Endogenous job destruction and job matching in cities

We propose a spatial search-matching model where both job creation and job destruction are endogenous. Workers are ex ante identical but not ex post since their jobs can be hit by a technological shock which decreases their productivity. They reside in a city, and commuting to the job center involves both pecuniary and time costs. As a result, workers with high wages are willing to live closer to jobs to save on time commuting costs. We show that, in equilibrium, there is a one-to-one correspondence between the productivity space and the urban location space. Workers with high productivities and wages reside close to jobs, have low per distance commuting costs and pay high land rents. We also show that higher per distance commuting costs and higher unemployment benefits lead to more job destruction.     

Strategic job analysis

The application of job analysis techniques makes the implicit assumption that information about a job as it presently exists may be used to develop programs to recruit, select, train, and appraise people for the job as it will exist in the future. Given a rapidly changing internal and external world it is likely that many jobs will change in the future. This article reviews some new techniques that, when added to traditional job analysis procedures, may facilitate strategic planning for the development of personnel procedures such as selection and training. Examples of the new technique are presented, followed by a discussion of some topics requiring future thought and research.     

A reassessment of the relationship between job specialization,job rotation and job burnout: example of Taiwan's high-technology industry

This study applies the concept of job specialization and job rotation based on early principles of job design in solving employees' perception of job burnout, using employees of Taiwan's high-technology industry as targets for re-examination. In past management systems of traditional industries, job rotation was adopted to address employees' feelings of monotony, boredom and fatigue as a result of job simplification and specialization. However, with the advancement of technology, shortening of technical life cycles and changes in job characteristics, the relationship between job rotation, job specialization and job burnout is now different from in the past. The results from 304 valid samples collected from employees of Taiwan's high-technology industry reveal that the adoption of job specialization in high-tech industry in fact raises professional efficacy and reduces employees' feeling of job burnout, which is opposed to the benefits of job design purported in past management systems. Therefore, this paper seeks to re-examine the relationship between the three variables. By implementing job rotation or job specialization systems as means to address issues related to employees' job burnout, organizations should not only consider the benefits to job management, but also adjust according to technology and environmental changes. Only by doing so could organizations release the maximum potential from human resources management systems.     

Returning to the workforce after retiring: a job demands,job control,social support perspective on job satisfaction

Despite growing interest in the aging of the workforce, few investigations have explored a key aspect of diversity among older workers: whether or not they consider themselves retired. Using a sample of workers ages 50 and older from the National Study of the Changing Workforce (2008), we apply career development theory and the job demand–control(–support) framework to investigate potential differences between working retirees (i.e. employed older adults 50+ who consider themselves retired) and working non-retirees (i.e. employed older adults 50+ who do not consider themselves retired) in terms of their job characteristics (i.e. demands, control, support) and how these job characteristics are related to job satisfaction. We find that working retirees report lower job demands and higher social support, and that there is limited evidence for the buffering hypothesis. Implications for researchers and employers are discussed.     

The magic of the new: How job changes affect job satisfaction

We investigate a crucial event for job satisfaction: changing one's workplace. For representative German panel data, we show that the reason why the previous employment ended is strongly linked to satisfaction with the new job. Workers initiating a change of employer experience extraordinarily high job satisfaction, though in the short term only. To investigate causality, we exploit the event of plant closure as an exogenous trigger of job switching. In this case, we find no significantly positive effect of job changes on job satisfaction. Our findings complement research on workers’ well‐being and concern labor market policies and human resource management.     

Unemployment insurance and subsequent job duration: job matching versus unobserved heterogeneity

The relationship between Unemployment Insurance (UI) benefit duration, unemployment duration and subsequent job duration is investigated using a multi‐state duration model with state specific unobserved heterogeneity. I examine two potential explanations for the negative correlation between unemployment and job spell durations; UI benefits increase job matching quality (the ‘Matching’ effect) versus unobserved heterogeneity (‘Adverse Selection’). The Matching effect is found to be weak. Although new jobs accepted within 5 weeks of benefit termination seem to have a higher dissolution rate, the negative correlation between unemployment and job duration is mostly explained by unobserved heterogeneity. Various simulations indicate that increasing the maximum benefit duration by one week will raise expected unemployment duration by 1.0 to 1.5 days but will raise expected job duration by 0.5 to 0.8 day only. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Effects of job stress on self-esteem,job satisfaction,and turnover intention

ABSTRACT

This study is focused on female inbound call center counselors who are easily exposed to emotional labor when customers express anger and hostility and use swear words toward invisible targets on the phone. Our study is based on 244 responses from female inbound call center counselors. Job stress has a significantly negative effect on job satisfaction and self-esteem. It was shown that self-esteem has a partially mediating effect, and turnover experience had a moderating effect. It is important to shed new light on the roles of self-esteem among determinants of job satisfaction.     

The job stress–job performance relationship in the social service encounter

• The current study empirically examines job performance by considering perceived customer demands as a new antecedent of job stress (JS) and the mediating role of emotion‐focused coping (EFC) on the relationship of JS and physical consequences (PC), and in‐turn job performance. A mailed survey that solicited 2500 social service providers working in the United States rendered a useable random sample of 533. Regression analyses supported the hypothesized relationships. Findings suggest that emotions play an important role in the quality of the social service encounter evidenced by the mediating role of EFC in the relationship between JS and job performance. The introduction of an intervening variable (i.e., EFC) in the JS–job performance relationship extends affective event theory (AET). The findings offer management new insights into the service encounter by identifying a source of JS that creates barriers to value added benefit creation.

Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Innovations in job analysis: Development and application of metrics to analyze job data

Job analysis is an integral part of any human resource function. Recent advancements in technology and changing worker environments have drastically altered the means by which job analysis data are collected and stored. These changes have led to an increase in the amount of data that is collected and the potential for the data to inform complex decision making. However, due to a lack of tools available for configuring and analyzing data, human resource professionals are often unable to keep themselves abreast of changes in their workforce, make complex decisions using job data, and facilitate communication across jobs, job families or departments in their organization. As a result, advanced methods for analysis of job data are needed. Metrics are quantitative algorithms applied to job data that aid in decision making in areas such as recruitment, selection, transferability, promotion, training, and development. Metrics are a sophisticated, user-friendly approach to analyzing job data that have the potential to meet the needs of human resource professionals in today's dynamic workplace. The development of metrics, their application and benefit to human resource professionals, and their use of O^⁎NET are discussed.     

Performance appraisals and job satisfaction

The research in this article is focused on formal performance appraisals (PA), one of the most important human resource management practices in firms. In detail, the study analyzes the effect of PAs on employees’ overall job satisfaction. We are able to differentiate between appraisals that are linked to monetary outcomes, such as bonus payments and promotions, and appraisals that have no monetary consequences. Building on a representative, longitudinal sample of around 10,500 German employees, we apply fixed effects regressions that allow us to more closely estimate the causal effect of appraisals on job satisfaction compared to previous cross-sectional studies. We find a significantly positive effect of PAs on job satisfaction, which is primarily driven by appraisals linked to monetary outcomes. The results demonstrate that PAs linked to monetary outcomes are a powerful HR management tool that is appreciated by employees. Furthermore, we explore the moderating effects of personality traits (Big Five, locus of control) on the relationship between PAs and job satisfaction. The results show that if tangible benefits cannot be provided or are not tied to the assessment procedure, the use of appraisals with no monetary consequences can be detrimental for open-minded and self-determined employees, as appraisals could then potentially raise expectations that are not fulfilled. Theoretical and practical implications of these results are discussed.     

Unions and involuntary job separations

In contrast to the extensive literature on the effects of unions on wages, productivity and voluntary job endings, the effect of unions on involuntary job endings has received relatively little attention. This article demonstrates how unions alter involuntary job separation (redundancies, temporary job endings and dismissals) rates at different tenure levels using the British Household Panel Survey data from 1991 to 2008. A novel finding is that being a union member reduces a person's redundancy probability at low‐tenure levels, relative to an employee of a non‐unionised firm, but has no significant effect at high tenure levels. Union membership and union recognition are not related to different rates of temporary job endings.     

Cognitive job crafting: A possible response to increasing job insecurity and declining professional prestige

Recent research has shown that job crafting, which describes individuals' attempts to craft a job to make it correspond more to personal inclinations, skills, and abilities, can generate significant work and nonwork benefits for individuals. Using the theoretical lens of activation theory, we examined whether professionals are prompted to cognitively craft their jobs in response to the increasing perception of precarisation of their profession, measured in terms of job insecurity and perceived external prestige. We adopted a mixed methods approach among professional accountants operating in Southern Italy and the results indicated the presence of two curvilinear relationships. More specifically, we found that accountants were more likely to engage in cognitive crafting when experiencing moderate levels of job insecurity (rather than high or low) and in the presence of both low and high levels of perceived external prestige (rather than a moderate level). Implications for theory and practice are discussed.     

Zero-intelligence agents looking for a job

We study a simple agent-based model of a decentralized matching market game in which agents (workers or job seekers) make proposals to other agents (firms) in order to be matched to a position within the firm. The aggregate result of agents interactions can be summarised in the form of a Beveridge curve, which determines the relationship between unmatched agents, unemployed job seekers and vacancies in firms. We open the black box of matching technology, by modelling how agents behave (make proposals) according to their information perception. We observe more efficient results—in the form of a downward shift of the Beverage curve in the case of simple zero-intelligent agents. Our comparative statics indicate that market conditions, such as the heterogeneity of agents’ preferences, will also shift the Beveridge curve downwards. Moreover, market thickness affects movement along the Beverage curve. Movement right-down along the curve if there is an increasing number of agents compared to positions within firms. Furthermore, we show that frictions in re-matching, such as commitment to a match, could be another factor shifting the Beveridge curve toward the origin.     

The effect of job satisfaction on job search: Not just whether,but also where

Using survey data of public sector employees in the Netherlands, this paper shows that workers' satisfaction with various job domains not only affects whether but also where workers search for another job. An intuitive pattern emerges. Workers try to leave their current employer when they are uncomfortable with an organisation-specific job domain, like management. Conversely, when workers are dissatisfied with a job domain that differs sufficiently across jobs within an organisation, like autonomy, they look for another position in their current organisation. Dissatisfaction with job domains which may have an industry-specific component, such as job duties, drives workers out of their industry. The findings provide a unique view on the relative heterogeneity of job domains across jobs within organisations and industries.     

Residential mobility with job location uncertainty

This paper investigates the relationship between job changes and residential mobility. A job change may be prompted by reasons unrelated to factors associated with housing consumption. However, a job change may lead to an adjustment to housing consumption, i.e., residential relocation. Previous studies find that job relocations are positively associated with residential mobility. This paper departs from previous studies by looking at the effects of an uncertain future job location on residential mobility and mobility expectation. It is conjectured that with the existence of costs of residential mobility, a household head's likelihood for changing jobs in the future dampens the household's propensity to move, but encourages the formation of mobility expectation. These conjectures are examined empirically using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics and they are confirmed.