Experimental Evidence of Discrimination in the Hiring of First‐ and Second‐generation Immigrants

Previous field experiments that study ethnic discrimination in the labour market are extended in this paper, which outlines a study comparing discrimination of first‐ and second‐generation immigrants. Qualitatively identical resumes, belonging to first‐ and second‐generation immigrants from the Middle East, were sent to employers in Sweden that had advertised for labour. The findings suggest, somewhat unexpectedly, that first‐ and second‐generation immigrants have essentially the same probability of being invited to a job interview, which in turn is significantly lower than the probability of invitation to interview for natives.     

Rehires and Unemployment Duration in the Swedish Labour Market — New Evidence of Temporary Layoffs

The paper investigates temporary layoffs in the Swedish labour market. Previous reports of few temporary layoffs are rejected. About 45 percent of unemployed people who found a job returned to a previous employer. As a stock measure, 10 percent of the unemployed are on temporary layoff. Using new job and recall as distinct exits in a competing risks model, one cannot reject a horizontal duration dependence for new jobs, while the recall hazard shows a strong, negative duration dependence. Clearer predictions of the effect of education on job probabilities are also found. Further, the results probably have implications for the interpretation of several policy parameters, including labour market programme outcomes.     

Measuring the Contribution of Workers' Health and Psychosocial Work‐Environment on Production Efficiency

Increasingly many firms have started to implement programs intended to improve the workers' health and the psychosocial work‐environment, as well as other attributes of labor quality. Motivated by the need for evaluating to what extent the programs affect a firm's productivity performance, this study discusses a model for analyzing the contribution of labor quality attributes toward firm productivity. To assess the contribution from the labor quality attributes, we model firm productivity as the outcome of two separate processes within a firm: the physical production process and the labor quality process. Firm productivity is measured by a Malmquist‐like productivity index and is computed by Data Envelopment Analysis. Based on bootstrap methods we analyze potential statistical bias and provide bias‐corrected productivity estimates. The labor quality attributes are first modeled at an individual worker level as latent variables using Item Response Theory, and then aggregated to a firm‐level. The model is empirically validated using data from three manufacturing plants that participated in a coordinated worksite health promotion program. Over a 4‐year period (2000–2003), we observed a general improvement in efficiency of 2–5%, half of which could be attributed to an improvement in workers' health and psychosocial work‐environment. A key benefit with the model is that it is practical, easy to implement, and very fast to compute. The model also constructively contributes to the discourse on sustainability by providing a framework for deriving meaningful metrics and providing tangible measurements on the effect of sustainability‐related issues.     

A Coalition Perspective on Nonprofit Governance Quality: Analyzing Dimensions of Influence in an Exploratory Comparative Case Analysis

We answer the call that governance research should focus more on processes outside the boundaries of boards, especially for nonprofit organizations. In particular, we suggest and elaborate concrete steps with respect to the advantages of a leadership coalition perspective to focus more on the behavioral and informal aspects of governance. Through a comparative case analysis of five nonprofit organizations, we explore contingencies between characteristics of nonprofit leadership coalitions and governance quality. We identify two dimensions to classify leadership coalitions: centralized versus diffused influence and specific versus holistic influence. These dimensions are subsequently related with observed governance quality. We frame our finding in the existing literature on group faultlines, which are socially constructed dividing lines within groups, and we discuss the importance of establishing a balanced coalition between a weak or nonexisting and a strong dominant coalition to ensure high governance quality. We also present propositions on how governance quality and its various sub-dimensions can be studied as a complex, nonlinear intermediate concept between coalitional aspects of leadership groups and nonprofit organizational performance. Finally, we discuss concrete avenues for further testing and verification of our theoretical interpretation.     

Equine-assisted social work counteracts self-stigmatisation in self-harming adolescents and facilitates a moment of silence

The purpose of this study was to determine whether equine-assisted social work (EASW) could affect self-stigmatisation and thereby counteract false identities in self-harming adolescents. Data were collected via interviews with nine female self-harming clients aged 15–21 years and eight staff members. Interviews and video-recorded human–horse interactions with three staff members and four clients were analysed. The interviews were followed by further dialogue with participants while they viewed videos of their own EASW sessions. The analysis indicated that the horse had a calming effect on the clients; enabled them to free themselves of their preoccupations; provided real-time, non-verbal and non-judgmental feedback on their emotions; and increased feelings of trust, patience and empathy. The presence of a horse provided a ‘moment of silence’ for the clients, silencing their inner critic, and made them feel more authentic and better able to regulate their emotions. However, staff could counteract this ‘safe’ healing by being too focused on goals, making interpretations and lecturing and encouraging clients, thus making clients feel judged anyhow. EASW seemed to give clients the opportunity to break free from self-stigmatisation, which seemed to lower the barrier to change.     

Characterizing optimality among three-decision procedures for directional conclusions

Jones and Tukey (2000) proposed three-decision procedures for directional conclusions in statistical inference, considered as an alternative to the conventional usage of one- and two-tailed significance testing. Moreover, implicit in their suggestions was to consider a procedure to be optimal in case indefinite results were minimized among all procedures with a given control of error. First, we argue by example that this characterization of optimality is not very fruitful when formalized into the strong sense of uniform minimization. Next, imposing a further regularity condition on the comparative class of procedures, we relate the suggested characterization to optimality criteria from test theory (UMP unbiasedness). Similarly, we also consider characterizing optimality in terms of maximizing correct decision rates and minimizing incorrect decision rates. Finally, we demonstrate the applicability of the three considered characterizations with respect to exponential families of distributions.     

Strategies for business model innovation: How firms reel in migrating value

This paper brings together firm-level research on business models and industry-level research on value migration to examine patterns of business model innovation. We draw on qualitative data from 14 cases and 68 interviews in the computer and telecommunications industries to demonstrate how business model innovation is sensitive to industry-wide forces of value migration. Based on our analysis we conclude that when value is rapidly migrating across industries and between firms, proactively substituting key elements of the primary business model provides a better fit with the new value landscape than launching secondary business models in parallel. We suggest four underlying mechanisms that link business model innovation, value migration and subsequent outcomes. Unpacking business model innovation allows us to discuss contingencies for the main business model strategies, specifically in terms of limitations to—and opportunities of—changing the primary business model and the practice of parallel business models.     

Subjective Measures of Employment Opportunities and Interregional Migration

Abstract. Empirical studies of interregional mobility routinely use regional unemployment differentials to characterize economic incentives to move between regions. In this paper, we present a new regional labour market indicator computed from survey data in which respondents are asked to evaluate local employment opportunities in their resident municipality and surroundings. The subjective measures of satisfaction with local employment opportunities have positive and significant impact on interregional migration flows, also when controlling for traditional measures of regional labour market conditions, including the regional unemployment rate. Contrary to most European studies, we find that regional labour market conditions have a strong effect on interregional migration flows.