Job Seekers with Musculoskeletal or Sensory Disabilities: Barriers and Facilitators of Job Search

Drawing on interviews with job seekers and expert informants, we outline a model of the job search experience of people with disabilities. This model specifies the sequence of events involved in the pursuit of paid work and the contextual features that inhibit or facilitate job search attitudes, behaviours, intermediate search outcomes and employment outcomes. By contrasting the experiences of job seekers with musculoskeletal and sensory disabilities, and outlining the influence of major stakeholders in the form of employment agencies and family members, our model provides the basis for a more nuanced understanding of the job search process. Finally, we recommend points of intervention that are grounded in data for improving job search outcomes for people with disabilities in general, and for job seekers with musculoskeletal or sensory disabilities specifically.     

What turns you on and off?

When you are exploring your career and where you are headed, it is helpful to consider what aspects of your job turn you on, and of course, those that don't. Energizers are activities that excite and invigorate you or people who lift your heart and inspire you. De-energizers are activities or people who drain you, drag you down, depress you. Make lists of those things that energize and de-energize you either at work or in other situations. Try hard to do something to incorporate or change at least the first five on each list and see if you feel more job and life satisfaction. Responses from 30 participants of a recent Career Choices program are provided to help you get started.     

Reorganization of Firms and Job Stability: A Theoretical Approach

Abstract. This paper seeks to provide a theoretical explanation to the contradictory results found by the empirical literature concerning the effects of recent workplace organizational changes on job stability. We develop an endogenous job destruction model à la Mortensen‐Pissarides (1994) where a modernizing firm may offer to the worker a tayloristic job (traditional organization) or a holistic job (modern organization). We then study the evolution of job stability during the transition from a tayloristic to a holistic organization. Our results point towards the importance of the restructuring costs supported by firms during the modernizing trajectory as the main factor responsible for the variations in job stability.     

The Quality of Skill Acquisition in Young Workers' First Job

Young workers' experiences of their first job form an important stage in the transition from school to work, and the quality of that experience is likely to have a strong bearing on future chances in the labour market. We provide evidence on a key aspect of that experience, namely, whether the skills acquired during the first job are firm-specific or in some degree transferable. More than one in six young people acquired only firm-specific skills in their first substantial job. High levels of prior human capital, short training spells or training leading to qualifications tend to raise, while being in casual or temporary jobs tends to lower, the likelihood that transferable skills are acquired.     

Physician glut. Physicians--the next victims of "downsizing?"

Should physicians really be polishing up their CVs or preparing to enter another line of work? In a word: No. What a recent survey makes clear is that, while managed care is driving physicians from some markets, jobs are still available in other markets traditionally underserved by physicians. This is not to suggest that the physician employment market has gone unchanged. Many physicians, particularly specialists, have taken income hits, and some specialists truly are in need of work. Primary care physicians, however, have seen their stars rise and are now in a position to work wherever they want. Physicians may no longer be able to practice within 50 miles of where they were raised or where they were trained, as has been their wont. Instead, they will have to do what other professionals have long done--go where job opportunities take them. In short, they will have to add a career strategy to their scientific mindset, and that means an aggressive job search, coupled with a strong consumer orientation.     

Different degrees of informational asymmetry on job markets and its impact on companies’ recruiting success

Based on a large survey of German companies, we investigate the influence of job characteristics on the recruiting success on labor markets with different degrees of informational asymmetry. We cluster companies’ recruiting channels in those with low (internal job markets and employee referrals) and high (job advertisements, the Federal Employment Agency and headhunters) degrees of informational asymmetry. We provide evidence that monetary aspects are important when quality aspects of the job and the company are not directly observable by job applicants. However, if recruiting channels are used where the level of asymmetric information is lower because applicants have more reliable information about job and company characteristics, the quality attributes of a workplace, such as flexible work times or a high job responsibility, become influential on the recruiting success. Finally, our results show that applicants with access to more information about the quality aspects of a job also seem to be in a better position to evaluate the information given with regard to their credibility.     

Vacancy Referrals,Job Search,and the Duration of Unemployment: A Randomized Experiment

One goal of the Public Employment Service is to facilitate matching between unemployed job‐seekers and job vacancies; another goal is to monitor job search so as to bring search efforts among the unemployed in line with search requirements. The referral of job‐seekers to vacancies is one instrument used for these purposes. We report results from a randomized Swedish experiment where the outcome of referrals is examined. To what extent do unemployed individuals actually apply for the jobs they are referred to? Does information to job‐seekers about increased monitoring affect the probability of applying and the probability of leaving unemployment? The experiment indicates that a relatively large fraction (one‐third) of the referrals do not result in job applications. Information about intensified monitoring causes an increase in the probability of job application, especially among young people. However, we find no significant impact on the duration of unemployment.     

Ageing, health and productivity: A challenge for the new millennium

The economic implications of Europe's ageing population are considerable. Without an increase in the size of the working population, reducing the possible fiscal deficits will be difficult. This paper reviews this area of increasing concern for basic, applied and strategic researchers, namely how to increase the age at which people typically stop working, without damaging health or productivity. Chronological age per se may not be a good predictor of health and job performance; rather we should examine various mediating and moderating factors. It is argued that attention should focus on national and organizational policies, management attitudes, training, work demands, the working environment, work organization, the psychosocial environment and health promotion. Older workers may currently be subject to discriminatory practices and to stereotypical and inappropriate attitudes which may adversely affect their health and performance. Flexible and intelligent solutions are required. Many organizations, perhaps reflecting western culture, have not yet evolved to the point where the potential contribution of older people is recognized and allowed to flourish. Once current barriers are removed, and existing and developing knowledge applied, an optimistic picture for older workers emerges.     

Residential Location,Job Location,and Wages: Theory and Empirics

I develop a stylized partial on‐the‐job equilibrium search model that incorporates a spatial dimension. Workers reside on a circle and can move at a cost. Each point on the circle has a wage distribution. Implications about wages and job mobility are drawn from the model and tested on Danish matched employer–employee data. The model predictions hold true. I find that workers working farther away from their residence earn higher wages. When a worker is making a job‐to‐job transition where he/she changes workplace location he/she experiences a higher wage change than a worker making a job‐to‐job transition without changing workplace location. However, workers making a job‐to‐job transition that makes the workplace location closer to the residence experience a wage drop. Furthermore, low‐wage workers and workers with high transportation costs are more likely to make job‐to‐job transitions, but also residential moves.     

Physicians can ease nursing shortage

In spite of a small increase in nursing school enrollments for the first time in five years, the demand for nursing services will continue to outstrip the supply during this decade. The solutions to this dilemma are obvious: More efficient use of the current supply of nurses and increased numbers of people entering the nursing profession. This article addresses the second solution, exploring the influence of physicians on career choices in nursing and describing a model doctor/nurse relationship that brings nurses pride and job satisfaction.     

Interruption and Forgetting in Knowledge‐Intensive Service Environments

An increasing barrier to productivity in knowledge‐intensive work environments is interruptions. Interruptions stop the current job and can induce forgetting in the worker. The induced forgetting can cause re‐work; to complete the interrupted job, additional effort and time is required to return to the same level of job‐specific knowledge the worker had attained prior to the interruption. This research employs primary observational and process data gathered from a hospital radiology department as inputs into a discrete‐event simulation model to estimate the effect of interruptions, forgetting, and re‐work. To help mitigate the effects of interruption‐induced re‐work, we introduce and test the operational policy of sequestering, where some service resources are protected from interruptions. We find that sequestering can improve the overall productivity and cost performance of the system under certain circumstances. We conclude that research examining knowledge‐intensive operations should explicitly consider interruptions and the forgetting rate of the system's human workers or models will overestimate the system's productivity and underestimate its costs.     

Technology Use and Performance: A Field Study of Broker Workstations*

Organizations invest in technology with the expectation that it will contribute to performance, and members of the organization must use technology for it to make a contribution. For this reason, it is important for managers and designers to understand and predict system use. This paper develops a model of workstation use in a field setting where the use of the system is an integral part of the user's job. The model is based on the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), which we extended to include social norms, user performance, and two control variables. Brokers and sales assistants in the privateclient group of a major investment bank provided data to test our extended model. The core perception variables in TAM do not predict use in this study. Social norms and one's job requirements are more important in predicting use than workers' perceptions about ease of use and usefulness. The paper discusses the implications of these findings and suggests directions for future research.     

Job demands and job control as correlates of early retirement thoughts in Finnish social and health care employees

Given the ageing workforce, there is an increasing interest in understanding the retirement process. This study examined whether early retirement thoughts can be explained by job demands, job control and their interaction, a hypothesis derived from the job demand-control model of Karasek (). The moderated hierarchical regression analyses of early retirement thoughts were based on a sample of 274 male and 2798 female employees aged 20 to 65 years in Finnish social and health care. Our results suggest that job demands and job control are independent predictors of early retirement thoughts even when adjusted for age, gender, educational level and self-rated health. Furthermore, our results offered support for the interaction effect of job demands and job control on early retirement thoughts. Among people over 45 years old, these associations were even stronger, compared to the whole sample. This indicates that one way to reduce the number of people taking early retirement would be to put the emphasis on psychosocial factors, such as job control, affecting the older workers.     

ON‐THE‐JOB SEARCH AND MORAL HAZARD

We analyze the interaction between intertemporal incentive contracts and search frictions associated with on‐the‐job search. In our model, agency problems call for wage contracts with deferred compensation. At the same time workers do on‐the‐job search. Deferred compensation improves workers' incentives to exert effort but distorts their on‐the‐job search decisions. We show that deferred compensation is less attractive when the value to the worker–firm pair of on‐the‐job search is high. Moreover, the interplay between search frictions and wage contracts creates feedback effects. If firms in equilibrium use contracts with deferred compensation, fewer firms with vacancies enter the on‐the‐job search market, and this in turn reduces the distortions created by deferred compensation. These feedback effects between the incentive contracts used and the activity level in the search markets can lead to multiple equilibria: a low‐turnover equilibrium where firms use deferred compensation, and a high‐turnover equilibrium where they do not. Furthermore, the model predicts that firms are more likely to use deferred compensation when search frictions are high and when the gains from on‐the‐job search are small.     

Inefficient Job Destructions and Training with Hold‐up

This paper develops an equilibrium search model with endogenous job destructions and where firms decide at the time of job entry how much to invest in match‐specific human capital. We first show that job destruction and training investment decisions are strongly complementary. It is possible that there are no firings at equilibrium. Further, training investments are confronted to a hold‐up problem making the decentralized equilibrium always inefficient. We show therefore that both training subsidies and firing taxes must be implemented to bring back efficiency.     

On the optimality of the TLS algorithm for solving the online-list scheduling problem with two job types on a set of multipurpose machines

In this paper we study the optimality of the TLS algorithm for solving the online scheduling problem of minimizing the makespan on a set of m multipurpose machines, where there are two different job types and each job type can only be processed on a unique subset of machines. The literature shows that the TLS algorithm is optimal for the special cases where either m=2 or where all processing times are restricted to unity. We show that the TLS algorithm is optimal also for the special cases where the job processing times are either job type or machine set dependent. For both cases, the optimality of the TLS algorithm is proven by showing that its competitive ratio matches the lower bound for any processing set and processing time parameters.     

工作嵌入对科技型员工离职创业活动的影响

目前,高科技企业与大学、科研机构员工离职创业的现象越来越普遍,这类企业家群体正在社会经济中发挥越来越重要的作用.本文围绕科技型员工离职创业活动的主题,根据创业过程前三个阶段的特点,从先前工作经历的"嵌入性"出发,对离职创业动机的形成、创业机会的识别和开发进行分析,进而揭示工作嵌入因素如何影响高科技人员离职创业决策的形成,并通过典型个案分析对上述结论做了进一步的验证,期望能为科技型员工提高创业成功率提供科学的理论依据.     

Seven deadly assumptions for new physician managers

You've just been, or are about to be, named to a management position, your first. Success will not be easy, but it can be achieved. Just avoid seven common assumptions that are the chief culprits in the demise of many a physician executive: All human beings make rational decisions, so the way to resolve conflicts is by giving people more data. Clinical teams are the same as management teams. Your new title confers all the decision-making authority, trust, and power needed to do the job. Bedside communication techniques are the same ones used in the board room. A financial statement is pretty much the same as a checking account statement. There are no politics in management. Just reading every important management text will make you a great manager.     

Self-directed health plans: alternatives to managed care enabled by new technologies

Few people believed the Internet would have much impact on the delivery of health care services. However, combined with technological advances in how computer systems are structured and implemented and knowing what doesn't work in managed care from bitter experience, the Internet is being used to create a new paradigm of alternative health insurance products. These products hold the potential to change for the better the face of health care as we know it. Self-directed health plans will be less expensive than managed care programs and offer greater predictability in health care spending. For health care providers, SDHPs' reliance upon episode allowances will create a new market for packaged or bundled services. Providers will be paid to provide solutions, not just treatment. This could represent a new model in which physicians accept a risk-adjusted payment and provide a warranty that they will do whatever necessary until the patient has reached the reasonably expected health status. This is a radical departure from the fee-for-service or capitation system.     

Beyond demand and control: The contribution of organizational risk factors in assessing the psychological well-being of health care employees

Abstract

The job demand–control(–support) model is frequently used as a theoretical framework in studies on determinants of psychological well-being. Consequently, these studies are confined to the impact of job characteristics on worker outcomes. In the present study the relation between work conditions and outcomes (job satisfaction, emotional exhaustion, psychological distress, and somatic complaints) is examined from a broader organizational perspective. This paper reports on an analysis that examines both the unique and the additional contribution of organizational characteristics to well-being indicators, beyond those attributed to job characteristics. A total of 706 care staff from three public residential institutions for people with mental or physical disabilities in the Netherlands took part in this research. To assess organizational risk factors a measurement instrument was developed, the organizational Risk Factors Questionnaire (ORFQ), based on the safety-critical factors of the Tripod accident causation model. Factor analyses and reliability testing resulted in a 52-item scale consisting of six reliable sub-scales: staffing resources, communication, social hindrance, training opportunities, job skills, and material resources. These organizational risk factors explained important parts of the variance in each of the outcome measures, beyond that accounted for by demographic variables and job demand–control–support (JDCS) measures. Communication and training opportunities were of central importance to carers’ job satisfaction. Social hindrance, job skills, and material resources explained a substantial amount of unique variance on the negative outcomes investigated.