Labour market protection across space and time: A revised typology and a taxonomy of countries’ trajectories of change

We measure and interpret the evolution of labour market protection across 21 high-income countries over three decades, employing as conceptual foundations the ‘regime varieties’ and ‘trajectories of change’ developed by Esping-Andersen, Estevez-Abe, Hall and Soskice, and Thelen. We measure labour market protection considering four institutional dimensions – employment protection, unemployment protection, income maintenance and activation – and the evolution of the workforce composition. This measurement accounts for the joint evolution of labour market institutions, their complementarities and their relation to outcomes, and mitigate the unrealistic Average Production Worker assumption. We handle the multi-dimensional nature of labour market protection with Principal Component Analysis and capture the characteristics of countries’ trajectories of change with a composite score. We contribute to the literature in three ways. (1) We portray a revised typology that accounts for processes of change between 1990 and 2015, and that clusters regime varieties on the basis of coordination and solidarity levels, that is, Central/Northern European, Southern European, liberal. (2) We illustrate that, despite a persistent gap, a large majority of Coordinated Market Economies experiencing a decline in the level of labour market protection became more similar to Liberal Market Economies. (3) We develop a fivefold taxonomy of countries’ trajectories of change (liberalization, dualization, flexibility, de-dualization and higher protection), showing that these trajectories are not always path-dependent and consistent with regime varieties previously developed in the literature.

Building a Productive Workforce: The Role of Structured Management Practices

In an influential study, Bender et al. [Bender S, Bloom N, Card D, Van Reenen J, Wolter S (2018) Management practices, workforce selection, and productivity. J. Labor Econom. 36(S1):S371–S409] document consistent relationships between management practices, productivity, and workforce composition using administrative data from German firms matched to ratings of their practices from the World Management Survey. We replicate and extend their analysis using comparable data from Brazil. The main conclusions from their study are supported in ours, strengthening the view that more structured practices affect organizational performance through workforce selection across different institutional settings. However, we find that more structured management practices are linked to greater wage inequality in Brazil, relative to greater wage compression in Germany, suggesting that some of the consequences of adopting structured practices are tied to the local context. This paper was accepted by Joshua Gans, business strategy.

Extractivism and Labour Control: Reflections of Turkey’s ‘Coal Rush’ in Local Labour Regimes

This study analyses labour processes and local labour control strategies in the extractive industries and regions as the reflections of state-capital-labour-nature relations. I argue that, for the analysis of labour control in extractive industries, there is a need to pay attention to (i) the significance of the natural resource for global capital accumulation processes and for the development policies of the state; (ii) the formation of the local labour market through proletarianization of rural population and other means of labour supply; (iii) the organization of work considering both natural limits (such as geological structure of the basin) and workforce composition; and (iv) the use of local political, institutional and community dynamics. Drawing upon the fieldwork carried out in Soma Coal Basin, this paper shows how Turkey’s coal rush shapes local labour control strategies.

Engaging Contract Labour: Learnings from Landmark Judgements

Despite debates on its hiring, contract labour is a growing form of employment in India. Establishments usually maintain a workforce composition of both regular workers and contract labour for optimizing their available resources and ensuring financial prudence. However, in the process, they often get embroiled in compliance issues related to regularization and ‘equal pay for equal work’ in the context of contract labour. In this article, we have explored the different judicial interpretations of the Contract Labour (Regulation and Abolition) Act, 1970, on contract labour. For this, we have referred to the landmark judgements passed by the Supreme Court of India on the deployment and regularization of contract labour, and also their entitlement to equal pay for equal work. A scrutiny of these judgements directs us to advise establishments to avoid engaging contract labour in their core and perennial activities. Considering the statutory provisions and the possible legal complications, we have recommended some measures to establishments to mitigate the underlying risks in deploying contract labour alongside regular workforce in similar kinds of jobs or activities. We propose that the legislative framework grants flexibility to industries to generate employment to contract labour, without compromising on the rights of these workers.

Workforce Composition, Productivity, and Labor Regulations in a Compensating Differentials Theory of Informality

We develop a search model of informal labor markets with realistic labor regulations, including minimum wage, and heterogeneous workers and firms. Smaller firms and lower wages in the informal sector emerge endogenously as firms and workers decide whether to comply with regulations. Because skilled and unskilled workers are imperfect substitutes in production, the model uniquely captures the informality consequences of shocks that affect returns to skill, such as rising educational levels. The model also reproduces empirical patterns incompatible with other frameworks: the presence of skilled and unskilled workers in the formal and informal sectors, the rising share of skilled workers by firm size, and formal and firm-size wage premiums that vary by skill level. We estimate the model using 2003 data from Brazil and show that it successfully predicts labor market changes observed between 2003 and 2012. Under a range of different assumptions, changes in workforce composition appear as the main drivers of the reduction in informality over this period. Policy simulations using the estimated model suggest that progressive payroll taxes are a cost-effective way to reduce informality.

Workforce Composition of Public R&D and Performance: Evidence from Korean Government-Funded Research Institutes

How do the organizational attributes of public R&D organizations affect their performance? Recent researchers have focused on the relationship between R&D investments and performance or efficiency, and others suggest that performance may be affected by organizational factors. However, we focus on the attributes of R&D workforce excellence and diversity of R&D workforce, which can affect the performance of public R&D organizations. Therefore, we conduct a panel negative binomial regression and a focus group interview after empirical analysis to derive interpretations and implications. The results show that the effects of the diversity and excellence of an R&D workforce can vary depending on the type of performance: scientific, technological, or social. Overall, we call for a human resources and resource-based approach to consider the importance of R&D workforce composition, specifically diversity and excellence, in evaluating the performance of public R&D organizations.

ANALYSIS OF LABOR RESOURCES AND INCENTIVE SYSTEM FOR EMPLOYEES OF THE ENTERPRISE

The scientific article substantiates the importance of the analysis of labor resources for a modern enterprise. In the article the author conducts a comparative analysis of working time, qualitative analysis of the workforce composition and job categories, in addition, the role of material incentives as one of the most important factors of productivity growth.