Incentives to work? The impact of a ‘Cash-for-Care’ benefit for immigrant and native mothers labour market participation

To what extent is labour market participation of mothers sensitive to economic incentives? We answer this question by studying the effect on labour market participation of a Norwegian family policy programme that clearly has affected the incentives to participate in the labour market of mothers with small children. From January 1999, all parents with one- and two-year-old children who did not use publicly subsidised day-care became entitled to a benefit, ‘Cash-for-Care’ (‘CFC’). The CFC reform has increased the price of publicly subsidised day-care relative to the price of own care. Economic theory of labour market participation postulates that the CFC reform would have a negative effect on labour market participation for the person most involved in childcare. The results show that the CFC reform has affected mothers' labour market participation negatively. The effects are much stronger for non-western immigrant mothers' than for native mothers. The results support the hypothesis that non-western immigrant mothers do react to changes in the relative prices of childcare and suggests that non-western female immigrants are quite responsive to changes in economic incentives.     

Activity Engagement as Escape from Self: The Role of Self-Suppression and Self-Expansion

A two-dimensional model on escape motives in activity engagement was developed in three studies. We suggested that motivation to escape the self through engagement in an activity partly derives from intentions to either prevent negative affect or to promote positive affect. A scale for measuring these intentional mindsets was developed consisting of the subcategories self-suppression and self-expansion. Results showed that the dimensions were differently related to psychological predictors, outcomes, and experiences in the activity engagement. We argue that the present research introduces escapism as a relevant theoretical and empirical concept applicable to several types of activity engagements.     

Happy together,or not? Balanced perceived investment in standard and nonstandard employees

This study investigated whether the relationship between temporary employees' perceived investment in employee development and work outcomes was moderated by temporary employees' perceived investment in standard employee development (PISED). A study among 2022 Norwegian temporary employees showed that the relationship between perceived investment in temporary employee development and in-role and contextual performance was moderated by the temporary employees' PISED. These results suggest that client organizations that invest more in standard employee development will get the most of their investments in temporary employee development. Implications for practice and future research are discussed.     

Understanding the Relationship between Individualism and Word of Mouth: A Self‐Enhancement Explanation

This study examines factors moderating the relationship between individualism and word‐of‐mouth (WOM) transmission. The conceptual model is based on the premise that high‐individualism consumers are highly driven by the self‐enhancement motive when they transmit WOM and that they change their willingness to provide WOM based on the perceived opportunity for self‐enhancement. The results reveal that high‐individualism consumers are more willing than low‐individualism consumers to transmit WOM in relation to satisfactory consumption experiences (vs. unsatisfactory), when WOM is unsolicited (vs. solicited), and when the context involves high perceived social risk (vs. low perceived social risk). Thus, the findings indicate that self‐enhancement may indeed be the underlying mechanism in the relationship between individualism and WOM transmission.     

Project Decision Chain

To add value to project performance and help obtain project success, a new framework for decision making in projects is defined. It introduces the project decision chain inspired by the supply chain thinking in the manufacturing sector and uses three types of decisions: authorization, selection, and plan decision. A primitive decision element is defined where all the three decision types can be accommodated. Each task in the primitive element can in itself contain subtasks that in turn will comprise new primitive elements. The primitive elements are nested together in a project decision chain.     

Project‐as‐practice: In search of project management research that matters

Research on projects is not only an immature field of research, but it is also insubstantial when it comes to understanding what occurs in projects. This article contributes to making project management research matter to the academic as well as to the practitioner by developing a project‐as‐practice approach, in alignment with the ongoing debate in social science research. The article outlines a framework and argues that there are two major challenges to the researcher and also suggests how these challenges can be met. Underlying notions of the practice approach are outlined to ensure a development of the project‐as‐practice approach that makes project management research matter!     

Family background and income during the rise of the welfare state: Brother correlations in income for Swedish men born 1932–1968

We investigate if the association between family background and income in Sweden has changed for men born between 1932 and 1968. Our main finding is that the share of the variance in long-run income that is attributable to family background, the so-called brother correlation in income, has fallen by some 17% from 0.49 for the cohorts of brothers born in the early 1930s to below 0.32 for the cohorts born around 1950. From then on, the correlations have inched back up to around 0.37. We report suggestive evidence that the decline is driven by changes in education.     

Co-movements of index options and futures quotes

We report evidence that the co-movements of index options and index futures quotes differ sharply from perfect correlation in periods with option trades. In half-hour intervals with (without) option trades 25% (12%) of call option quote changes have either the opposite sign or are larger in magnitude than the corresponding index futures quote changes. We calibrate a stochastic volatility model that allows for trade and no-trade periods using real data and simulate the joint co-movements of index quotes and option quotes in this model. We show that for trade intervals the observed co-movements differ from the benchmark case established by our simulations approximately three times too often. We provide empirical evidence that market microstructure effects – specifically, stale quotes and aggressive quotes – explain the majority of the deviations from the benchmark. Our findings are relevant for techniques that use estimates of local co-movements as inputs to price or hedge options.     

Business Groups in 20th‐Century Swedish Political Economy: A Sociological Perspective

Since the interwar period, the Swedish economy has been dominated by a few business groups that control practically all Swedish industry of any importance. This article provides a sociologically informed account of the existence and lasting dominance of business groups in Sweden. In challenging efficiency‐based accounts of business groups in Sweden offered by transaction‐cost economists, I adopt a historical and dynamic approach that understands economic institutions not as efficient responses to external circumstances, such as market conditions, but as “social constructions.” This approach emphasizes the role of contingency as well as agency in the formation and reproduction of institutions. The article demonstrates the historical contingencies of the emergence of the business groups—in the form of economic crises in the interwar period—and how the groups became institutionalized in the postwar period through a process of social exchange among the key actors in the Swedish political economy: the business elite, the trade unions, and the state.     

Amazon Mechanical Turk and the commodification of labour

Crowd employment platforms enable firms to source labour and expertise by leveraging Internet technology. Rather than offshoring jobs to low‐cost geographies, functions once performed by internal employees can be outsourced to an undefined pool of digital labour using a virtual network. This enables firms to shift costs and offload risk as they access a flexible, scalable workforce that sits outside the traditional boundaries of labour laws and regulations. The micro‐tasks of ‘clickwork’ are tedious, repetitive and poorly paid, with remuneration often well below minimum wage. This article will present an analysis of one of the most popular crowdsourcing sites—Mechanical Turk—to illuminate how Amazon's platform enables an array of companies to access digital labour at low cost and without any of the associated social protection or moral obligation.