The MISLEM Project : developing meta-level quality indicators for establishing a systematic linkage between educational institutions and the labour market:education, employment and graduate employability: project manual

The MISLEM Project comprised representatives from Higher and Vocational Education in four partner countries, Austria, Romania, Slovenia and the UK. In addition to this, representatives from a major UK graduate employment agency and the Austria Quality Assurance Agency were also involved. At the inaugural meeting of the Project, partner teams discussed and agreed upon appropriate methodological processes with which to carry the Project forward.

FDI and the labour market: a review of the evidence and policy implications

This paper presents a series of results concerning the labour-market impact of inward foreign direct investment (FDI) in the UK. The paper demonstrates that one of the crucial impacts of FDI is to increase wage inequality and the use of relatively more skilled labour in the domestic firms. This result is found to be a combination of two effects. First, the entry by a multinational enterprise (MNE) increases the demand for skilled workers in an industry or region, thus increasing wage inequality. Second, technology spillovers occur from foreign to domestic firms. As a result of these spillovers, relative demand for skilled workers increases in the domestic firms, further contributing to aggregate wage inequality and skill upgrading. The paper also considers how FDI impacts upon skill shares by productivity differentials between foreign and domestic firms. Finally, the policy implications of this are discussed, from the perspective of regional development, and the likely effectiveness of attracting FDI to reduce structural unemployment.

Innovation and regional absorptive capacity:the labour market dimension

In 2003, Eurostat published an 'experimental' dataset on regional innovation levels derived from the Second Community Innovation Survey. This dataset, part of the European Innovation Scoreboard, also contains a range of regional labour market indicators. In this paper, we report an exploratory analysis of this data, focussing on how the labour market characteristics of regions shape regions' absorptive capacity (RACAP) and their ability to assimilate knowledge from public and externally conducted R&D. In particular, we aim to establish whether labour market aspects of RACAP are more important for innovation in prosperous or lagging regions of the European Union (EU). © Springer-Verlag 2006.

Employment outcomes and plant closure in a post-industrial city:an analysis of the labour market studies of MG Rover workers three years on

This paper examines how the loss of 6300 jobs from the closure of MG Rover (MGR) in the city of Birmingham (UK) in April 2005 affected the employment trajectories of ex-workers, in the context of wider structural change and efforts at urban renewal. The paper presents an analysis of a longitudinal survey of 300 ex-MGR workers, and examines to what extent the state of local labour markets and workers’ geographical mobility—as well as the effectiveness of the immediate policy response and longer-term local economic strategies—may have helped to balance the impacts of personal attributes associated with workers’ employability and their reabsorption into the labour markets. It is found that the relative buoyancy of the local economy, the success of longer-run efforts at diversification and a strong policy response and retraining initiative helped many disadvantaged workers to find new jobs in the medium term. However, the paper also highlights the unequal employment outcomes and trajectories that many lesser-skilled workers faced. It explores the policy issues arising from such closures and their aftermath, such as the need to co-ordinate responses, to retain institutional capacity, to offer high-quality training and education resources to workers and, where possible, to slow down such closure processes to enable skills to be retained and reused within the local economy.

Auto plant closures, policy responses and labour market outcomes:a comparison of MG Rover in the UK and Mitsubishi in Australia

This paper provides a preliminary comparative longitudinal analysis of the impact on workers made redundant due to the closure of the Mitsubishi plant in Adelaide and the MG Rover plant in Birmingham. Longitudinal surveys of ex-workers from both firms were undertaken over a 12-month period in order to assess the process of labour market adjustment. In the Mitsubishi case, given the skills shortage the state of Adelaide was facing, together with the considerable growth in mining and defence industries, it would have been more appropriate if policy intervention had been redirected to further training or re-skilling opportunities for redundant workers. This opportunity was effectively missed and as a result more workers left the workforce, most notably for retirement, than could have otherwise been the case. The MG Rover case was seen as a more successful example of policy intervention, with greater funding assistance available and targeted support available, and with more emphasis on re-training needs to assist adjustment. However, despite the assistance offered and the rhetoric of successful adjustment in both cases, the majority of workers have nevertheless experienced deterioration in their circumstances particularly in the Australian case where casual and part-time work were often the only work that could be obtained. Even in the UK case, where more funding assistance was offered, a majority of workers reported a decline in earnings and a rise in job insecurity. This suggests that a reliance on the flexible labour market is insufficient to promote adjustment, and that more active policy intervention is needed especially in regard to further up-skilling.

Productivity and labour demand effects of inward and outward foreign direct investment on UK industry

We relate the technological and factor price determinants of inward and outward foreign direct investment (FDI) to its potential productivity and labour market effects on both host and home economies. This allows us to distinguish clearly between technology-sourcing and technologyexploiting FDI, and to identify FDI that is linked to labour cost differentials. We then empirically examine the effects of different types of FDI into and out of the UK on domestic (i.e. UK) productivity and on the demand for skilled and unskilled labour at the industry level.

Productivity and labour demand effects of inward and outward FDI on UK industry

We relate the technological and factor price determinants of inward and outward FDI to its potential productivity and labour market effects on both host and home economies. This allows us to distinguish clearly between technology sourcing and technology exploiting FDI, and to identify FDI which is linked to labour cost differentials. We then empirically examine the effects of different types of FDI into and out of the United Kingdom on domestic (i.e. UK) productivity and on the demand for skilled and unskilled labour at the industry level. Inward investment into the UK comes overwhelmingly from sectors and countries which have a technological advantage over the corresponding UK sector. Outward FDI shows a quite different pattern, dominated by investment into foreign sectors which have lower unit labour costs than the UK. We find that different types of FDI have markedly different productivity and labour demand effects, which may in part explain the lack of consensus in the empirical literature on the effects of FDI. Our results also highlight the difficulty for policy makers of simultaneously improving employment and domestic productivity through FDI.

Does move to market have an impact on earnings gap across gender? Some evidence from India

We use Indian National Sample Survey employment–unemployment data for the urban sector for the years 1987 and 1999. Our results indicate that the gender wage gap had narrowed considerably between these two years, for all earnings deciles and for all education cohorts. The narrowing of the earnings gap can be attributed largely to a sharp increase in the returns to the labour market experience of women.

The best days of your life? Youth, policy and Blair's New Labour

Since the election of New Labour in 1997, young people's relationship to work and to the labour market has been the subject of intense scrutiny and policy activity. By equipping young workers with the qualifications and skills they are held to need in the knowledge economy, the government hopes to reconcile its quest for economic progress with the commitment to social justice for young people. However, as this article argues, the importance invested in this area of 'youth policy' overlays a more fundamental process of disengagement in which New Labour is presiding over the withdrawal of those traditional sources of support it has held out to the young. For this reason, the article concludes by suggesting that the importance that New Labour attaches to policy for young workers tells us more about the needs of government than it does about the needs of young people.

Do labour laws protect labour in India? Union experiences of workplace employment regulations in Maharashtra India

The debate over labour market regulations in India is highly polarised. Advocates of labour market deregulation suggest that the labour law framework in the country confers disproportionate powers on workers and trade unions in the formal sector of the economy, resulting in industrial conflicts and poor productivity. Using workplace union survey data from the state of Maharashtra, this paper examines the veracity of these claims. Maharashtra is recognised as a state with a broadly pro-worker labour law framework. We find that even pro-worker labour laws at best offer only weak protection to workers and unions in the formal sector establishments. Unions find themselves increasingly vulnerable to employer hostility. We discuss these findings in the context of the role of state and judiciary in employment relations and of union links with political parties.

Linking labour force participation, education, labour wages and household consumption in developing countries:push and pull effects in self-employment - evidence from Nigeria

The contribution of this thesis is in understanding the origins in developing countries of differences in labour wage and household consumption vis-à-vis educational abilities (and by extension employment statuses). This thesis adds to the labour market literature in developing countries by investigating the nature of employment and its consequences for labour wage and household consumption in a developing country. It utilizes multinomial probit, blinder-oaxaca, Heckman and quantile regressions to examine one human capital indicator: educational attainment; and two welfare proxies: labour wage and household consumption, in a developing country, Nigeria. It finds that, empirically, the self-employed are a heterogeneous group of individuals made up of a few highly educated individuals, and a significant majority of ‘not so educated’ individuals who mostly earn less than paid workers. It also finds that a significant number of employers enjoy labour wage premiums; and having a higher proportion of employers in the household has a positive relationship with household consumption. The thesis furthermore discovers an upper educational threshold for women employers not found for men. Interestingly, the thesis also finds that there is indeed an ordering of labour wages into low-income self-employment (which seems to be found mainly in “own account” self-employment), medium-income paid employment, and high-income self-employment (which seems to be found mainly among employers), and that this corresponds to a similar ordering of low human capital, medium human capital and high human capital among labour market participants, as expressed through educational attainments. These show that as a whole, employers can largely be classed as experiencing pulled self-employment, as they appear to be advantaged in all three criteria (educational attainments, labour wage and household consumption). A minority of self-employed “own account” workers (specifically those at the upper end of the income distribution who are well educated), can also be classed as experiencing pulled self-employment. The rest of the significant majority of self-employed “own account” workers in this study can be classed as experiencing pushed self-employment in terms of the indicators used.

The impact of learning outcomes in business education: assessing value, relevance and graduate ability in a multi-country study of employers and business graduates

This paper discusses critical findings from a two-year EU-funded research project involving four European countries: Austria, England, Slovenia and Romania. The project had two primary aims. The first of these was to develop a systematic procedure for assessing the balance between learning outcomes acquired in education and the specific needs of the labour market. The second aim was to develop and test a set of meta-level quality indicators aimed at evaluating the linkages between education and employment. The project was distinctive in that it combined different partners from Higher Education, Vocational Training, Industry and Quality Assurance. One of the key emergent themes identified in exploratory interviews was that employers and recent business graduates in all four countries want a well-rounded education which delivers a broad foundation of key business knowledge across the various disciplines. Both groups also identified the need for personal development in critical skills and competencies. Following the exploratory study, a questionnaire was designed to address five functional business areas, as well as a cluster of 8 business competencies. Within the survey, questions relating to the meta-level quality indicators assessed the impact of these learning outcomes on the workplace, in terms of the following: 1) value, 2) relevance and 3) graduate ability. This paper provides an overview of the study findings from a sample of 900 business graduates and employers. Two theoretical models are proposed as tools for predicting satisfaction with work performance and satisfaction with business education. The implications of the study findings for education, employment and European public policy are discussed.

The Japanisation process in Malaysia

This thesis examines the empirical evidence for the transferability of Japanese soft technology (JST) or Japanese work organisation within two government-initiated, Malaysian-Japanese strategic alliances: PROTON and PERNEC. The government, through its Look East Policy (LEP) began in 1982, taking Japan (and South Korea) as models and partners in Malaysian economic and industrial development process, and expected these alliances to learn the good aspects of Japanese work organisations and management styles in order for them to become independent companies, both technologically and economically. The thesis found that the alliances have been successfully taking and utilising Japanese parts, components, tools, robots and machines; i.e. the 'ready-made hard technology'. [Whereas the important element of soft technology has been ignored]. The soft technology has been slowly and marginally transferred because neither local parties nor their Japanese counterparts within the alliances consider the acquisition or transfer of soft technology to be the main concern or a part of business plan. Although many factors influence management transfer, the thesis has focused on the eagerness and the capability of Malaysian managerial teams to acquire and, to a lesser extent, the readiness of the Japanese to transfer the technology. It was found that there is a lack of demand on technology acquisition by Malaysian managers and lack of responsibility to transfer the technology among Japanese experts. However, the political and social pressures on these alliances, the industrial climate and labour market, leaderships and management system of alliances, and Japanese MNCs regional and global corporate strategies have contributed to the high level of transfer of JST at PROTON compared to PERNEC. The research also found that Malaysian industrial and investment policies have favoured foreign investment but there is a lack of strategies for nurturing indigenous technological development.On the other hand the Japanese MNCs and public agencies have been operating in Malaysia and guided by their regional and global corporate strategies and less concerned with Malaysian technological development. In conclusion, empirically, the JST transfer is minimal. The transfer has been influenced by internal contingency factors of organisation; external industrial, political and cultural environmental factors; and last but not least the Japanese MNCs' global and regional corporate strategies. The transfer of Japanese management in this research is inclined towards core-periphery transfer model, it is also related to organisational and national technological capability.