Strength matters: Tie strength as a causal driver of networks’ information benefits

Studies of social networks have often taken the existence of a social tie as a proxy for the transmission of information. However, other studies of social networks in the labor market propose that the likelihood of information transmission might depend on strength of the tie; and that tie strength is a potentially important source of the tie's value. After all, even if job seekers have social ties to those who have valuable job information, the seekers will gain little information benefit when the ties do not actually transmit the information. This paper clarifies the conditions under which social ties might provide information benefits. We use a survey vignette experiment and ask MBA students about their likelihood of relaying job information via strong ties (to friends) or weak ties (to acquaintances), holding constant the structural locations spanned by the tie and job seekers' fit with the job. The results support the claim that strength of tie has a causal effect on the chances of information transmission: potential referrers are more likely to relay job information to their friends than to acquaintances. The larger implication of these findings is that whatever benefits there might be to using weak ties to reach distant non-redundant information during job search, these benefits need to be considered against the likely fact that people connected via weak ties are less likely to actually share information about job opportunities than are people to whom the job seeker is strongly tied.     

知识型员工离职倾向的心理解构及其影响机理

心理契约主要通过工作满意度和组织承诺的双重中介效应影响离职倾向。组织承诺是工作满意度影响离职倾向的非完全中介变量,工作满意度对离职倾向的解释程度高于组织承诺。变量之间的影响关系,揭示了知识型员工离职倾向的动因及其形成的心理过程。从心理契约构面对离职倾向的影响程度来说,人际型责任影响最大,反映了我国人际关系文化的深刻影响。     

The skill-divide in job quality: A cross-national analysis of 28 countries

This study focuses on the skill divide in job quality and the role of social institutions in structuring the relation of workers’ qualifications to the attributes of their jobs. Four measures of job quality are examined: job security, job achievement, job content and work schedule flexibility. The study is based on the 2005 ISSP module on work orientations and encompasses 28 countries. Obtained through multilevel modeling, the findings show that low-skilled workers are disadvantaged in all aspects of job quality. However, skill inequality in the quality of employment depends on countries’ characteristics, with declining inequality in countries at higher levels of technological development and to some extent also in times of technological growth. At times of high unemployment, skill disparities in job security widen while on other measures of job quality they decline. Under high market regulation, the low skilled enjoy better job security but on other measures, skill inequalities increase.     

Career pathways for temporary workers: Exploring heterogeneous mobility dynamics with sequence analysis

Because temporary jobs are time-delimited, their implications for workers’ economic security depend not only on their current characteristics, but also their place in longer-term patterns of mobility. Past research has typically asked whether temporary jobs are a bridge to better employment or trap workers in ongoing insecurity, investigating this question by analyzing single transitions. We demonstrate that this approach is ill-suited to assessing the often more complex and turbulent employment patterns characteristic of temporary workers. Our analysis instead employs sequence methods to compare a representative sample of temporary workers’ month-by-month mobility patterns through 8 potential (non)employment states over five years. We derive a typology of trajectories and describe their relative precariousness in relation to employment stability and wage and earnings levels and growth. While some of the pathways correspond quite closely to frameworks used by past research, others reveal new and important distinctions. Multinomial logit models reveal job, employer, and worker characteristics associated with different pathways. Age, gender, and type of temporary work stand out as important factors shaping subsequent mobility patterns.     

Compensating differentials, labor market segmentation, and wage inequality

Two literatures on work and the labor market draw attention to the importance of non-pecuniary job amenities. Social psychological perspectives on work suggest that workers have preferences for a range of job amenities (e.g. Halaby, 2003). The compensating differentials hypothesis predicts that workers navigate tradeoffs among different job amenities such that wage inequality overstates inequality in utility (Smith, 1979). This paper joins these perspectives by constructing a new measure of labor market success that evaluates the degree to which workers’ job amenity preferences and outcomes match. This measure of subjective success is used to predict workers’ job satisfaction and to test the hypothesis that some degree of labor force inequality in wages is due to preference-based tradeoffs among all job amenities. Findings demonstrate that the new measure predicts workers’ job satisfaction and provides evidence for the presence of compensating differentials in the primary and intermediate, but not secondary, labor markets.     

Racial differences in the effects of job contacts: Conflicting evidence from cross-sectional and longitudinal data

Recent research has argued that using job contacts to find work restricts the opportunities of Black workers. Although this makes sense in light of literature on urban poverty that contends that inner-city Blacks are isolated from effective job networks, this paper argues that there are two reasons why these findings may be misleading. First, the existence of discrimination in the labor market means that contacts may be an efficient method of job search for Black workers. Second, because the use of contacts may be an endogenous variable, we need to look at longitudinal data. In the analysis, I compare cross-sectional and longitudinal results on the relationship between contacts and wages. While the cross-sectional data indicate a negative relationship between contacts and wages, the longitudinal data suggest this merely reflects lower levels of opportunity among workers who use contacts rather than the effect of contacts per se.     

Do displaced workers lose occupational prestige?

Worker displacement has become a common feature of employment in the “flexible economy.” While studies of income losses and the duration of unemployment after displacement abound, and popular accounts argue that workers often lose status, less empirical attention has been paid to the quality or prestige of employment displaced workers are able to secure after a downsizing event. This paper helps to fill this gap in the literature by focusing on changes in occupational prestige among a nationally representative sample of displaced workers who became reemployed from the January 2004 Displaced Workers and Employee Tenure Supplement of the Current Population Survey. Our findings show that displaced workers with higher levels of education, net of other factors, fared significantly better than others in job quality upon reemployment, highlighting the importance of education in retaining status and privilege in the new economy.     

“桥头堡”战略下云南人口较少民族地区新农村建设研究

云南人口较少民族地区的新农村建设在全国新农村建设中有着特殊的意义,在各级政府、社会组织和民族兄弟的努力下,在经济、公共设施和社会保障等方面取得很大进步,但仍存在当地人口素质低、所处环境恶劣、农业设施滞后及教育水平低等制约因素,云南实施“桥头堡”战略,给该地区带来了化解城乡体制障碍、提高参与建设能力及发展特色产业等方面的机遇,为了加速这一地区经济的发展,本文提出了加大公共基础设施建设、扩大职业培训、提升基层干部和劳动者素质、发展特色经济等措施,确保少数民族地区跨越式发展,创新人口较少民族地区的新农村建设新思路。     

Relational skill assets and anti-immigrant sentiments

This study introduces the role of relational skill assets in accounting for attitudes toward immigrants: relational skill assets. Drawing upon stratification researchers’ notion of “non-cognitive skills,” we build a theoretical framework highlighting the role of occupational skill requirements in explaining anti-immigrant sentiment. Then, utilizing two occupation-specific measures, interpersonal skill requirement and instrumental skill requirement, we construct an explanatory factor, relational skill specificity. We test its effect on anti-immigrant attitudes as well as on the concentration of foreign-born workers in occupations, using the 2004 national identity module of General Social Survey. The findings confirm our argument that workers with a higher possession of interpersonal skill assets relative to instrumental skill assets are exposed to less intense competitions with immigrants, and are therefore less likely to express anti-immigrant sentiments. Our findings suggest that occupational-level relational skill assets based on sociocultural differences play an important role in shaping native workers’ attitudes’ toward immigrants.     

劳动力市场分割、职业流动与城市劳动者经济地位获得的二元路径模式

使用2009年中国社会网络与职业经历调查广州、上海、厦门、济南和西安5城市数据,检验了改革以后影响中国城市劳动者职业流动模式以及经济地位获得的因素。研究结果表明,高学历劳动者与低学历劳动者群体处于两个分割的劳动力市场中,他们的经济地位获得路径完全不同。对于低学历劳动者,职业流动是提升他们收入水平的最重要因素,而人力资本因素(受教育年限和工作经验)对他们的收入没有影响。高学历劳动者的情况刚好相反,职业流动对收入获得没有任何作用,影响他们收入分层的最重要因素是人力资本。本研究揭示了转型期中国城市地区不同劳动力市场劳动者经济地位获得的二元路径模式。     

政府在企业兼并与技术转让中的的策略选择

在Stackelberg竞争条件下,提高产品质量的技术转让与企业兼并之间存有如下关系与技术转让相比,技术拥有企业总是偏好企业兼并,但是企业兼并会降低社会福利;就技术转让的形式而言,技术拥有企业绝不会选择固定收费方式,可是,因为特许权收费(或双重收费)方式既不能提高技术拥有企业的收益,也不能提高技术接受企业的收益,所以技术授权可能不会发生.但是,因为技术授权可以提高社会福利,所以政府应禁止企业兼并,并且干预企业的技术授权行为.     

政府在企业兼并与技术转让中的策略选择

在Stackelberg竞争条件下,提高产品质量的技术转让与企业兼并之间存有如下关系:与技术转让相比,技术拥有企业总是偏好企业兼并,但是企业兼并会降低社会福利;就技术转让的形式而言,技术拥有企业绝不会选择固定收费方式,可是,因为特许权收费(或双重收费)方式既不能提高技术拥有企业的收益,也不能提高技术接受企业的收益,所以技术授权可能不会发生。但是,因为技术授权可以提高社会福利,所以政府应禁止企业兼并,并且干预企业的技术授权行为。     

青岛市农民职业技能教育的现状及对策

农民职业技能素质已成为制约农民充分就业和增收的关键因素。青岛市政府虽高度重视对农民的职业技能教育,并探索了形式多样的职业技能教育模式,但仍存在许多问题。农民职业技能培训是一项综合性工作,除培训供给者——政府适应市场变化的需要,加大资金投入力度,整合培训资源,加强法制建设,满足农民多元化的需求外,更多的是需要农民工自身的发展动力。     

艺术设计专业学生必须强化理论素质修养

理论素质修养包括“人生修养,艺术修养,学识修养”三大因素。然而艺术设计专业学生的理论素质修养受到多方面因素的制约。要加强学生理论素质修养,必须深化教学改革,调整培养目标,加大理论课时量,彻底扭转传统教学上重技能、轻理论的观念,并在实践性教学环节上予以强化和检验。     

高校毕业生求职礼仪指导

掌握求职礼仪技巧,提高求职技能,在大学生的求职过程中起着越来越重要的作用。长期以来,高校在求职礼仪的教学方面还存在着一些亟待改进的问题。通过几种训练方法提高学生的求职技能,使其熟练掌握求职礼仪规范,提高就业的成功率,值得尝试。     

风险投资有限合伙与合同自由原则研究

风险投资有限合伙合同几乎很少涉及对风险投资家(即:普通合伙人)的行为限制。而对此外部投资人通常倾向于采纳这种灵活而松散的安排。虽然表面上看起来作为有限合伙人的外部投资者处于一个容易受到伤害的地位,但是风险资本在运作过程中的循环性使得名誉约束代替了合同义务以及法律默示规定的地位。风险投资家和外部投资者可以灵活地安排协议内容的事实使得风险投资有限合伙成为了合同自由主义的鲜活的体现。     

劳动力市场分割、培训机会获取与新生代农民工培训收益率差异

新生代农民工就业能力的高低关系到国家经济转型和产业结构升级,通过职业技能培训对提高其就业能力具有重要和深远意义。本文根据调查样本数据,建立Logistic和Stepwise回归模型,在劳动力市场分割视角下分析新生代农民工职业培训选择影响因素并对培训收益率进行研究,发现职业培训对低学历者存在"挤出效应",劳动力市场分割对农民工的培训机会和培训收益方面存在显著影响;与学校教育相比,职业技能培训对新生代农民工收入增长作用仍待进一步提高。据分析,政府必须统筹规划不同劳动力市场的职业技能培训资源,优化配置培训资源;同时,为提高职业培训的效率和效益,必须对免费培训选择性的"提档升级",努力规避培训对低学历的"挤出效应"。     

提高临床实习质量的多种途径

临床实习的质量直接影响临床医学人才培养的质量。但是,随着我国医疗体制改革的不断深入,出现了很多影响临床实习质量的因素。为了提高临床实习质量,可以从改革高等医学教育模式、建立临床技能训练中心、建立标准化病人教学体系、加强管理、加强临床师资队伍建设、改善医患关系等方面入手。     

Kin availability and the living arrangements of older women

This paper models the distribution of older women across household types, taking account of variations in the availability of kin, as well as other explanatory variables such as income and race. Household types are distinguished by the presence or absence in the household of siblings, parents, children, or others, including unrelated individuals. A modified multinomial logit model is used to represent the simultaneous effects of kin availability and other variables on the probability of living in each household type. The results indicate that while income is related to the propensity to live alone, the relationship appears to operate solely through the effect of income upon the propensity to share a household with close relatives. Older black women are shown to be more likely to live in extended-family households, holding constant both income and the availability of kin.