Productivity labour adjustment costs. How do new hires and leavers (Incl. retirees) compare?

Labour turnover is a crucial element of contemporary economic life of firms. It can improve productivity if more productive workers replace less productive ones. However, in the short run, it generates sizeable labour adjustment costs (LACs), including productivity losses for firms. This paper sheds new light on the turnover-productivity relationship focusing on productivity LACs. We use firm-level 2014–2022 Belgian data with information on stayers, new hires and leavers: those who are fired, those leaving voluntarily, and those who are about to retire. We use the Hellerstein-Neumark (HN) framework to quantify the productivity of these different labour types, using stayers as a benchmark. We posit that evidence of significant productivity handicaps is a good indicator of productivity LACs. Results suggest no productivity LACs for new hires. By contrast, for leavers, they point to significant ones. What is more, findings for prospective (early) retirees indicate a very sizeable drop in productivity during their last year of employment

Telework

This chapter presents an overview of telework in critical management studie

Le télétravail, un mode de vie

Présentation extensive de l'ouvrage et discussion par un panel d'experts issus de la recherche et de la pratique

Bringing Ecological and Socioeconomic Justice Together: A Law & Political Economy Approach to Planetary and Earth System Justice

When addressing the global ecological poly-crisis, there is a tendency to focus predominantly on two of its components – climate change and biodiversity loss – and to ignore the other types of ecological degradations that put our lives, lifestyles and economies at risk. To holistically account for the entire spectrum of ecological crises and their complex interactions, Earth system science (ESS) emerged as an application of systems thinking to the global environment. However, these crises are deeply intertwined with economic systems and social demands, requiring an integrated legal approach to governance, taking account simultaneously of ecological and socioeconomic challenges and dynamics. On the front of human and social sciences, ESS has given rise to the interdisciplinary field of Earth system governance (ESG), which seeks to guide societies in preventing, mitigating, and adapting to global and local environmental changes. ESG places a particular emphasis on the “5 A’s”: architecture (of the international political and legal systems), agency, adaptiveness, accountability, and allocation & access (to resources). This framework not only addresses environmental sustainability but also economic equity and social welfare. Within this context, the legal dimension - particularly the establishment of binding and actionable norms – plays a pivotal role in operationalizing justice across global ecological-socioeconomic systems. Indeed, as the code of our contemporary globally integrated economies, law – public binding legislations and, increasingly, private non-binding norms – is in a unique position to allow for an ordered and inclusive encounter between ecological, economic and social interests. In particular, the question of justice is fundamental for the determination of priority between those interests. Curiously, research on justice in ESG has diverged into two distinct strands: Planetary justice (from the ESG Project) and Earth system justice (from the Earth Commission). Perhaps even more curiously, these strands have benefited from very scant contribution from legal expertise,even as Earth system law (ESL) has emerged as a critical field of inquiry. The absence of robust legal contributions to both Planetary and Earth system justice scholarships has limited their ability to create actionable frameworks that reconcile ecological goals with economic imperatives and social demands. This contribution’s objectives are threefold. First, it reviews and maps the split between Planetary justice and Earth system justice, analysing the variations, distinctions, and interconnections between these research agendas, including their implications for legal frameworks. Second, it identifies the legal shortcomings of the two approaches. Third, the paper proposes an ecological-socioeconomic justice framework that integrates insights from both strands, emphasizes the 5 A’s, and derives principles that are actionable within governance (including legal) systems, particularly with regards to the procedural, distributive, and corrective dimensions of justice. In addition to the two strands of research on justice in the Earth system, this framework builds in an interdisciplinary manner on the works of Amartya Sen and Maeve McKeown on justice, Peter S. Wenz on environmental justice, and Elinor Ostrom on polycentric governance. Recognizing the inherently political nature of refining such a framework, the contribution concludes with a reflection on its potential implications for the political economy of both States and the global system, highlighting existing initiatives – either political (like the French Convention citoyenne pour le climat) or already legal (e.g., due diligence legislations) – that align with the proposed approach and exploring their role in fostering equitable and sustainable ecological-economic governance

Mapping and monitoring peatland soil moisture using drone-borne Ground-Penetrating Radar

The moisture status of peatlands is an important factor as it directly affects carbon dynamics. Therefore, it is critical to characterize and understand peatland moisture status and to monitor its spatial and temporal variations. This study aims to evaluate the potential of drone-borne ground-penetrating radar (GPR) in combination with full-wave inversion to investigate the spatial and temporal variability of peatland root-zone moisture. A secondary objective is to assess its benefits for restoration applications. This study was carried out on a 4.5 ha peatland in the Belgian Hautes Fagnes which was previously degraded by forestry activities. Ground-penetrating radar measurements were conducted every 2 to 4 weeks for 17 months, resulting in 19 peatland soil moisture maps with a 5-meter resolution. Reference soil moisture data were collected using ground-based probes to enable comparison. The temporal variability showed an overall correlation of 0.71 between the GPR and the ground-based probes, indicating that this method effectively captures overall moisture dynamics across the entire study site throughout different seasons. In contrast, the spatial comparison of GPR with the ground-based probes showed a lower correlation, namely 0.23, which is attributed to the high micro-variability of soil moisture (on centimeter to meter scales) and the spatial mismatch between the measurements and their characterization areas and depths. However, we show that the spatial data contained high information content when applying a spatial clustering analysis to produce maps of homogeneous moisture classes. These clusters aligned well with other specific site characteristics, such as peat depth and vegetation composition, and can be used to support the planning of restoration efforts. This study introduces a new approach to studying peatland root-zone moisture and shows potential to guide and monitor peatland restoration strategies

Politicized Policies? The Cases of Employment Policies in Belgian and French Televised Public Debates

Employment policies are central to contemporary social models. According to liberal democratic principles, public debate around policies must be characterized by politicization, understood as a discursive process marked by contingency and controversy. Given the far-reaching transformations in employment policies, this study examines how they are (de)politicized in Belgian and French television news through a framing analysis of coverage from three points in time: 1995–96, 2005–06, and 2019. We then test differences between countries, time points, and speaker types using multinomial analysis. The results show that discourses are predominantly depoliticized, without significant country differences, but a decrease in the share of depoliticized frames over time. Moreover, trade unions and policy beneficiaries are more likely to produce politicized discourse as compared to other types of actors. These findings raise questions about the democratic quality of policy-making for employment and challenge taken-for-granted conceptions of liberal democratic theory

Habiter un quartier informel périphérique soumis aux inondations à Bujumbura : relations de voisinage autour de l’eau

La communication vise à contribuer à l’étude des rapports entre humains et eau dans le contexte d’une « urbanisation sauvage » (Nadia Khouri-Dagher, 1985) dans un quartier de la ville de Bujumbura (Burundi) soumis aux risques croissant de catastrophes socio-naturelles (Revet, 2007). Écologiquement fragile car positionnée le long du lac Tanganyika et au pied des contreforts, Bujumbura est très exposée aux aléas hydrologiques. Des inondations dues pour l’essentiel à des pluies torrentielles s’y observent de plus en plus fréquemment. De plus, la démographie galopante à l’échelle nationale s’accompagne d’un exode rural et de migrations urbaines vers les périphéries de la ville, conduisant à la prolifération de nouveaux quartiers sur les collines parmi lesquels des quartiers informels non pourvus d’infrastructures adéquates pour le drainage des eaux ménagères et pluvieuses. La communication interroge dans une perspective pragmatiste les rapports des habitant·es d’un nouveau quartier informel fortement exposé aux risques d’inondation avec ses matérialités hydrologiques. Elle s’appuiera sur une enquête de terrain en cours (initiée en septembre 2024) dans le quartier Gatunguru traversé par la rivière Gasenyi au Nord de Bujumbura, menée par observations directes aux échelles du logement et du quartier et par entretiens compréhensifs auprès d’une quinzaine d’habitant·es aux positions sociales et aux trajectoires résidentielles hétérogènes. Plus précisément, il s’agit d’une part, d’éclairer les rapports symboliques et pratiques des habitant·es, pris dans cette diversité, à l’eau et aux matérialités en lien avec l’eau, qu’elles soient naturelles (tels que les champs et la rivière) ou construites (tels que les canaux d’évacuation des eaux). La place que ces matérialités occupent dans la composition et la délimitation de leur environnement résidentiel vécu est notamment questionnée. D’autre part, la communication interroge la manière dont ces matérialités soutiennent et affectent les relations de voisinage : les alliances et les clivages (Young et Willmott, 2010) qui se forment autour de celles-ci, les pratiques de solidarité qu’elles soutiennent, les affordances (Gibson, 1979) qu’elles offrent aux formes locales de sociabilité. Enfin, ces analyses soutiennnent une réflexion plus théorique sur la relation entre le rural et l’urbain dans le contexte burundais, envisagé dans une perspective de cohabitation et d’hybridation entre des territoires et des sociabilités spécifiques questionnant le modèle classique dichotomique hérité de l’opposition société/communauté (Charmes, 2011)

CEO retirement and Cost Stickiness

Cost stickiness is a crucial concern in accounting research. Prior research sheds light on how cost asymmetry is shaped by managerial decisions in adjusting resources either for value maximization or self-interest. In this paper, we investigate the relationship between the degree of cost stickiness and intentional resource adjustments made by Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) approaching retirement age. Based on a sample of United States firms between 1993 and 2019, our findings indicate that CEOs approaching retirement tend to reduce their selling, general, and administrative (SG&A) expenses in response to declining sales. This effect is more pronounced when motivating and monitoring mechanisms are weaker. We also explore the influence of cultural differences on corporate decision making and find that the reduction in SG&A costs is more substantial among CEOs coming from countries with a stronger future oriented language. We conduct additional analyses to address endogeneity concerns and to check the robustness of our main findings

Towards a Practical Tool for Music Composition: Using Constraint Programming to Model Chord Progressions and Modulations

The Harmoniser project aims to provide a practical tool to aid music composers in creating complete musical works. In this paper, we present a formal model of its second layer, tonal chord progressions and modulations to neighbouring tonalities, and a practical implementation using the Gecode constraint solver. Since music composition is too complex to formalize in its entirety, the Harmoniser project makes two assumptions for tractability: first, it focuses on tonal music (the basis of Western classical and popular music); second, it defines a simplified four-layer composition process that is relevant for a significant number of composers. Previous work on using constraint programming for music composition was limited to exploring the formalisation of different musical aspects and did not address the overall problem of building a practical composer tool. Harmoniser's four layers are global structure (tonal development of the whole piece), chord progressions (diatonic and chromatic) and modulations, voicing (four-voice chord layout), and ornaments (e.g., passing notes, appoggiaturas), all allowing iterative refinement by the composer. This paper builds on prior work for voicing layer 3, \textit{Diatony}, and presents a model for layer 2, chord progressions and modulations. The results of the present paper can be used as input to \textit{Diatony} to generate voicing. Future work will define models for the remaining layers, and combine all layers together with a graphical user interface as a plug-in for a DAW