Institutional labor economics, the new personnel economics, and internal labor markets: A reconsideration

The author illustrates the utility of institutional labor economics and makes a case for a reconsideration of it. Two recent developments motivate this effort: the rise of New Personnel Economics (NPE) as a significant subfield of labor economics and the substantial shifts in work organization that have taken place since the 1990s. Understanding how and why firms have reorganized work opens the door for a renewed interest in institutional approaches. The author explains that the rules of institutional labor markets (ILMs) emerge from the competition between organizational interest groups—unions, personnel professionals, and the government—and competing views of firms’ objectives—resulting in the rise of ILMs, the slow diffusion of High Performance Work Systems, strategies used to obtain a high level of commitment from workers, the use of contingent employees, and the spread of new promotion rules in response to equal employment opportunity pressures. As such, the role of power and influence in establishing work rules is of central concern, though more conventional NPE considerations also remain important

Expansion of radio galaxies in a cosmologically evolving medium: Possible implications for the cosmic star-formation history

We compare earlier estimates of the volumes filled by lobes of radio galaxies during the quasar era based upon non-evolving ambient media with new ones assuming a strong cosmological evolution of the ambient medium. If the sources remain active for over 10^8 years the volumes filled by them are found to be comparable for the two scenarios. This strengthens our earlier inference that much of the cosmic web of gaseous filaments, the site of galaxy formation, was probably permeated by radio lobes during the quasar era and this could have triggered extensive star formation and made large contributions to the spread of magnetic fields and metals through the universe by z ~ 2.Comment: To appear in Bull. Astron. Soc. India; 10 pages, 3 Figures, basi.sty LaTex fil

Ports and Ladders: The Nature and Relevance of Internal Labor Markets in a Changing World

[Excerpt] Many believe that the nature of careers has changed dramatically in the past twenty years. One scholar writes that internal labor markets have been \u27demolished\u27, while a human resources manager at Intel comments that, in contrast to the past, today, \u27You own your own employability. You are responsible\u27 (Knoke 2001: 31). The idea of the \u27boundaryless career\u27 seems increasingly popular (Arthur and Rousseau 1996). If it is in fact true that the old rules for organizing work have disappeared, this would represent a fundamental change for employees. It would also have major implications for how scholars think about the labor market. Not surprisingly, the reality is more complicated, with evidence of both change and stability in the nature of the employment relationship. In this chapter we discuss the nature of these developments and their implications for the internal labor market literature

Les politiques de lutte contre le travail à bas salaire

Sur le marché du travail américain, 20 à 30 % des travailleurs occupent des emplois à bas salaire (selon le seuil retenu par l’auteur), qui se situent le plus souvent dans le secteur des services, tout en concernant un grand nombre d’activités et de professions. Dans ce contexte, la lutte contre les emplois à bas salaire et de faible qualité constitue un enjeu important pour les politiques publiques. Aussi, plusieurs leviers d’intervention sont-ils mis en œuvre aux États-Unis : outre la fixation de normes en matière de rémunération (salaire minimum – fixé au niveau des États – et autres standards), les syndicats et d’autres organisations ciblant les travailleurs (community organizations et worker centers) peuvent se mobiliser pour soutenir les salaires. En parallèle, des outils innovants ont été développés à l’échelon local, tels que la mise en place de « salaires décents » s’appliquant aux salariés des collectivités locales ou à leurs prestataires, et la fixation de critères de sélection afin que les entreprises bénéficiant d’aides au développement économique s’engagent à faire progresser leur politique en matière d’emploi.In the American labour market 20 % to 30 % of workers hold a low wage job (depending on the threshold utilized to define low wages). These jobs are mainly in the service sector, but include a large number of sectors and occupations. Given these magnitudes reducing the size of the low wage sector is an important goal for public policy. These policies include minimum wage and standard setting policies, as well as trade unions. Innovative policies have also been developed at the local level: organizing efforts by community organizations and worker centers, living wage ordinances that set decent wages that apply to local governments or their subcontractors, and linkages between wages and economic development incentives

The labor market for young men

Thesis. 1976. Ph.D.--Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning.Microfiche copy available in Archives and Rotch.Vita.Bibliography: leaves 242-252.by Paul Osterman.Ph.D

Strengthening the Healthy Start Workforce: A Mixed-Methods Study to Understand the Roles of Community Health Workers in Healthy Start and Inform the Development of a Standardized Training Program

Introduction Healthy Start (HS) is dedicated to preventing infant mortality, improving birth outcomes, and reducing disparities in maternal and infant health. In 2014, the HS program was reenvisioned and standardization of services and workforce development were prioritized. This study examined how HS community health workers (CHW), as critical members of the workforce, serve families and communities in order to inform the development of a CHW training program to advance program goals. Methods In 2015, an online organizational survey of all 100 HS programs was conducted. Ninety-three sites (93%) responded. Three discussion groups were subsequently conducted with HS CHWs (n = 21) and two discussion groups with HS CHW trainers/supervisors (n = 14). Results Most (91%) respondent HS programs employed CHWs. Survey respondents ranked health education (90%), assessing participant needs (85%), outreach/recruitment (85%), and connecting participants to services (85%) as the most central roles to the CHW’s job. Survey findings indicated large variation in CHW training, both in the amount and content provided. Discussion group findings provided further examples of the knowledge and skills required by HS CHWs. Conclusions The study results, combined with a scan of existing competencies, led to a tailored set of competencies that serve as the foundation for a HS CHW training program. This training program has the capacity to advance strategic goals for HS by strengthening HS CHWs’ capacity nationwide to respond to complex participant needs. Other maternal and child health programs may find these results of interest as they consider how CHWs could be used to strengthen service delivery. Keywords: Healthy start; Community health worker; Infant mortality; Maternal health; social determinants of healt

The Family Caregiving Dilemma

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/146879/1/pmr290.pd

Detection of Intra-day Variability Timescales of Four High Energy Peaked Blazars with XMM-Newton

We selected a sample of 24 XMM-Newton light curves (LCs) of four high energy peaked blazars, PKS 0548-322, ON 231, 1ES 1426+428 and PKS 2155-304. These data comprise continuous light curves of 7.67h to 18.97h in length. We searched for possible quasi-periodic oscillations (QPO) and intra-day variability (IDV) timescales in the LCs of these blazars. We found a likely QPO in one LC of PKS 2155-304 which was reported elsewhere (Lachowicz et al. 2009). In the remaining 23 LCs we found hints of possible weak QPOs in one LC of each of ON 231 and PKS 2155-304, but neither is statistically significant. We found IDV timescales that ranged from 15.7 ks to 46.8 ks in 8 LCs. In 13 LCs any variability timescales were longer than the length of the data. Assuming the possible weak QPO periods in the blazars PKS 2155-304 and ON 231 are real and are associated with the innermost portions of their accretion disk, we can estimate that their central black hole masses exceed 1.2 $\times$ 10$^{7}$ M$_{\odot}$. Emission models for radio-loud active galactic nuclei (AGN) that could explain our results are briefly discussed.Comment: 13 emulateapj pages, 2 tables, 4 figures, accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journa