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For workers living with a disability, pathways to sustainable employment in the open labour market are inhibited by barriers operating at different structural and societal levels. The culture of Australia's government employment services has applied a 'work-first' approach that emphasises finding people employment rather than supporting the acquisition of skills and education. The net effect of this approach is the preferencing of short-term employment solutions, with a focus on individual behaviour or so-called resilience and an emphasis on personal responsibility instead of addressing structural issues. In this paper, we explore how people with disability can be supported in finding employment through a shared resilience approach offered by a Work Integration Social Enterprise (WISE). We suggest that WISEs can provide the conditions for shared resilience by developing and sustaining networks needed to generate hybrid pathways to work and by role modelling inclusive work conditions in the open labour market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents an evaluation of History and Korean Studies WIL internships at Monash University Library, focusing on past students' views of the program in relation to their future career, and past host-supervisors' perceptions of its benefits. Data collection for the qualitative research was conducted through semi-structured interviews with past students and host-supervisors. The results revealed that both past students and hostsupervisors expected the internships to facilitate students to gain hands-on experiences and develop 'soft-skills.' There was a gap where past host-supervisors consistently mentioned teamwork in their expectations, yet none of the past students had teamwork as one of their expectations. Both past students and host-supervisors view the program as beneficial for students, therefore, they suggested that the programs continue to be offered. Upon being asked what the benefits of internships were for themselves however, the host-supervisors put forward benefits that were more related to the library. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes data describing jobs in 100 establishments in order to test hypotheses about the characteristics of jobs and organizations associated with the structure of internal promotion ladders. The diversity of labor market arrangements found within the organizations indicates only weak support for hypotheses linking internal labor markets to organizational or sectoral imperatives. At the job level, however, there is support for hypotheses linking job ladders to firm-specific skills, organizational structure, gender distinctions, technology, occupational differentiation, the institutional environment, and the interests of unions. The paper concludes with an examination of how promotion ladders are formed from clusters of jobs associated with each other by occupation, skill, or gender composition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate empirically whether job assignment, based on comparative advantage and learning about workers' abilities, can explain wage and promotion dynamics within firms. Design/methodology/approach – The Gibbons and Waldman model is estimated in a generalized method of moments (GMM) framework using a unique data set on white-collar workers in Norway, for the years 1987-1997. The estimation is carried out on two occupational groups: technical and administrative white-collar workers. Findings – The placing of workers in a given position within a firm's hierarchy is based on comparative advantage. Both measurable and unmeasurable skills are important. This holds in both occupations that were studied in this investigation. When it comes to firms' learning about their workers, the results are not so clear; however, overall, the results on learning seem to have stronger support than found in previous studies. In general, there is more evidence for learning about administrative white-collar workers than learning about technical white-collar workers. Originality/value – This paper contributes to a very small thread of empirical literature concerning wage and promotion dynamics within firms using linked employer-employee data that contain detailed information on firm hierarchies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last two decades the composition of the labor force in the United States has changed significantly. Today, most employees are mothers or fathers of children under eighteen in families where both parents are employed or where the employed parent is a single mother. This represents a reversal of the older family ideal in which a father worked to provide income and a mother performed the domestic work that sustained families. The practices of business and much of the attention of business ethicists have assumed the older ideal. However, the wage work of mothers raises serious concerns about how business should view their parent-employees. Business has responded with family friendly corporate policies. This article analyzes these policies in light of two particular values: The social equality of women and the well-being of families. Finding current policies inadequate to meet these values, this paper calls for renewed ethical attention to the issues of time demands on employees and just wages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While idealized conceptions of internal labor markets suggest that career movement in bureaucratized organizations invariably occurs along formally defined job ladders, scholars of the subject generally recognize that actual career trajectories are only imperfectly constrained by formal job ladders. This paper argues that some occupational and organizational characteristics work to increase the similarity between trajectories implied by formal job ladders and actual career movement, while others tend to structure divergence between the two in systematic ways. An analysis of vacancy filling in four bureaus of the federal government demonstrates the effects on personnel practices of task idiosyncrasy, imperfect information, training needs that are inconsistent with formal job ladders, and the organization's configuration of vacancies and employees eligible to fill them. Results are based on a model that takes account of the horizontal boundaries between positions created by intraorganizational structure and official job ladders, as well as the vertical stratification of positions by grade. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper expands the scope of organizational demography to include two populations, the population of workers and the population of jobs. White's (1970) vacancy chain model is extended, and several new properties for vacancy chains are developed. The latter pertain to interpreting the chain reactions of vacancies in terms of person moves (pro- motions, demotions, transfers, and hires), analytically separating the effects of internal staffing and external hiring, and separately estimating vacancy behavior for new and old jobs, when job evolution is significant. The extensions beyond vacancy chains pertain to additional social structures, most notably job grade distributions, multiple grade ratios and organizational Venturi tubes. Job distributions, vacancy chains, and managerial staffing and hiring practice are combined to form a compound structure of multiple grade ratios. These multiple grade ratios are then used to construct organizational Venturi tubes, which indicate the relative career chances over the full organizational hierarchy. Data for the analyses were derived from three internal labor markets (two managerial, one professional) and ranged from two to five decades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to report on case study research of employment downsizing and the implications for equal opportunity and diversity management conducted in the UK airline industry during 2002/2003.
Design/methodology/approach - Review of literature on downsizing and equal opportunity and diversity management followed by identification of a number of research questions which are answered with reference to secondary analysis of labour market data and interviews with key informants from senior management and line management.
Findings - A planned approach to downsizing had been adopted that was strongly influenced by the human resources function in terms of equal opportunity and diversity management. An adverse impact on different employee groups had been avoided in order to sustain the diversity of the workforce.
Research limitations/implications - The research focuses on the management of downsizing and equal opportunity and diversity management. It addresses the perceptions of managers involved in developing and implementing policy, but does not examine the perceptions of other employees.
Practical implications - There are some reflections on ways in which equal opportunity and diversity management policy might adapt to organisational change and downsizing.
Originality/value - This paper brings together two scholarly debates on downsizing and equal opportunity and diversity management, and provides case study evidence of how an equal opportunity and diversity management agenda is implemented during organisational restructuring and downsizing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current paper aims to research the functioning mechanism of labour market, departing from the idea that labour market represents a constitutive part of the market system, the market system stands as a subsystem of economy and the economy itself a subsystem of the society. First of all, the labour market mechanism results from the essential interdependencies between the structural components of such market, between the labour market and the other markets, between the market system and the economic one, as well as between the economic and social system. Secondly, the labour market mechanism arise from its functional relations with the operational, executive, legislative, institutional and organizational structures of the social system from which it belongs, and which functional relations manifest as public preferences towards the functioning of the labour market. Therefore the regulatory mechanism of the labour market functions in two main steps, each of them comprising means and instruments for the implementation of the regulatory process: the spontaneous mechanism (based on objective necessity) and the intervention mechanism on the labour market, making use of various external economic means. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines employment structures within firms in Great Britain. In this paper. The author of this article wish to argue that a more complex understanding of work settings would yield new insights both for problems which have concerned dualists and, more generally, for understanding internal labor markets. The central idea is that the unit of analysis in dual labor market theory has been incorrect. Primary labor market firms should, in general, not be viewed as monolithic in their employment arrangements. Simple examples are large white collar employers such as banks or insurance companies. For many employees, these firms offer stable jobs, career prospects, and well developed rules with respect to promotion. Hence they are primary employers. However, these same firms also frequently hire a large number of young women for poorly paid, high turnover clerical jobs with virtually no prospects for upward mobility. In most salient respects, these are secondary jobs.

Health workforce cohort studies are uncommon in low-and middle-income countries (LMICs), especially those in sub-Saharan Africa. Describe the methodology and lessons learned from establishing and maintaining the WiSDOM (Wits longitudinal Study to Determine the Operation of the labour Market among its health professional graduates) health professional cohort study in South Africa. WiSDOM is a prospective longitudinal cohort study that commenced in 2017. The cohort focuses on the eight professional groups of clinical associates, dentists, doctors, nurses, occupational therapists, oral hygienists, pharmacists and physiotherapists. Annual, electronic follow-up surveys have been conducted in 2018, 2019 and 2020 with informed consent. Key steps in establishing the WiSDOM cohort include consultation, communication and marketing, stakeholder feedback, resources and infrastructure. Retention strategies consist of an electronic database, detailed cohort contact information, cohort engagement, communication and feedback, short survey tools, and appropriate incentives. We obtained an overall response rate of 89.5% at baseline in 2017, 79.6% in 2018, 68.3% in 2019 and 72.8% in 2020. The largest decline in response rates is for medical doctors: 66.0% response rate in 2018, 53.2% in 2019 and 58.2% in 2020. However, for each of the three follow-up surveys, we have obtained response rates in excess of 80% for clinical associates, dentists, nurses, oral hygienists, pharmacists and physiotherapists. Since baseline, the outright refusals have remained very low at 4.7%. The multiple logistic regression analysis showed that self-identified race was the only significant socio-demographic difference between medical doctor respondents and non-respondents. Black African doctors and Indian doctors were 2.0 and 2.6 times more likely respectively to respond than White doctors (p < 0.05). Other LMICs can learn from WiSDOM's lessons of establishing and maintaining a health professional cohort that aims to generate new knowledge for health system transformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study is to find out whether there is a verifiable correlation between the individuals' employee commitment dimensions (affective, continuance, normative, professional and deliberate) and the personal characteristics of these employees. Our research was carried out among the employees of 56 organizations based in Hungary. Organizations were selected by snowball method. A total of 1731 questionnaires were processed, besides descriptive statistical methods we have used variance analysis. We have found significant correlations between the ages of employees and the level of affective, continuance, normative and professional commitment as well, by age-grouping and wage-grouping too. The results show that the first communication mode also has a significant impact on these four commitment dimensions, and all of the commitment dimensions had a higher level among employees who was enquired by the organization (the direction of the first communication is from the organization to the employee). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

If public health is the field that diagnoses and strives to cure social ills, then understanding political causes and cures for health problems should be an intrinsic part of the field. In this article, we argue that there is no support for the simple and common, implicit model of politics in which scientific evidence plus political will produces healthy policies. Efforts to improve the translation of evidence into policy such as knowledge transfer work only under certain circumstances. These circumstances are frequently political, and to be understood through systematic inquiry into basic features of the political economy such as institutions, partisanship and the organization of labour markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the last three decades, most developed countries have experienced increasing income inequality. Using Danish register data from 1992 to 2007 for all private-sector employees, we confirm that income inequality has increased in Denmark. We also observe an increase in the relative employment of highly educated individuals, as well as differential income growth rates across employee subgroups where, in particular, managers experienced significant real income progression. We use an equilibrium search framework with on-the-job search to study the interplay between skill-upgrading, management compensation, and income inequality. In this model we can determine the management and education premia. We can also show that when our model is exposed to skill-upgrading, it is capable of producing income dynamics similar to those observed in the Danish income distribution. ( JEL J3, J6, M5) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The growing number of discouraged workers--those who leave the labor market despite their willingness to work--is a new employment problem facing the Korean economy. The existing literature has attributed this problem to the internal aspects of the labor market, including the power of labor unions, technological development, and a weakening work ethic. However, such approaches cannot explain how this problem has emerged historically. This study emphasizes two alternative factors. One is financial rationalization that has burdened industries with the pressure of cost reductions since the late 1990s and, thus, reduced their labor demand. The other is the hierarchical structure within Korea's industries that has accommodated the new financial rule in a way that excludes workers from the labor market. The chaebol's strategies for cost reductions, particularly squeezing small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and freezing further employment, have exacerbated the SMEs' problem of finding employment among young and female workers. The labor supply has shrunk, as families have protected these workers by withdrawing them from the labor market. This analysis implies that the global norm of financial rationalization becomes socially risky in Korea, not in and by itself, but because it is combined with Korea's local institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study of the U.S. automobile industry, we highlight the way the division of innovative labor across firms in the supply chain can be influenced by a particular form of digital innovation known as "digital control systems." Digital control systems are becoming ubiquitous in complex products, and these digital innovations integrate other components across a product structure and introduce a level of indeterminacy and unpredictability in the organization of the interfirm division of innovative labor. Much of organizational scholarship holds that accompanying a shift toward increasingly modular product structures, component suppliers are engaging in relatively more design and invention around the components that they supply. We find that the evolution of digital controls may reverse this pattern, because in the wake of a major shift in the digital controls technology, suppliers actually engage in relatively less component innovation in comparison with their large manufacturing customers. To explain this shift, we characterize complex product structures in terms of two distinct product hierarchies: the inclusionary and the digital control hierarchy. In using this distinction to analyze the evolution of automotive emission control systems from 1970 to 1998, we reconcile two competing views about the interfirm division of innovative labor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study turnover and promotions of division managers in multidivisional firms. Turnover is negatively related to divisional accounting performance, positively related to industry performance, but not significantly related to firm performance or the performance of other divisions. Consistent with tournament theory, promotions are significantly related to whether one division is performing better than others, but are not significantly related to the magnitude of any performance difference. A simple performance metric, divisional ROA, appears more closely related to job allocation decisions than several alternatives. Our evidence is consistent with the hypothesis that accounting information is used by firms when evaluating managerial personnel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents studies that focus on the small firms' behavior and practices. A framework based mainly on low-wage family-owned firms was identified to describe different types of small firms. The framework was tested out in the context of high technology and non-family-owned firms. It discusses the basis of evidence in differentiating firms including product market, labor market, resources, strategy, rules, management styles, and network embeddedness. The implications of the type of firm to the competitive strategies are also explained.

This broad analysis of the employment of blacks in metropolitan areas examines the role of residential segregation in comparison with four other key structural explanations for racial metropolitan inequality: industrial composition, minority concentration, immigration, and the racial disparity in skills. The goal of the analysis was to determine whether the spatial configuration of blacks relative to whites in a metropolitan area influences the employment rates of black men and black women in the context of the structural conditions of the local labor market. The study expanded the analysis of space and work beyond an emphasis on the physical distance between black communities and jobs to a broader conceptualization of residential segregation as a structural feature of the entire metropolitan labor market that is representative of its social organization with regard to race. Using a longitudinal data set of the structural characteristics of the 95 largest U.S. cities from the 1980, 1990, and 2000 decennial censuses, the study used a cross-sectional analysis of the cities in 2000 and a fixed-effects analysis to assess the impact of five dimensions of residential segregation and the four other structural factors on the employment of blacks across different labor markets and across time within each labor market. The results revealed that when the other structural characteristics are controlled, the employment rates of blacks are lower in more segregated cities and decrease as cities become more segregated over time. The clustering and evenness dimensions of residential segregation were the most determinative of black employment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how organizational environments affect labor market processes in Japan. I hypothesize that labor market inequality is generated through workers being "positioned" in either domestic or in foreign firms. I apply the concept of social versus economic exchange to distinguish the nature of transactions between domestic and foreign firms. I argue that foreign firms operate under an institutional context that is conducive to the economic mode of exchange, which has enormous consequences for their personnel practices and reward systems. Using a dataset of Japanese workers collected in 2000, I examine the extent to which employment practices in foreign firms deviate from the benchmark features observed in the Japanese labor market. My results confirm that employment in foreign firms significantly affects career outcomes. The high-commitment culture commonly associated with the Japanese workforce is an outcome of the organizational environment. I find little evidence of Japanese employment practices (e.g., seniority and lifetime employment) operating within foreign firms. I also find that workers in foreign firms trust their employers less and have a higher propensity to quit their jobs. My findings suggest that workers in domestic and foreign firms are subject to vastly different sets of institutional constraints. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers how local firm histories influence individual turnover rates in organizations. We argue that position imprints—the legacies left by the first incumbents of particular functional positions—constrain subsequent position holders. We show that the functional experience of the person who creates a position influences the turnover rate of successors who later occupy that position. When the first position holder has an atypical background, all successors experience high turnover rates. Individuals who are both typical with respect to the normative environment and similar to the position imprint have the lowest turnover rates. Surprisingly, we find lower turnover rates among individuals who match the position imprint even if they violate normative expectations. Thus, contrary to institutional theory predictions, we find that local firm histories dominate. In revealing how social structures emerge within firms and affect individual outcomes, our research revisits core topics of bureaucratization and organizational stratification including idiosyncratic jobs, occupational segregation, and differential mobility. In addition, we integrate structuralist and interactionist perspectives on role theory by considering how roles are created. Finally, in demonstrating the effects of position imprints on successor mobility we add a temporal dimension to theories of turnover. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article aims to provide an overview of the forces at work in the Chinese urban labor market, using a database that allows for a better evaluation of direct nonwage benefits and taking into account differences in hours worked. Earnings differentials among enterprises of different ownership are investigated. The proportion of observed earnings gaps that can be attributed to differences in characteristics of workers, differences in hours worked and incomplete labor market integration are studied. The structure of the Chinese labor market after ten years of reforms is also analyzed. Instead of privatizing state-owned enterprises, the Chinese government has chosen to reform the state sector while at the same time encouraging the emergence of a competing nonstate sector, especially through preferential policies toward foreign direct investment.

This article describes an embedded framework for analyzing workplace relations. The author argues that the contemporary workplace is embedded to varying degrees in three force-fields: the macro field of globalization and new technology, the meso field of transnational production networks, and the micro field of local political and labor market institutions and organization structure and culture. The article explores the effect of these influences on management, particularly the way flexibility and cost reduction are prioritized, and the consequences of this for workplace structures and relations. This analysis provides a relevant and shared context for the issues explored in the following five articles. These are briefly introduced in the final section of this article. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on team gender and racial composition with respect to team effectiveness is reviewed. Published literature shows a dearth of studies on this issue in work organizations. The studies published suggest that teams with even slight variability on gender and race will be less positively evaluated. These suggestions are tested in a field setting, using 31 teams in a medium-sized state regulatory agency that were rated by team members and outside raters. Results showed that members of cross-functional project teams that vary with respect to gender or racial composition rate their team as less effective than members of homogeneous (all-male or all-White) teams. Ratings of external evaluators show no differences based on team composition. Antecedents and effects of these evaluations on female and minority team members are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents ongoing studies on research methods and information sources as of April 1984. Analysis of regional and labor market is being undertaken by Morris Kleiner, Bob McLean, Ken Walker and Tony Redwood. Martha Jane Soltow is investigating the provision of library services to organized labor. A study of potential and actual private sector applications of program evaluation research has been undertaken by Robert Perloff. Randy Hodson is evaluating the reliability and explanatory power of various measured of industrial and organizational structure. A catalogue of the Canadian labor union documents has also been completed.