wage inequality that causes productivity level or viceversa by assessing non-causal homogeneity in a panel Granger framework.

Knowledge Economy and Industry Performance in China: A Provincial Level Analysis

We construct a framework for investigating the effects of knowledge on industry performance. Using Chinese provincial industry data from 2000 to 2012, we decompose total factor productivity (TFP) change into the four components of embodied technical change, disembodied technical change, scale efficiency change, and technical efficiency change. Our results show a considerably stronger positive effect of advanced knowledge on production technology than of basic knowledge. International knowledge spillovers, particularly trade-induced spillovers, are more effective in inducing TFP growth than domestic spillovers. Our analysis further illustrates a discrepancy in TFP growth rates between regions. We also find TFP of the Central and West Region to be catching-up with the East Region. On average, scale efficiency change is the major contributing factor to regional disparities in terms of TFP change. From a policy point of view, the government should improve, for example, the level of knowledge through educational programs, and further focus on policies on urbanization or the development of regional centers to develop a competitive labor market, as well as on policies encouraging international trade.

VIRAL MANAGEMENT AS A SUBSET OF CREATIVE MANAGEMENT IN CONDITIONS OF FINANCIAL INSTABILITY

Urgency of the research. In the period of globalization, financial instability and high competition both in the international labour market and in every enterprise (small or large, profitable or non-profit, operating in a local or intercultural environment), there is a need for a certain percentage of employees who can think in a creative and inventive way and captivate other workers by it. Target setting. Providing a rationale for the necessity of forming creative thinking among employees of the enterprise and the viability of viral management implementation. Actual scientific research and issues analysis. The issue of organizational development is a major focus of interest of such field experts as Biletska K., Zadorozhnyuk N., Zinkevich D., Lesakova L., Prodius O., who prove that the modern enterprise needs creative workers who can stimulate others. Uninvestigated parts of general matters defining. The necessity of studying viral management as a modern form of creative management, whose purpose is to stimulate non-standard thinking of employees in order to increase their efficiency. The research objective. Providing a rationale for the necessity of viral management implementation, whose main idea is the “infection” of the enterprise and mainly employees with one or another “virus” in the form of a general idea or purpose. The statement of basic materials. The article states that viral management is a subset of creative management, since only a creative person can become a virus carrier. It has been proved that a person who possesses at least one of the elements of creativity can become a virus carrier. The authors of the article suggest a classification of virus carriers: a trojan, a spy, a vandal. The main task of virus carriers has been identified which is definition of employees’ strengths and formation of workers groups in such a way that they fully meet these skills. Conclusions. Viral management, as a subset of creative management, involves a certain degree of automatic change, an internal “obsession” with a particular innovation, involvement of an informal personal factor. So, the main task, with the implemented “virus” to bring positive results, not damage, to a company, is for the company gone through the virus to become stronger, more powerful, more efficient.

What Do You Fear? Anti-immigrant Sentiment in Latin America

In this article, we study the material determinants of anti-immigrant sentiment in Latin America. Based on new data on immigration to non-Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries, we use the workhorse distributive theories that anticipate who wins and who loses from immigration and test their predictive capacity in labor-abundant countries. We exploit the variation in regional immigration rates, in the skill composition of natives versus migrants, and in the relative generosity of Latin American welfare states. We find that fears of labor-market competition are weak predictors of anti-immigrant sentiment. In contrast, fears of greater tax burdens are strong and robust predictors of anti-immigrant sentiment. We conclude that studying Latin American public opinion opens new avenues for theorizing about anti-immigrant sentiment in developing countries.

What Do You Fear? Anti-immigrant Sentiment in Latin America

In this article, we study the material determinants of anti-immigrant sentiment in Latin America. Based on new data on immigration to non-Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries, we use the workhorse distributive theories that anticipate who wins and who loses from immigration and test their predictive capacity in labor-abundant countries. We exploit the variation in regional immigration rates, in the skill composition of natives versus migrants, and in the relative generosity of Latin American welfare states. We find that fears of labor-market competition are weak predictors of anti-immigrant sentiment. In contrast, fears of greater tax burdens are strong and robust predictors of anti-immigrant sentiment. We conclude that studying Latin American public opinion opens new avenues for theorizing about anti-immigrant sentiment in developing countries.

On the Trade-off between Efficiency in Job Assignment and Turnover: The Role of Breakup Fees

We highlight a novel trade-off with the use of breakup fees in employment contracts. Under asymmetric learning about workers’ productivity, the market takes job assignments (or “promotions”) as a signal of quality and bids up the wages of a promoted worker, leading to inefficiently few promotions (Waldman, M. 1984. “Job Assignments, Signalling, and Efficiency” 15 RAND Journal of Economics 255–67). Breakup fees can mitigate such inefficiencies by shielding the firm from labor-market competition, but they reduce turnover efficiency when there are firm-specific matching gains. We show that it is optimal to use breakup fees if and only if the difference between the worker’s expected productivity in the pre- and post-promotion jobs is small. Also, the relationship between the optimality of breakup fees and the importance of firm-specific human capital is more nuanced than what the extant literature may suggest.

Anticompetitive Mergers in Labor Markets

Mergers of competitors are conventionally challenged under the federal antitrust laws when they threaten to lessen competition in some product or service market in which the merging firms sell. Mergers can also injure competition in markets where the firms purchase. Although that principle is widely recognized, very few litigated cases have applied merger law to buyers. This article concerns an even more rarefied subset, and one that has barely been mentioned. Nevertheless, its implications are staggering. Some mergers may be unlawful because they injure competition in the labor market by enabling the post-merger firm anticompetitively to suppress wages or salaries. To the best of our knowledge no court has ever condemned a merger for this reason. This paper examines a number of issues that are relevant to merger challenges in employment markets, focusing on the traditional rationale for challenging horizontal mergers – namely, that increased market concentration in labor markets threatens to facilitate coordinated interaction among employers that could lead to lower output and wage suppression in employment markets. Because most mergers are challenged prior to their occurrence, the threat is not of observed coordinated interaction, but rather of an “appreciable danger” that it may occur if the merger is permitted to proceed. We outline the major issues that enforcers are likely to encounter in assessing mergers threatening competitive harm in labor markets. Mergers affecting the labor market require some rethinking of merger policy, although not any altering of its fundamentals. For example, mergers that threaten wage suppression are horizontal when the merging firms compete in the labor market, and this may be true even if they are not competitors in any product market. One useful way to think of the extent of horizontal competition in the market for employees is to look at the participants in the several “anti-poaching” cases that involve agreements among firms not to hire one another’s employees. This is quite consistent with the general principle of market definition in merger cases that a market consists of a grouping of firms that, if unified by a cartel, would have market power, or more specifically, an ideal collusive group. Horizontal mergers threatening labor market competition present a significant competition problem but also unique legal issues. On significance, labor market concentration – measured by a small number of employers – is very high, perhaps as high or higher than product market concentration. This suggests that a mature policy of pursuing mergers because of harmful effects in labor markets could yield many cases, although prima facie we cannot predict how many. Also significant is that some of these mergers might be horizontal in the labor market but not in the product market in which the merging firms sell their goods or services. Once again, we do not predict the extent to which this is true, but it does suggest that those reviewing mergers cannot simply assume that lack of competition in the product market entails the same for the labor market. So to say that merger analysis focusing on labor will take evaluators into uncharted territory seems clear, and perhaps even more clearly for courts.

REASSESSING THE BREADTH OF THE PROTECTIVE BENEFIT OF IMMIGRANT NEIGHBORHOODS: A MULTILEVEL ANALYSIS OF VIOLENCE RISK BY RACE, ETHNICITY, AND LABOR MARKET STRATIFICATION*

AbstractResearchers in the United States have increasingly recognized that immigration reduces crime, but it remains unresolved whether this applies to people of different racial–ethnic and economic backgrounds. By using the 2008–2012 area‐identified National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), we evaluate the effect of neighborhood immigrant concentration on individual violence risk across race/ethnicity and labor market stratification factors in areas with different histories of immigration. The results of our analysis reveal three key patterns. First, we find a consistent protective role of immigrant concentration that is not weakened by low education, low income, unemployment, or labor market competition. Therefore, even economically disadvantaged people enjoy the crime‐reduction benefit of immigration. Second, we find support for threshold models that predict a nonlinear, stronger protective role of immigrant concentration on violence at higher levels of immigrant concentration. The protective function of immigration also is higher in areas of longer histories of immigration. Third, compared with Blacks and Whites, Latinos receive a greater violence‐reduction benefit of immigrant concentration possibly because they live in closer proximity with immigrants and share common sociocultural features. Nevertheless, immigrant concentration yields a diminishing return in reducing Latino victimization as immigrants approach a near‐majority of neighborhood residents. The implications of these results are discussed.

Attitudes towards highly skilled and low‐skilled immigration in Europe: A survey experiment in 15 European countries

AbstractTo what extent do economic concerns drive anti‐migrant attitudes? Key theoretical arguments extract two central motives: increased labour market competition and the fiscal burden linked to the influx of migrants. This article provides new evidence regarding the impact of material self‐interest on attitudes towards immigrants. It reports the results of a survey experiment embedded in representative surveys in 15 European countries before and after the European refugee crisis in 2014. As anticipated by the fiscal burden argument, it is found that rich natives prefer highly skilled over low‐skilled migration more than low‐income respondents do. Moreover, the study shows that these tax concerns among the wealthy are stronger if fiscal exposure to migration is high. No support is found for the labour market competition argument predicting that natives will be most opposed to migrants with similar skills. The results suggest that highly skilled migrants are preferred over low‐skilled migrants irrespective of natives’ skill levels.

DO MINIMUM WAGES REDUCE EMPLOYMENT? A CASE STUDY OF SARAWAK’S SERVICE SECTOR

This paper examines the impact of minimum wages using a survey data of services sector in Sarawak. Dependent t-test and regression analysis were conducted to determine the impact of minimum wages on employment. Although minimum wages increased salary, but the impact on employment is very small. Most of the findings do not support minimum wages reduce employment, in contrast with competitive labour market prediction.

Measuring Imperfect Competition in Product and Labor Markets. An Empirical Analysis Using Firm-Level Production Data

We disentangle the extent of imperfect competition in product and labor markets using plant-level data. We derive a formula for the ratio between markups and markdowns assuming cost-minimizing firms that face upward-sloping labor supply and downward-sloping product demand curves. We then separate this combined measure of market power by estimating firm-level labor supply elasticities instrumenting wages with a different set of instruments including the use of intermediate inputs, input price shocks, and TFP shocks. Our results suggest that both markets exhibit imperfect competition, but the variation is mainly driven by markups. We also estimate the relative gains of removing market power dispersion on allocative efficiency, finding that markups are more important on TFP than markdowns.

Immigration and the Displacement of Incumbent Households

We make use of the universe of immigrants who arrived in Switzerland between 1992 and 2013, granular community level house price and wage data as well as detailed information on the Swiss population to study the effects of immigration on the location choice of incumbent households. Immigration influences a household’s location choice through three distinct channels: house price changes, labor market competition, and households’ sentiment regarding immigration. We find evidence of all three channels. However, we show that the channel to which a household responds most strongly depends on the type of immigration and the characteristics of the household. Our research provides valuable insights into some of the effects of large scale immigration.

Forced Migration and Human Capital: Evidence from Post-WWII Population Transfers

We exploit a unique historical setting to study the long-run effects of forced migration on investment in education. After World War II, the Polish borders were redrawn, resulting in large-scale migration. Poles were forced to move from the Kresy territories in the East (taken over by the USSR) and were resettled mostly to the newly acquired Western Territories, from which Germans were expelled. We combine historical censuses with newly collected survey data to show that, while there were no pre-WWII differences in education, Poles with a family history of forced migration are significantly more educated today. Descendants of forced migrants have on average one extra year of schooling, driven by a higher propensity to finish secondary or higher education. This result holds when we restrict ancestral locations to a subsample around the former Kresy border and include fixed effects for the destination of migrants. As Kresy migrants were of the same ethnicity and religion as other Poles, we bypass these confounding factors characteristic of other cases of forced migration. We show that labor market competition with natives and the selection of migrants are also unlikely to drive our results. Survey evidence suggests that forced migration led to a shift in preferences, away from material possessions and towards investment in a mobile asset -- human capital. The effects persist over three generations.

Do Natives' Beliefs About Refugees' Education Level Affect Attitudes Toward Refugees? Evidence from a Randomized Survey Experiments

In recent years, Europe has experienced an unprecedented influx of refugees. While natives’ attitudes toward refugees are decisive for the political feasibility of asylum policies, little is known about how these attitudes are shaped by refugees’ characteristics. We conducted survey experiments with more than 5,000 university students in Germany in which we exogenously shifted participants’ beliefs about refugees’ education level through information provision. Consistent with economic theory, we find that beliefs about refugees’ education significantly affect concerns about labor market competition. These concerns, however, do not translate into general attitudes because economic aspects are rather unimportant for forming attitudes toward refugees.

2017 BPS DART-P/PsyPAG Award for Excellence in Teaching winner: Should PhD students teach?

The number of PhD students in the UK is growing exponentially, and in an increasingly competitive labour market, postgraduate research students are facing unprecedented pressure to demonstrate a range of skills within and beyond research management. Due to the popularity and broad-ranging nature of the discipline, psychology students will face particularly fierce competition throughout their careers and must be acutely aware of the need to produce publishable, fundable, and impactful work. Given these pressures on PhD students and their supervisors, does teaching during postgraduate study give worthwhile experience, or is it a needless tax on time that is both limited and strained?