Skill Complementarities and Migration Decisions

This paper offers an explanation of the high mobility of skilled workers based on human capital complementarities. If the skill premium is increasing in the average level of human capital of a location, and there exist fixed migration costs, in equilibrium the more skilled the workers are, the stronger the economic incentives to migrate towards the richest regions will be. Moreover, endogenously generated differences in productivity due to migration affect occupational choices and regional specialization. Empirical evidence consistent with the proposed explanation is provided using data on Italian regions. It emerges that, even after controlling for economic conditions, a high population share of individuals who completed college or high‐school in a region seems to be a relevant pull factor for the most educated migrants. In contrast, the importance of this variable, which measures the average level of human capital of a location, drops when unskilled migrants are considered. Finally, the effects of migration on the evolution of regional disparities are taken into account.     

Exploring the Career Capital Impact of International Assignments within Distinct Organizational Contexts

The existing expatriation literature concentrates on what individuals need to perform in an international assignment (IA) but neglects what they gain from their foreign work experience. Using a dual‐dependency perspective this study presents results from 26 in‐depth interviews with international secondees within two UK‐based organizational contexts. The paper explores the perceived impact of an IA on the career capital of individuals, showing that the outcomes of IAs can be equivocal for expatriates. Each firm concentrated their human resource mechanisms on developing different types of career capital and this focused individual behaviour on diverse career capital activities. In one of the organizations there was an internal misalignment between organizational and individual assignee focus. Based on the research a number of propositions were developed. This study provided an exploratory insight into points of departure rather than complementarity in individuals' international careers in organizations, which has been at the core of much recent research and writing. A more complex, contextualized picture of the effects of IAs on the careers of individuals emerged.     

The Dark Side of Stakeholder Reactions to Corporate Social Responsibility: Tensions and Micro‐level Undesirable Outcomes

With a review of literature on corporate social responsibility (CSR) and its micro‐level impacts, this paper proposes an integrative framework to map undesirable relational outcomes of CSR activities on internal (employees) and external (customers) stakeholders. By adopting a paradox‐based perspective, the authors determine that unexpected, adverse stakeholder reactions to CSR are driven primarily by either performing or belonging tensions, related to exchange‐ and identity‐based stakeholder concerns, respectively. Specifically, contextual and personal influences can trigger and explain undesirable relational outcomes of CSR. On this basis, this paper offers a research agenda for developing a more refined understanding of CSR‐related tensions and a more nuanced perspective on the business case for CSR.     

Permanently ‘in process’: the intersection of migration,work identity and the reality of human resource development in the South African context

This article explores the experiences of skilled Zimbabweans who migrate, only to experience de-skilling upon securing employment in South Africa (SA). This is due to various factors such as insufficient bridging social capital and xenophobia and is exacerbated by the inability of the Human Resource Development Strategy for South Africa (HRD-SA) to cater for their employment needs. The article is based on qualitative research conducted within a phenomenological paradigm with Zimbabwean migrant women residing in Port Elizabeth, SA. The Zimbabwean context is discussed, as well as the mixed migration methods utilized and the subsequent negative effect that deskilling and under-employment have on the self-identity. It is argued that work constitutes an important signifier of identity, yet the HRD-SA and practice excludes migrants from achieving their potential, thus resulting in brain waste and downward status mobility. In the final section implications for HRD practice are discussed and recommendations made.     

Human Capital Accumulation,Social Mobility and Migrations

This paper studies the effects of migrations on growth and income distribution when social mobility is imperfect. Workers migrate in response to differences in expected wages between home and a foreign country, but their choice depends also whether they qualified themselves as skilled workers by accumulating human capital or not. Such an activity has a cost, which depends on each agent’s family background: sons of skilled workers have lower human capital accumulation costs. The effects of labour migrations on per capita income depend only on the degree of social mobility: if there is a difference in the cost of accumulating human capital for the sons of educated and non-educated people, migrations reduce total earnings of unskilled workers in the receiving country, and increase those of skilled workers.     

Modeling Earnings Dynamics

In this paper, we use indirect inference to estimate a joint model of earnings, employment, job changes, wage rates, and work hours over a career. We use the model to address a number of important questions in labor economics, including the source of the experience profile of wages, the response of job changes to outside wage offers, and the effects of seniority on job changes. We also study the dynamic response of wage rates, hours, and earnings to various shocks, and measure the relative contributions of the shocks to the variance of earnings in a given year and over a lifetime. We find that human capital accounts for most of the growth of earnings over a career, although job seniority and job mobility also play significant roles. Unemployment shocks have a large impact on earnings in the short run, as well as a substantial long‐term effect that operates through the wage rate. Shocks associated with job changes and unemployment make a large contribution to the variance of career earnings and operate mostly through the job‐specific error components of wages and hours.     

Proactivity and work experience as predictors of career-enhancing strategies

The present study aims to enhance researchers' understanding of career self-management behaviour by introducing proactivity along with human capital variables into the analysis. By modelling employees' career strategies, this empirical investigation assesses the relative importance of human capital predictors as well as that of proactive personality. A survey was conducted using a structured questionnaire. There were 328 participants in the survey, consisting of individuals working for firms across all sectors of the Greek economy. Factor analysis was used to form implemented career strategies reported in the survey. Regression analysis was applied for assessing the impact of each predictor on career self-management behaviour. The main findings indicate that the primary sources behind shaping employees' career strategies are their own proactive personality and their work experience in full-time jobs. The importance of combining human capital variables with employees' proactivity in modelling career development is stressed by the present study.     

On micro-foundations of dynamic capabilities: A multi-level perspective based on CEO personality and knowledge-based capital

In recent years, researchers have asked why some firms are better than others at developing dynamic capabilities. The existing literature assesses micro-foundations separately, either on the managerial or on the organizational level. This study aims to provide a more holistic picture on the antecedents of dynamic capabilities by integrating managerial and organizational micro-foundations. Specifically, we posit that the personality of Chief Executive Officers (CEOs), manifested through their core self-evaluation (CSE), represents an individual-level micro-foundation which influences three types of a firm's knowledge-based capital—human, social, and organizational capital. We also argue that these three, in turn, are organization-level micro-foundations that ultimately enable the development of a firm's dynamic capabilities. We test our multi-level framework using data from 307 German CEOs, and confirm that CEO CSE is positively related with all three forms of knowledge-based capital. We further find that human capital and organizational capital mediate the relationship between a CEO's CSE and a firm's dynamic capabilities. Our research contributes by extending a central framework of the micro-foundations project (the bathtub model) that integrates the upper echelons perspective into a multi-level analysis. We empirically validate this model and advance the understanding of how firm leaders indirectly influence firm dynamic capabilities by shaping individual learning conditions.     

Can the Augmented Solow Model with Migration Explain the Italian Internal Brain Drain?

We extend the Dolado et al. (1994) model to both inflows and outflows of migrants and assume that they have a human capital endowment that contributes to increase/decrease the stock of human capital in the receiving/sending economy. We derive the conditional convergence equation in which the impact of migration flows on the growth rate is disentangled in a pure quantity effect and in a quality or composition effect of immigration and emigration rates that accounts for the relative human capital endowment of migrants with respect to resident population. Next, we test the model with Italian regional data for the 1970–2005 time period. We find that the model provides a good explanation of the Italian experience. The quantity effect is negative for the immigration rate and positive for the emigration rate, whereas the composition effect is positive for immigration and negative for emigration. Finally, we separate the centre‐north from the south and find that the composition effect of emigration is stronger for the latter. We interpret these results as a clear evidence of a brain drain from the Mezzogiorno to the centre‐northern regions.     

The Early‐career Gender Wage Gap among University Graduates in the Finnish Private Sector

In the Finnish private sector, the gender wage gap increases significantly during the first 10 years after labour market entry, accounting for most of the lifetime increase in the gender wage differentials. This paper investigates the reasons for this gender difference in early‐career wage development. By focusing on university graduates the paper considers several explanations based on the human capital theory, job mobility, and labour market segregation. The results suggest that only about 20–26 per cent of the average early‐career gender wage gap is explained by gender differences in experience, the field of education, employer characteristics, and mobility. A substantial unexplained gap thus remains. Of the investigated factors gender differences in the field of education and work experience matter most.     

European Integration and the Integration of European Labour Markets1

Abstract. Will European economic and monetary union bring about a unification of European labour markets, and is there likely to be a convergence of patterns of labour market organisation among Community countries? The evidence discussed suggests that a major increase in unskilled mobility across the EC is unlikely, at least concerning EC citizens. Among skilled labour, a major increase in international mobility is also unlikely on account of differences in skill organisation among countries. In contrast, the integration of European capital is causing some integration of enterprise internal labour markets across national borders as firms seek to integrate their managerial and technical workforces. In the “high-tech” area, skills are in a state of flux, and the possibility that European labour markets will emerge is much stronger than for other categories.     

Immigration Policy,Equilibrium Unemployment,and Underinvestment in Human Capital

We analyse the impact of different immigration policies on human capital investment in a search‐theoretic model. This class of models features unemployment and underinvestment in human capital. The underinvestment in human capital can be solved by combining immigration policy with appropriate education subsidies. Extending the model with respect to different skill groups allows to analyse the observed bimodal skilled immigration of the USA.     

Why Do Women's Wages Increase So Slowly Throughout Their Career? A Dynamic Model of Statistical Discrimination

Abstract. The aim of this paper is to explain the growing wage differentials between men and women during their working careers. We provide a dynamic model of statistical discrimination, which integrates specific human capital decisions: on‐the‐job training investment and wages are endogenously determined. We reveal a small wage differential at the beginning of women's career, but women's wages increase more slowly; this is partly due to a lower level of human capital investment by women and partly because firms smooth training costs between different periods.     

Clarifying the Effect of Intellectual Capital on Performance: The Mediating Role of Dynamic Capability

Recent studies suggest a potential relationship between intellectual capital and dynamic capability in achieving performance. This is unsettling for managers because these studies contain little effort to develop a framework for understanding the relationship. To examine this unnerving potential, we develop and test a theoretical model that explains how dynamic capability mediates the impact of intellectual capital on performance. In this study, the scope of intellectual capital includes human capital, relational capital and structural capital. This study examines the pooled data of 242 high‐technology firms from 2001 to 2008. Results from Bayesian regression analysis suggest that the effect of structural capital on performance is completely mediated by dynamic capability. Furthermore, the findings show that dynamic capability does not completely mediate the respective effects of human capital and relational capital on performance, but does so only partially. These results provide convincing support for the importance of dynamic capability through accumulating R&D and marketing capability over time, thereby enhancing firm performance. The empirical findings and the ensuing discussion will be of interest to managers and practitioners.     

The Role of Career Choice in Understanding Job Mobility

This paper presents a simple model that explains how the likelihood of job changes and their complexity changes over a worker's career, and the empirical work presented here uses the life cycle patterns of mobility and their complexity to infer the relative importance of firm‐specific versus career‐specific concerns as determinants of mobility decisions. The estimates of the model indicate that the contemporaneous presence of two quality matches, one career‐specific and one firm‐specific, is necessary to understand the patterns of the data. The model also predicts that the welfare losses implied by a disappearance of a career can be on average twice as large as the losses implied by a plant closure.     

Engaging institutions in global careers: highly skilled self-initiated expatriates’ journeys through a Nordic welfare state

Recent years of research have highlighted the phenomenon of self-initiated expatriation and clarified the individual agency that underlies it, such as its motivational drivers, thereby depicting it as one form of boundaryless career. Yet as a consequence the role of wider institutional and structural contexts has been left under-theorized. This article provides a much needed examination of the interaction between institutional contexts and agency in self-initiated global careers. It advances the understanding of how self-initiated expatriates (SIEs) are influenced by and engage institutions in constructing their global mobility and careers. The research is a field-based study of SIEs’ encounters with the institutions of a Nordic welfare state and consists of interviews, observations, and document analyses. It makes a relevant addition to understanding how the self-directed expatriation of highly skilled professionals is institutionally moderated. It expands knowledge by showing how SIEs engage and potentially aim to influence public institutions and discourses to further their global mobility and work experiences and by providing a differentiated and distributed view of agency in self-initiated expatriation. While institutional environments condition global mobility and work experiences, they are potentially also influenced by the global talent that flows through them.     

Remitting Behaviour of “Temporary” and “Permanent” Migrants: The Case of Greeks in Germany and Australia

This paper makes the point that migrants have different motives for sending remittances and remittance receivers have different claims on migrants' income, depending on whether people move to accumulate capital to improve their living at home after they return — temporary migration — or to start a new life in a foreign country — permanent migration. This hypothesis is empirically tested with data from Greek–German and Greek–Australian migration. The findings attest to the fact that German remittances constitute obligatory income streams to close family at home, while Australian remittances are gifts. Some quantitative estimates of the relative impact of individual factors on remittances are also obtained. Some hints are also given for a changing remitting behaviour of Greek migrants in Germany, along with the changing character of migration in that country.     

‘One MBA?’ How context impacts the development of post-MBA career outcomes

Using survey data from alumni of one of the UK's earliest and largest MBA programmes we explore how career capital, career outcomes and career satisfaction are impacted by learner context. We adopt comparative capitalisms theory to investigate whether graduates from a standardised programme marketed as ‘One MBA’ report broadly similar career outcomes irrespective of their work and study location. We find that despite the rhetoric around globalisation in management education there are differences that fit the theories of comparative capitalisms literature; thus supporting the view that, despite the global nature of MBA branding, context still plays a role in shaping learning and career outcomes as evidenced by differences reported here. Significant findings are reported in terms of the reported development of career capital ‘knowing how’; career satisfaction and perceived organisational support, however differences in terms of the achievement of objective career success (promotion and career mobility) were less pronounced.     

Post‐Migratory Employment Prospects: Evidence from Finland

This paper analyses the role which migration plays in improving post‐migratory employment prospects of migrants (long‐distance) within Finland, by examining the employment status of migrants and non‐migrants at the end of the migration interval. The analysis is based on micro data from the period 1985–90. The results from multivariate analyses suggest that migration by itself has not augmented the likelihood of getting a job, even though tabular comparisons of re‐employment rates between migrants and non‐migrants suggest this to be the case. Migration, however, has an indirect role in enhancing job search outcomes as it moves workers to labour markets characterized by more favourable employment opportunities.     

中国居民代际收入流动性的变化趋势及影响机制研究

基于1989~2015年共计10轮CHNS数据,本文采用代际收入弹性和代际收入秩关联系数双重测度指标对我国居民代际收入流动性进行了测算,发现代际收入流动性在1991~2004年期间基本保持稳定,2004年以后呈现出不断上升的变化趋势。基于收入分组视角的研究发现,各收入组2004年以后代际收入阶层固化程度均有所降低,但高收入组和低收入组的固化程度远高于其他各组,中等收入群体是目前我国保持较高代际收入流动性的主要动力来源。从城乡差异视角看,受大规模农村劳动力向城镇流动的影响,2000年后农村家庭的代际流动性显著提升,且持续高于城市居民的代际流动性。进一步,基于人力资本分析框架对我国代际收入传递机制进行了探究,发现父亲的非教育因素在代际收入传递中起到主导作用。受整体社会制度环境不断改善的积极影响,2004年以后非教育传递机制不断减弱,对代际收入流动性的提升起到较大助推作用;而受高等教育扩张政策的影响,教育因素在2004年左右一定程度上削弱了代际收入流动性。