Revolution or Evolution: The Transformation of Japanese Personnel Practices

[Excerpt] Ever since Japan reemerged as an economic power from the ruins of the World War II, it is striking how the pace and magnitude of economic and social changes facing the country continue to increase. The rapid growth of the late 1960s, the successive of oil shocks, the revaluation of the yen, the changes in global competitive position in many industries, the spread of information technology, the aging of the society, the enlargement of the middle class and consequent increase in discretionary consumption, all these factors have had a major impact on the organizational culture and climate in Japanese firms

Career Service work in Germany during the Bologna Process

The roots of today Career Service (CS) work can be traced back to the education policy of the 1960s and 1970s. The work then focused on the relation between universities, working environment and society. University graduates were increasingly seen as economical growth and innovation factors and education with a practical orientation became the main aspect. During the late 80s the first “job preparation initiatives” developed at German universities. These were the stepping stones for today CS work. One of the securely established institutions in this field in Germany is the Career Service “Studierende & Arbeitswelt (S&A)” founded in 1989 at the University of Cologne. Since 1999 there has been an increasing interest in CS work in the course of the Bologna reform. This growing interest is also a result of introducing a new degree system. The focus of CS is to improve the students' employability. Practical, vocational oriented qualification should be an integral part of occupational bachelor-degree programs as well as of scientifical master-degree programs. CS-centers function as gateways between university and work environment and have expertise and competence in the field of applied learning. As service and transfer units they form nodal points for students, teachers, administration and employers. With its segments of information, advising, qualification, and contact management, CS offers a wide range of services in order to provide links to the working world. The increasing formation and expansion of CS at German universities was promoted by academic political referral engines. At present, structural and contentual changes in CS areas are being carried out

Assessing collaborative learning: big data, analytics and university futures

Traditionally, assessment in higher education has focused on the performance of individual students. This focus has been a practical as well as an epistemic one: methods of assessment are constrained by the technology of the day, and in the past they required the completion by individuals under controlled conditions, of set-piece academic exercises. Recent advances in learning analytics, drawing upon vast sets of digitally-stored student activity data, open new practical and epistemic possibilities for assessment and carry the potential to transform higher education. It is becoming practicable to assess the individual and collective performance of team members working on complex projects that closely simulate the professional contexts that graduates will encounter. In addition to academic knowledge this authentic assessment can include a diverse range of personal qualities and dispositions that are key to the computer-supported cooperative working of professionals in the knowledge economy. This paper explores the implications of such opportunities for the purpose and practices of assessment in higher education, as universities adapt their institutional missions to address 21st Century needs. The paper concludes with a strong recommendation for university leaders to deploy analytics to support and evaluate the collaborative learning of students working in realistic contexts

Accounting for Wage and Employment Changes in the U. S. from 1968-2000: A Dynamic Model of Labor Market Equilibrium

In this paper, we present a unified treatment of and explanation for the evolution of wages and employment in the U.S. over the last 30 years. Specifically, we account for the pattern of changes in wage inequality, for the increased relative wage and employment of women, for the emergence of the college wage premium and for the shift in employment from the goods to the service-producing sector. The underlying theory we adopt is neoclassical, a two-sector competitive labor market economy in which the supply of and demand for labor of heterogeneous skill determines spot market skill-rental prices. The empirical approach is structural. The model embeds many of the features that have been posited in the literature to have contributed to the changing U.S. wage and employment structure including skill-biased technical change, capital-skill complementarity, changes in relative product-market prices, changes in the productivity of labor in home production and demographics such as changing cohort size and fertility.Male-Female Wage Differential, Wage Inequality, College Wage Premium

Accounting for Wage and Employment Changes in the U.S. from 1968-2000: A Dynamic Model of Labor Market Equilibrium

This paper presents a unified treatment of and explanation for the evolution of wages and employment in the U.S. over the last 30 years. Specifically, we account for the pattern of changes in wage inequality, for the increased relative wage and employment of women, for the emergence of the college wage premium and for the shift in employment from the goods to the service-producing sector. The underlying theory we adopt is neoclassical, a two-sector competitive labor market economy in which the supply of and demand for labor of heterogeneous skill determines spot market skill-rental prices. The empirical approach is structural. The model embeds many of the features that have been posited in the literature to have contributed to the changing U.S. wage and employment structure including skill-biased technical change, capital-skill complementarity, changes in relative product-market prices, changes in the productivity of labor in home production and demographics such as changing cohort size and fertility.gender wage differential, college wage premium, sectoral changes

Subject: Groups and Organizations

Compiled by Susan LaCette.GroupsandOrganizations.pdf: 992 downloads, before Oct. 1, 2020

Cities and Cultures

We investigate the existence of wage premium due to cultural diversity across US cities. Using census data from 1970 to 1990, we find that at the urban level richer diversity is systematically associated with higher average nominal wages for white US-born males. We measure cultural diversity in a city using the variety of languages spoken by city-residents. While the positive correlation between wages and diversity survives a battery of robustness checks, it seems to be larger once foreign cultures have been assimilated. Finally, instrumental variable estimation hints at causation going from diversity to wages. Comparing real and nominal wages across cities, we interpret these results as evidence that diversity enhances productivity.Cultural diversity, Productivity, Wages, Metropolitan areas

The association between graduates' field of study and occupational attainment in West Germany, 1980-2008

Over the course of higher education expansion and growing numbers of graduates, employers are supposed to have increasing difficulties to regard a higher education degree as reliable signal for productivity. As a consequence, they may take into account 'qualitative' differences such as graduates' field of study more often than in previous times when hiring labour market entrants. Both from a supply- and demand-side perspective graduates from humanities, social services or arts may be increasingly disadvantaged in terms of labour market outcomes compared to graduates from science, technology, engineering and mathematics over time. The article tests this argumentation by assessing changes in the relationship between graduates' field of study and risk of unemployment as well as access to the service class in West Germany between 1980 and 2008. Changes in returns to field of study may contribute to growing (social) inequalities among graduates amidst educational expansion and are therefore important to consider. Based on Microcensus data, the results show that field of study differences in terms of both labour market outcomes did not increasingly diverge over time. The paper concludes that due to a limited educational expansion and the prevalence of an occupationally segmented labour market higher education remains a good investment in terms of labour market returns in West Germany irrespective of graduates' field of study

Understanding employment systems from a gender perspective: pitfalls and potentials of new comparative analytical frameworks

Economic globalization, welfare state transformation as well as political and social change on national and supranational level impact on national labor markets in advanced societies in complex ways. From a gender perspective, these dynamics of change entail deregulation as well as re-regulation of employment systems and at the same time are triggered by shifts in gender relations. Addressing this complexity poses challenges to scholarly research comparing employment systems and systemizing cross-national variations of labor market regimes which tend to neglect gender relations as a relevant factor of change. This context sets the framework for our question on how ongoing changes in employment systems and in gender relations are taken up in recent scholarship. We focus on three approaches prominent in the mainstream scholarly debate which address the current state of employment systems in advanced economies in comparative perspective spanning from political economy to micro economics and economic sociology, namely the Varieties of Capitalism (VOC) approach (Hall/Soskice 2001), Marsden's micro-economic theory of employment systems (1999) and Fligstein's work 'The architecture of markets' (2001). The approaches differ in the assignment of agency (to firms, employees and the state) as well as in the assessment of the role of educational institutions for shaping employment systems. They thus dispose of different pitfalls and potentials for analyzing the gendered character of change of employment systems. -- Unter dem Einfluss von Globalisierung, Wohlfahrtsstaatstransformation und politischen und gesellschaftlichen Umbrüchen sind nationale Arbeitsmärkte in fortgeschrittenen Marktökonomien erheblichen Veränderungen ausgesetzt. In geschlechtssensibler Perspektive wird deutlich, dass hier nicht nur Deregulierung von Beschäftigung sondern auch Re- Regulierung eine Rolle spielt, ebenso wie Arbeitsmarktdynamiken auch durch Veränderungen im Geschlechterverhältnis beeinflusst sind. Diese Komplexität des Wandels stellt eine Herausforderung für die vergleichende Arbeitsmarkt- und Wohlfahrtsstaatsforschung dar, in deren Typisierung von Arbeitsmarktregimes Geschlechterverhältnisse nur begrenzt Berücksichtigung finden. Vor diesem Hintergrund fragen wir, wie in einschlägigen neueren Ansätzen zur Analyse von Arbeitsmärkten Wandel von Beschäftigungssystemen und Geschlechterverhältnissen konzipiert wird. Im Mittelpunkt stehen drei prominente komparatistisch ausgerichtete Konzepte: der polit-ökonomische Ansatz ‚Varieties of Capitalism’ (Hall/Soskice 2001), die mikro-ökonomische Theorie von Beschäftigungssystemen von David Marsden (1999) und Neil Fligstein’s wirtschaftssoziologischer Ansatz ‚The architecture of markets’ (2001). Wie die Ergebnisse zeigen, unterscheiden sich die Ansätze in der Identifikation von relevanten Akteuren (Betriebe, Beschäftigte, Staat) ebenso wie in der Rolle, die Ausbildungsinstitutionen für die Strukturierung von Arbeitsmärkten zugeschrieben wird. Damit ergeben sich für die Analyse von geschlechtsspezifischen Aspekten von Beschäftigung unterschiedliche blinde Flecken und Erkenntnispotentiale.

Labor Market Search and Schooling Investment

We generalize the standard search, matching, and bargaining framework to allow individuals to acquire productivity-enhancing schooling prior to labor market entry. As is well-known, search frictions and weakness in bargaining position contribute to under-investment from an efficiency perspective. In order to evaluate the sensitivity of schooling investments to "hold up," the model is estimated using Current Population Survey data. We focus on the impact of bargaining power on schooling investment, and find that the effects are large. A brief exploration of the two-sided investment model suggests that something akin to a "Hosios condition" result regarding the socially optimal surplus division rule may be attainable.Labor market search; schooling choice; hold-up; Nash bargaining