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This paper highlights an inherent contradiction that exists within investment promotion activities in rich countries. Since the financial crisis, many inward investment agencies have shifted their activities from job creation per se to seeking to attract investment in high-tech activities. Such knowledge-intensive sectors are engaged in what has become referred to as “the war for talent”, so locations need to understand their value proposition to firms, especially where labour is tight. This paper explores the implications of this, in terms of the impact on employment and earnings of high skilled labour. We show that, because skill shortages already exist in many of these sectors, seeking to attract inward investment in these sectors simply causes the earnings of such workers to be bid up, and employment in the incumbent sector to fall. We highlight the over-riding importance that firms place on the availability of skilled labour when determining locations, and how policies which promote labour market flexibility, particularly through investment in skills to address skill shortages, can significantly mitigate the adverse effects, which tend to be more keenly felt in poorer regions of Europe where skilled labour is in even shorter supply.

According to the OECD, active employment policies include all social expenditure that are directed at improving the chances of finding a job and income generation (except education). Active labour market policies are around to assist in enhancing labour market flexibility at the times of economic changes. Their key components are the so-called activation strategies that act as typical prerequisites of benefitting from unemployment security/support systems in every EU country. The workfare concept lies behind the public work programmes. There are serious professional debates whether public work can primarily be seen as a ’compulsion and work test’ or, rather, as an opportunity of entering the primary labour market. The available efficiency analyses unanimously state that public work forms have the biggest role in testing willingness to work and the obligatory nature is the strongest of all active labour market policies. Research also indicates that public work reintegrates only few people back to the primary labour market and the majority are restrained from seeking a job and other income generating activities. There are several reasons for and against public work and opinions differ. The paper summarises the benefits and drawbacks on the basis of international and Hungarian analyses.

The post-reform scenario of inflow of capital and technology associated with labour market flexibility has changed the employment portfolio in Indian manufacturing industries. The shift of workers from directly employed status to contractual status has resulted in wage differences in different ways. This study is an attempt to determine inter-labour, inter-temporal and inter-state wage differences. The study also finds the impact of capital–labour ratio and labour productivity on wage disparity and the possibility of wage convergence (if any). The study is based on secondary data. Using simple statistical techniques and applying ordinary least square method, the study finds a difference in average daily earnings of directly employed workers and contract workers. The difference is found to be high from the average daily earnings of all employees. This is on account of increasing importance of non-production workers in relation to production workers in the manufacturing sector. Consequently, the share of wages in total emoluments is decreasing. The study suggests increasing labour productivity via appropriate education and skill in order to deal with wage disparity and drive the wages towards convergence in the long run.

Supply-side economists made numerous pleas for removing labour market rigidities through ‘structural reforms’. From a Schumpeterian viewpoint, however, one can argue that labour market rigidities create useful incentives for innovation. Our estimates on German panel data (2007–2015) support the Schumpeterian view. Using the taxonomy of industries by Peneder (2010) we find that evidence of the Schumpeterian view is particularly strong in R&D intensive manufacturing industries, as well as in service industries with high degrees of cumulativeness of knowledge. Evidence of the Schumpeterian view is weaker in low-technology industries and in start-ups when firms rely more on generally available knowledge rather than on firm-specific and tacit knowledge accumulated in the past.

This chapter examines the character and impacts on workers’ lives and strategies of labour market ‘flexibility’ through a case study of corporate food retailing. It expresses the sense of detachment and isolation that these working people come to feel in their experiences with ‘flexibility’. Changes in the local economy during the 1990s have meant a decline of its predominantly manufacturing base, which in the past had nurtured powerful union organisations. The chapter suggests that through these changes, worker subjectivity and attempts to make sense of restructuring also change. Specifically, workers tend to internalise the responsibility for their own survival at an individual level. In South Africa, retailers have also resorted to downsizing to lower wage bills, together with an increasing use of ‘casual’ and subcontracted labour. The impact of labour market flexibility combines a segmentation of workers at work and increasing economic insecurity in their households.

This paper examines the prevalence of non-standard workers in EU-28, rules for accessing social security, and these workers’ risk of not being able to access it. It focuses on temporary and part-time workers, and the self-employed, and offers a particularly detailed analysis of their access to unemployment benefits. It focuses on eligibility, adequacy (net income replacement rates) and identifies those workers which are at the greatest risk of either not receiving benefits or receiving low benefits. It offers a special overview of foreign non-standard workers, who may be particularly vulnerable due to the absence of citizenship in the host country. The paper also analyses access to maternity and sickness benefits for these three groups of workers, as well as their access to pensions. Its key contribution is in bringing together the different dimensions of disadvantage that non-standard workers face vis-a-vis access to social protection. This allows us to comprehensively assess the adaptation of national social security systems across EU-28 to the changing world of work over the past 10 years. The paper shows that there is a lot of variation between the Member States, both in the structure of their social security systems, as well as the prevalence of non-standard work. Most notably, the paper concludes that: i) access to unemployment benefits is the most challenging component of welfare state provision for people in non-standard employment; ii) policy reforms vis-a-vis access to social benefits have improved the status of non-standard workers in several countries, while they have worsened it in others, particularly in Bulgaria, Ireland and Latvia; iii) some Eastern European countries can offer lessons to other Member States due to their experiences with labour market challenges during transition and the subsequent adaptations of their social security systems to greater labour market flexibility. The paper also implies that a country’s policy towards non- standard work cannot be examined in isolation from its labour market conditions, as well as its growth model, and that uniform policy solutions for non-standard work cannot be applied across EU-28.

About 13 percent of Canadian workers have skills mismatched to their jobs. Although this is somewhat in line with an average of around 10 percent among OECD countries in an international survey, Canadian policymakers have two reasons for concern. Firstly, there is significant variation across socioeconomic groups. While workers with higher educational attainment are more likely to be over-skilled, women, immigrants, and older workers are more likely to be under-skilled for their jobs. In the case of immigrants, the under-skilled problem entirely disappears with time spent in Canada, highlighting the importance of settlement policies that provide rigorous and accessible skills training, language programs, and job-search workshops for newcomers. Secondly, these results could worsen in the years ahead in the face of technological development and demographic aging that are occurring in the labour market at the same time as the role of newcomers in Canada’s labour force is growing. As it is, the majority of workers across occupations need to use cognitive skills such as literacy, numeracy, and problem solving at least once a week at work. More importantly, there is no occupation where these skills are not required at all. This study’s results highlight the importance of providing more opportunities for skills development and lifelong learning for all workers and better addressing individual training needs, particularly, among underskilled people such as older workers and new immigrants. Businesses – in addition to providing training opportunities for under-skilled workers – can reduce mismatches within their organizations by appropriately reassigning tasks, providing relocation assistance and finding innovative ways to use workers’ skills in order to optimize productivity. Governments can help reduce skills mismatch with policies that enhance labour market flexibility, ease labour mobility, and more importantly, increase participation in lifelong learning.

This policy brief considers what is the scope for addressing the challenges linked to irregular work schedules in EU social and employment policy. It first describes EU competence in the areas of work and employment conditions in order to assess what the EU institutions can de jure do to address irregular work schedules. It then evaluates what the EU can de facto do based on the current direction and agenda of its employment policy. This is followed by a more detailed discussion of two legislative acts at EU level in the areas most pertinent to irregular and variable work schedules, that is working time and employment contracts.

Chapter objectives This chapter will enable readers to understand the: nature and causes of labour market flexibility in two industries that are high users of precariously employed workers attraction of many employers in retail and hospitality towards a minimalist approach to workplace flexibility, despite policy settings that facilitate employee-oriented flexibility international literature demonstrating that the strategic implementation of flexible working practices can be beneficial to both employers and employees potential for implementing flexible working arrangements in a way that reduces the adverse impacts of events such as the Global Financial Crisis (GFC). Introduction As illustrated elsewhere in this book (see especially Chapters 2, 10 and 11), there has been a widespread shift in recent decades from full-time, ‘standard’ employment towards part-time, ‘non-standard’ employment, both in Australia and internationally. This trend has brought with it a proliferation of less secure, peripheral labour market participation. Focusing on retail and hospitality, two closely related industries that are characterised by high levels of ‘non-standard’ or precarious employment, this chapter examines how the strategic implementation of flexible working arrangements can enable people to achieve more secure and less peripheral labour market participation. The policy impetus for this discussion is provided primarily by the provisions of the Fair Work Act 2009 in relation to flexible working arrangements, set within the context of Australia’s experience during the Global Financial Crisis (GFC). The chapter indicates ways in which the use of flexible working arrangements can be implemented to expand equitable labour market participation and to reduce the impact of macro-economic fluctuations.

To assess potential public concerns, this paper examines theory and evidence surrounding graduate educational underemployment (overeducation) in this era of mass higher education. Using a new, validated, index of graduate jobs, we find that the prevalence of graduate underemployment across 21 countries is correlated with the aggregate supply–demand imbalance, but not with indicators of labour market flexibility. Underemployment’s association with lower job satisfaction and pay is widespread. Yet in most countries there are external benefits (social trust, volunteering, and political efficacy) associated with higher education, even for those who are underemployed. Taken together with existing studies we find that, in this era of mass higher education participation, under-employment is a useful indicator of the extent of macroeconomic disequilibrium in the graduate labour market. We conclude that governments should monitor graduate underemployment, but that higher education policy should be based on social returns and should recall higher education’s wider purposes.

In this paper, we develop a matching model with both permanent and temporary contracts to address situations in which the quality of a match formed by a worker-firm pair is not observable to both workers and firms. The screening and cost-saving aspects of temporary employment contracts are two primary reasons that firms use them, but screening has received little attention in the study of employment protection. We show that increasing dismissal costs decreases job creation and that higher dismissal costs are likely to reduce the hiring threshold for temporary jobs and raise the threshold for permanent jobs. We also examine how changes in dismissal costs affect the average productivity of permanent jobs and discuss the effectiveness of the policy of increasing labour market flexibility by weakening firing restrictions for permanent employment.

Many policymakers and economists have argued in favour of greater labour market flexibility as a part of structural adjustment reforms that are expected to improve economic performance. Existing post-Keynesian-Kaleckian (PKK) models are unable to address these issues because they assume away long-term labour by allowing employment to be short term and adjusting freely with output. This paper introduces long-term labour into PKK models. We develop a model that provides alternative ways of modelling labour market flexibility and suggest that when aggregate demand issues are important, an increase in employment flexibility is likely to have adverse growth and distributional impacts.

Following formal economic liberalisation in 1991, business, in particular big business, has gained increasing access to and influence over policy decision-making in India. Industry has been an outspoken critic of national labour laws and has lobbied extensively for greater labour market flexibility. While business has not been successful in influencing “official” labour reform at the national level, it was able to influence labour policy within the National Manufacturing Policy 2011, which curtailed labour protections and implemented “hire and fire” policies. Utilising qualitative data from 40 face-to-face interviews with policy stakeholders in New Delhi, India, this paper aims to explore how business was able to influence labour reform within this policy as well as underscore the wider social welfare implications that may follow. It will be argued that the ability of business to dictate labour reform, while strong, is somewhat variable as competing factors serve to constrain business influence. Furthermore, the extent to which labour laws are hindering manufacturing investment is widely debatable. Nevertheless, curtailment of labour protections, as afforded in this policy, will have a widespread and damaging impact on workers. While the policy promises to empower rural youth, provide gainful employment, and enable growth to become more sustainable and inclusive for its citizens, it is questionable whether these goals can be achieved alongside the curtailment of labour protections.

The share of non-standard jobs in total employment has increased in Germany over recent decades. Research tends to attribute this in particular to labour market re-forms and socio-economic change. However, it becomes clear upon closer inspection that macro trends alone cannot provide satisfactory explanations. A striking yet rarely acknowledged aspect of the development in Germany is a large occupational heterogeneity, which is true for both current working conditions and trajectories of change. A process of asymmetric change has been witnessed in recent years, increasing the gap between occupational groups. Given this process, it seems increasingly questionable to aggregate data at the national level. Therefore, this paper analyses the role of different types of non-standard employment across occupations in Germany, explaining variation between occupations with reference to institutional conditions, industrial relations and patterns of labour supply and demand, in particular skill requirements.

Part 1 State, society and employment: flexibility - in search of a new social settlement flexibility and policies in employment - reflections from several European countries the new employment flexibility - the perversion of an ideal part-time employment, the "social movement" and citizenship - work in the arts "modernization" or insecurity - labour market deregulation and state retrenchment - the British case. Part 2 Employment uncertainty and economic security: mobility of manpower in Europe and the transfer of social rights flexible labour markets, citizenship and pension provision - a view from the UK are proposals for pension reform compatible with adaption to employment flexibility? minimum wages, flexibility and social exclusion. Part 3 Citizenship rights, and employment security: labour market flexibility, security and self-respect flexibility, economic security and social rights citizenship and work obligation in Britain and France labour market flexibility in relation to citizenship conclusion.

Over this chapter, we go over the interplay between globalization, labour flexibility and labour standards. We highlight the discourse of flexibility of labour put out by bodies such as the World Bank and contrast it with the labour standards espoused by UN and ILO, particularly in relation to contract labour. It is also noted that international political interactions encourage many international organizations to selectively advocate decent labour standards and state regulations, while on other platforms the same organizations or their counterparts propagate deregulation and labour market flexibility. We conclude by emphasizing that both these—labour flexibility and labour standards—need to be balanced together to govern labour relations.

This paper looks at the recent past of the benefits system and employment services in the UK and how they have operated through more than five years of austerity. The UK presents an interesting case, as the unemployment rate following the financial crisis has recovered faster than expected. The major reforms of welfare-to-work programmes and cuts to the public sector, together with continued labour market flexibility, have been identified as the source of this triumph. Yet behind this apparent success story is another picture. Many public employment service programmes in the UK were contracted out to private employment agencies following the Coalition Government’s 2011 reforms. A much more restrictive and punitive benefits system and an emphasis on pushing people into work, whatever its quality or stability, has driven the rise of precarious and part-time employment.\ud \ud It is an important time to take stock of the effects of continued austerity and public sector job cuts, as well as the extreme shift to a deterrent model of benefit provision. Using the UK context, we might question what makes for a ‘successful’ story on job creation and what kind of social toll there is to advocating “a job, any job” through the benefits and employment services systems. In particular, I suggest that by paying attention to the experience of those who use the benefits and employment services systems, we might learn about the effects of austerity and welfare reform on public services in a more meaningful way.

New Zealand's highly regulated labour market existed in a wider environment of regulation. The government maintained high levels of intervention in areas such as imports and exports, money markets and banking. While the Employment Contracts Act 1991 represented a substantive break with the tradition of industrial relations in New Zealand, it was in keeping with the philosophy that had driven deregulation in other sectors of the economy since 1984. New Zealand has a unique social welfare system which expanded, in stages, during the twentieth century. The system is funded from general taxation rather than from targeted contributions and, in this respect, is unlike the social security systems in most other countries. The National government's labour market and social security changes were clearly designed to enhance labour market flexibility and reduce welfare dependency. A Labour/Alliance coalition government was formed following the elections in November 1999. Once again, industrial relations have been the subject of government attention.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper, with an organisational focus, is to offer a novel examination of the association between workforce nationality composition and workplace flexibility practices (WFPs), an under-researched topic with high potential benefits at microeconomic and macroeconomic level. Design/methodology/approach – British data are used, as the UK has experienced significant immigrant flows and has a relatively high level of labour market flexibility. The Workplace Employee Relations Survey 2011, sampling 2,500 British workplaces, offers for the first time data on workforce nationality. Via zero-inflated regressions, the number of non-UK nationals employed in a workplace is assessed against a wide range of numerical, functional and cost WFPs. Findings – There are significant links between WFPs and the employment of non-UK nationals, and these are distinct for non-UK nationals from the European Economic Area (EEA) when compared to non-UK nationals from outside the EEA. The former are more likely to be in “good” employment, with job security, working from home, job autonomy and training. Yet, both types of non-UK nationals are more likely to be employed in workplaces making high use of causal contracts. The implications of these results are discussed. Originality/value – The paper addresses the need to research migration from a relatively new perspective of WFPs while also taking into account the diversity of non-UK nationals. The topic is of importance to organisations, as well as to labour market and migration policymakers. Timely results are of value in view of heightened interest in migration.

The article deals with the comparative experience of women and men during the current crisis in eight of the European countries most affected by austerity and the challenge that recession and austerity represent for gender equality. Short term reductions in gender gaps and the female employment rate have been a common trend in all countries but the longer term trends are more important from a gender perspective. More labour market flexibility leads to a greater convergence of men’s and women’s employment conditions at the bottom of the labour market; reductions in public sector employment hamper women’s access to stable, protected and more equal jobs, while the withdrawal of the state from the provision of social care is interrupting the defamilialisation of care. However, as women’s employment remains vital for social reproduction at both the macro and household levels, gender equality must be an essential component of a progressive exit strategy from the crisis.

Empirical studies on the unemployment effects of labour market institutions show contradictory results. One explanation is that these institutions affect unemployment differently depending on the regime in which they operate. Because of good labour relations, institutional complementarities and a trade-off between external and internal flexibility, they produce distinctive effects in corporatist regimes. Based on empirical evidence from 20 OECD countries over the period 1985-2008, the author finds that, in corporatist labour markets, strict employment protection legislation reduces unemployment, and unemployment benefits have no negative effect. He also shows that high real interest rates, low capital accumulation and restrictive fiscal policy during recessions increase unemployment.What determines structural unemployment? The answer to this question is of crucial relevance to economic theory and policy - and to the well-being of societies. Yet so far there exists no empirical consensus explanation. Although many econometric studies have investigated this topic, their results are very ambiguous. According to the "standard explanation", structural unemployment is driven by labour market inflexibility. This view is shared by many authors who argue that unemployment is primarily the result of rigid labour markets (e.g. OECD, 1994; Nickell, 1997; IMF, 2003; Nickell, Nunziata and Ochel, 2005; Bassanini and Duval, 2006 and 2009).But other researchers object that the empirical support for this view is not conclusive. For example, Blanchard and Katz (1997, p. 68) argue that "the cross-country evidence on the relation of unemployment to rigidities is less than fully supportive". Fitoussi et al. (2000, p. 257), referring to the OECD Jobs Study series, find that "the institutional reforms in the OECD proposal can only be a small part of the story". Baker et al. (2004a, p. 15) consider the impact of labour market institutions on unemployment to be nebulous: "While it is possible to construct multivariate regressions that find significant relationships between various labour market institutions and the unemployment rate, it is also easy to construct equally plausible regressions that do not". Baccaro and Rei (2007, p. 563) show that "the impact of labor market institutions is, for the most part, not robust and that unemployment is mostly increased by high real interest rates and independent central banks". Freeman (2007, p. 19) remarks that "despite considerable effort, researchers have not pinned down the effects, if any, of institutions on ... unemployment and employment". Bell and Blanchflower (2009, pp. 15-16) conclude: "The orthodox explanation of unemployment that argues that institutions matter has been subject to fairly extensive econometric testing, and in recent years, the validity of the empirical results supporting this view has been called into question. It has proved difficult to ... show that any of the labor market rigidity variables work." And Stockhammer and KlA¤r (2011, p. 455) present evidence to the effect that "[l]abour market institutions do have an effect on unemployment, but it is a comparatively minor one. Macroeconomic variables have a much greater impact and among these capital accumulation ... and the real interest rate are the most important ones".The impact of labour market institutions on employment is thus the focus of an ongoing debate. Against this background, this article shows that one of the reasons why it is hard to detect a robust impact is that there exist different labour market regimes across the OECD countries. External labour market flexibility does not play the same role in determining unemployment in corporatist labour markets as in non-corporatist ones. This result remains robust after accounting for various macroeconomic variables, including real long-term interest rates, capital accumulation, and monetary and fiscal policy reactions to recessions.The remainder of the article is structured into four sections. …

Throughout much of the advanced industrial world the building and construction industry has been extremely reliant upon migrant workers to meet industry labour force needs. However, changes to work organisation in this sector, such as extended subcontracting chains and the increased significance of ‘phoenix’ operators, have reinforced greater recourse to migrant workers, especially temporary and undocumented workers. Considered in the broader context of the widespread embrace of labour market flexibility and state engagement with neoliberal-oriented labour market policies that include less-restrictive labour migration programs, organised labour has been confronted by new and quite different industrial challenges in responding to migrant workers. This article evaluates the significance of this shifting terrain in the construction sector for unions at the national, international and transnational level in engaging and organising migrant labour.

In the realm of managing industrial relations (IR), organizations are handicapped in two ways: the government?s labour regulations and compliance regime, and their own inability to extricate themselves from half-baked theories and poor management practices. Research findings indicate the growth of the informal sector at the expense of the formal sector, but with low productivity, low wages and virtually no job security. And in the formal sector, data indicates rising conflict often laced with brutal violence. While organizations in the formal sector wait for labour reforms towards greater labour market flexibility that would lead to greater labour mobility and higher productivity and employment in the formal manufacturing sector, they could undertake a paradigm shift in their IR strategy. Such a paradigm shift in IR strategy would not just obviate many of the ills besetting the industrial relations scenario, but provide a competitive advantage. Based on a year-long work in a steel tube manufacturing company in western India, this paper distils the architecture of a paradigm shift in IR strategy for organizational turnaround.

This paper makes use of a natural experiment to examine effects of potential capital losses and general attractiveness of pension schemes on employees' propensity to change jobs. On January 1st 2004, the two largest pension funds in the Netherlands, for civil servants and for the health care sector, changed their pension scheme from a final salary to an average salary. This industry-leve change excludes the possibility that a negative correlation between having a job with an attractive pension scheme and the number of labour market transitions is driven by self-selection of workers into jobs with an attractive pension arrangement. Using individual data covering the entire Dutch population, we estimate discrete choice models for job-to-job transitions. The results show that the number of job transitions of civil servants significantly increased at the onset of the new pension rules. The changing pension rules affected the propensity to change jobs for individuals working in the health care sector only to a smaller extent.

The steady rise of non standard employment relationships, such as temporary agency work, fixed-term contracts and marginal part-time work cloud the successes of Germany’s recent “employment miracle”. This paper discusses the labour market effects of the rise of atypical employment, especially with regard to fixed-term employment, temporary agency work and marginal part-time work. Based on existing research studies, we discuss whether these non-standard work arrangements are a way out of unemployment into regular employment, whether they create additional jobs or if there has been a replacement of standard employment and also whether the changes have contributed to stronger labour market flexibility and an increase in matching efficiency. In conclusion, results are summarized and gaps in research identified.

This paper contributes to the strategic human resource management literature by testing the three main approaches – the universalistic (‘best practice'), contingency and configurational – against an original database. Specifically, we examine: (1) the relationship between HR and firm performance, (2) the links between strategy, HR and the use of flexible employment contracts and (3) the moderating effects of strategy on the links between HR, flexible labour and firm performance. Using original data collected from manufacturing and service-sector companies, we find positive relationships between HR policies and practices and performance; that the relationship between HR and performance is dependent upon business strategy; and that companies pursuing an integrated approach to HR coupled with an innovator/quality-enhancer focus within their business strategy perform best. The use of external flexible labour reduces the effectiveness of HR, especially for those pursuing an innovator/quality-enhancer approach.

Labour market flexibility is often portrayed as a key to the competitive success of the UK and US economies. We surveyed several hundred firms in the UK, and using the resulting data (on over 200 manufacturing firms) this paper investigates the relationships between firms' use of flexible work practices, human resource systems and industrial relations on the one hand, and corporate performance on the other hand. The results suggest that 'low-road' practices – short-term contracts, a lack of employer commitment to job security, low levels of training and low levels of human resource sophistication – are negatively correlated with corporate performance. In contrast, it is found that 'high-road' work practices –'high commitment' organizations or 'transformed' workplaces – are positively correlated with good corporate performance. It is also found that human resource management practices are more likely to contribute to competitive success where they are introduced as a comprehensive package, or 'bundle' of practices. Significant interaction effects between human resource systems, trade unions and flexible work practices add further support to the bundling hypothesis.

This chapter focuses on how developments under the coalition government actually impacted upon immigrants in the context of a UK labour market that is increasingly dependent on their work. As the experience of the coalition demonstrates, tightening the grip through an incremental reduction of the rights of immigrants does not reduce actual levels of immigration. The situation for migrant workers in UK is affected by the way in which the rules are implemented and enforced, but also by a whole host of non-immigration law and policy that affect labour market conditions. Workers' rights in the UK are generally negatively rather than positively enforced. Business and employment regulation was subject to several reviews during the 2010-15 parliaments, reflecting a continuation of UK macro-economic strategy and the prioritization of job creation and labour market flexibility. The chapter examines immigration context, the existing institutional architecture, political challenge facing government taking power in 2010, before turning to the main legal and policy developments during period.

Recent policy in England has advocated the introduction of fast-track degrees to provide an alternative, shorter route to a bachelor’s degree. It has been argued that this will widen participation in higher education and increase labour market flexibility by providing an option in which undergraduates spend one fewer years out of the labour market. Critics have suggested that the outcomes from this new undergraduate option will be worse than those for students following the standard length of undergraduate degree (which is three years for most subjects studied at universities in England). This criticism is based on a belief that students on the shorter degrees will be encouraged to ‘cram’, having less opportunity for reflection that will foster a deep understanding. These arguments are evaluated using data which compare students following two and three year degrees in the same subjects at the same university.

The flexibility of European labour markets remains an important topic. At the policy level, there is a call for more labour market flexibility as globalisation and technological and organisational change are major drives of accelerated change in the economic environment. Furthermore, the ageing of the workforce may weaken its adaptability to labour market shocks because retraining and mobility are less profitable for older workers. Employers seem to react to such developments by becoming more hesitant to hire permanent workers for jobs which need little investments in skills and knowledge. Instead, they hire temporary workers in order to be able to absorb shocks in labour demand. The incidence of temporary employment is already high in countries such as Spain and Portugal, and now it is also at a rise in a country such as the Netherlands, where it according to OECD data increased from 11% of dependent employment in 1995 to almost 19% in 2010. At the societal level, labour market flexibility leads to concerns as to duality of the labour market. This duality may lead to inequality between core workers with permanent contracts and those with other contracts. The inequality is particularly related to bearing the burden of economic shocks and different opportunities to benefit from firms’ investments in the skills and knowledge of their workers. This will be less a

Background The relationship between labour market flexibility, job insecurity and occupational injuries is not univocal. The literature generally focuses on the temporary character of work arrangements rather than on the precarity of careers. The aim of this paper is to identify, without defining a priori what a precarious career is, the most common professional profiles of young people who entered the labour market in the 2000s and to correlate them with occupational injury risks. Methods Using the Whip-Salute database, which combines individual work and health histories, we selected the subjects under 30 years of age whose first appearance in the database is dated after 2000. The occupational history of each individual between 2000 and 2005 was described according to 6 variables (type of entry contract, number of contracts, number of jobs, economic activities, work intensity and duration of the longest period of non-employment). Workers were grouped into homogeneous categories using cluster analysis techniques, which enable to identify different career profiles. Injury rates were calculated for each cluster, and compared within and between the groups. Results We selected 56,760 workers in the study period, who were classified in 6 main career profiles. About 1/3 of the subjects presented an employment-secure career profile, while about 45 % of them were classified into 3 clusters showing precarious career profiles with different work intensities. Precarious workers present significantly higher injury rates than those with secure careers, with an increase in risk between 24 and 57 % (p

An amendment to legislation in 2009 enabled New Zealand firms with fewer than 20 employees to hire new workers on trial periods. The scheme was subsequently extended to employers of all sizes. The policy was intended to encourage firms to take on more employees, and particularly more disadvantaged job seekers, by reducing the risk associated with hiring an unknown worker. We use unit record linked employer-employee data and the staggered introduction of the policy for firms of different sizes to assess the policy effect on firm hiring behaviour. We find no evidence that the policy affected the number of hires by firms on average, either overall or into employment that lasted beyond the trial period. We also do not find an effect on hiring of disadvantaged jobseekers. However, our results suggest that the policy increased hiring in industries with high use of trial periods by 10.3 percent.

This paper examines labour market flexibility in various definitions and its impact on innovation. The results demonstrate that the relationship strongly depends on the type of innovation as well as the predominant innovation regime in which a company operates. Thereby, labour market flexibility does not influence innovation in an entrepreneurial innovation regime characterised by high competition, low market entry barriers and generally available knowledge. That might explain why the Silicon Valley has been successful despite of having a labour market with a strong strong hire and fire mentality. In contrast, labour market flexibility significantly reduces the likelihood of innovation in a routinised innovation regime with leading innovators and high entry barriers similar to the US automobile industry and steel districts that did not succeed. These findings emphasise that the currently discussed structural labour market reforms might hamper innovation as technological change still requires a level of security and stability.

This paper seeks to identify the extent of labour market flexibility in Croatia. It measures different dimensions of flexibility using a range of various indicators and compares them against available indicators for EU member countries. The presented evidence runs counter to some of the previous research as several of the selected indicators point to significant flexibility in their domains. However, there also remain some weak points where appropriate policies need to be designed in order to bring the expected flexibility.

Housing conditions in Belgium are among the best in OECD countries according to the Better Life Index, as dwellings are of high quality and large, and housing costs are average. However, the steep increase in house prices since 2003 has put market access for first-time buyers under pressure. Housing affordability is also deteriorating for the poor, as demand for social housing has not been met while the private rental market has become expensive. As a result, access to housing is at risk of becoming less equitable if the young and poorer people are priced out. Affordability for poorer people could be improved by expanding the regional rental allowance schemes. In parallel, scaling down the disproportional support for homeownership would free up public resources and reduce the bias towards homeownership. Other challenges to the efficiency of the housing market are posed by the high level of greenhouse gas emissions due to the old age of the housing stock and the low residential mobility, which harms the labour market and contributes to congestion and air pollution. To maintain an efficient housing market, policies should aim at increasing building densities in residential areas. Tilting taxation from transaction to recurrent taxes would lower barriers for residential mobility and contribute to labour market flexibility. This Working Paper relates to the 2015 OECD Economic Survey of Belgium (www.oecd.org/eco/surveys/economic-survey-belgium.htm)

High commitment or high performance work systems (HPWS) are a managerial approach aimed at facilitating high performance companies by transforming employees from merely being workers into partners with employers in realizing company goals. To achieve this HPWS use human resource practices that draw on employee commitment, involvement and empowerment. The pursuit of HPWS with employees in export-oriented industries (EOI) in newly industrializing economies (NIEs) of Malaysia and Sri Lanka is explored here. The discussion confirms a number of difficulties in realizing the aims of an HPWS approach because employers simultaneously pursue labour market flexibility (LMF) practices. As a result, this hybrid labour management model fractures workers' commitment thus leading to a mismatch between the ‘talk’ and ‘walk’ of HPWS in these environments with significant implications for employers.

Flexibility is a vaguely defined media buzzword connoting the progressive, forward-looking workplace. Employers report that increased labour market flexibility has made them more cost-effective, efficient, better able to deal with customer and employee demands and the implementation of new technology. But what is happening to those workers who make up the flexible workforce? For a while in the 1980s it seemed that flexibility could do no wrong; now, however, the shortcomings of flexible labour markets are becoming more apparent.

We often hear that the high unemployment rates of low-educated workers in Europe are due to the rigidities of the institutions increasing the labour costs that burden employers. In this article, we challenge this traditional view and offer alternative explanations to the cross-national variation in the employment rate of low-educated workers. Using macro-data and an error correction model, we analyse the determinants of the creation of jobs for low-educated workers in 19 countries between 1997 and 2010. Our findings tend to invalidate the neoliberal view, while also pointing to the positive impact of investing in public employment services and the predominant role of economic growth, which can be weakened by union density and employment protection in the case of male workers. Last but not least, creating low skill jobs has no or little impact on the employment outcomes of low-educated workers, thus indicating job displacement issues.

In the time of a knowledge-based economy, flexibility has become increasingly important for both employers and employees. The process of making the labour market flexible leads to the greater popularity of atypical forms of employment, with fixed-term employment contracts among them, which are considered to be less consistent with the protective function of labour law in comparison with indefinite- term employment contracts. The right balance between labour market flexibility and job security has become a real concern. Taking into account the legal regulations on fixed-term employment contracts which are now in force in Poland and Switzerland, this paper determines how that relationship has been shaped in those countries with reference to fixed-term employment contracts. W dobie gospodarki opartej na wiedzy, elastyczność staje się istotna dla pracodawcy i pracownika. Dążenie do większej elastyczności na rynku pracy powoduje wzrost popularności atypowych form zatrudnienia, w tym także umowy o pracę na czas określony, które jednak są uważane za mniej bezpieczną formę zatrudnienia w porównaniu do umowy o pracę na czas nieokreślony. W tych warunkach istotnym wyzwaniem staje się zachowanie właściwej równowagi między elastycznością rynku pracy a bezpieczeństwem zatrudnienia. Opierając się na analizie regulacji prawnych o umowie o pracę na czas określony obowiązujących w Polsce i w Szwajcarii, przedmiotem niniejszego artykułu jest ustalenie jak powyższy stosunek został ukształtowany w odniesieniu do umowy o pracę na czas określony.

Examining the occupational variation within non-standard employment, this book combines case studies and comparative writing to illustrate how and why alternative occupational employment patterns are formed. Through expert contributions, a framework is developed integrating explanations based on labour market regulation, industrial relations and skill supply, filling the gaps in previous scholastic research.

The Hartz-Commission recommends the reduction of unemployment by increasing the efficiency of the labour bureau, increasing the number of low-wage jobs and subsidising firms which employ unemployed. In addition benefits especially for long-term unemployed should be cut. The hope to cut unemployment by these measures by two million until 2005 is far to optimistic. The theoretical basis of the Hartz-proposals are weak. It is not seen that changes in the structure of wages or changes in distribution generally modifY the structure of relative prices and the technology. Lower wages in these case may not lead to higher employment. The Hartz-proposals completely neglect macroeconomic dimensions of economic policy and completely concentrates on labour market flexibility and higher efficiency of the labour bureau.

In this paper we present comparative evidence from OECD countries concerning the impact of labour market institutions and regulations on technological specialization. The interplay between the degree of labour market flexibility, the system of industrial relations and the knowledge base of different industries determines the viability of different human resource strategies, thereby shaping the patterns of comparative advantage. Our empirical results show that countries with coordinated industrial-relations systems and strict employment protection tend to specialize in industries with a cumulative knowledge base. We argue that two mechanisms explain these patterns. The larger the scope for resorting to internal labour markets, the lower the adjustment costs imposed by labour market regulation. Furthermore, employment protection and coordinated industrial-relations regimes, by aligning workers' and firms' bjectives, encourage firm-sponsored training as well as the accumulation of firm-specific competencies, allowing firms to fully exploit the potential of the internal labour market. Copyright 2002, Oxford University Press.