Measuring Labour Market Flexibility in the OECD Countries

This paper investigates the adjustment of employment to population shocks in 22 OECD countries over the period 1960–1997. Most of the countries have experienced significant population shocks during that period – due to migration and other reasons. We estimate the speed of adjustment parameter which is used as a measure of the functioning of the labour market. If the OECD countries are compared using this measure, it turns out that the Anglo Saxon countries clearly outperform the other (European) countries in terms of labour market adjustment. In the case of the Nordic countries, the results presented are the most extreme. In practically all OECD countries, the functioning of the labour market seems to have deteriorated over time. These observations seem to be helpful in explaining the behaviour of unemployment rates in the OECD area.     

Is more capability always beneficial for firm performance? Market orientation,core business process capabilities and business environment

This study examines the role of capabilities in core marketing-related business processes–product development management (PDM), supply chain management (SCM) and customer relationship management (CRM)–in translating a firm’s market orientation (MO) into firm performance. The study is the first to examine the interplay of all three business process capabilities simultaneously, while investigating how environmental conditions moderate their performance effects. A moderated mediation analysis of 468 product-focused firms finds that PDM and CRM process capabilities play important mediating roles, whereas SCM process capability does not mediate the relationship between MO and performance. However, the relative importance of the capabilities as mediators varies along the degree of environmental turbulence, and under certain conditions, an increase in the level of business process capability may even turn detrimental.     

Displacement Effects of Active Labour Market Policy: The Youth Labour Market in Finland

In 1994 the number of workers participating in active labour market programmes in Finland was 299,000. On average there where 125,000 workers in these programmes at any one time, the average length of participation in a programme being about 5 months. In relation to the 2.5 million-strong Finnish labour force, these figures are proportionally large. In 1994 the total expenditure on unemployment amounted to 6.7 per cent of GNP of which the share spent on active labour market programmes was about 25 per cent. The study investigates the displacement effects of active labour market programmes in the youth labour market in Finland. The two age groups analysed are 15-19-year-olds and 20-24-year-olds. The results, based on a VAR analysis of quarterly data from the period 1981.1-1995.2, suggest that the displacement effects of job-creation programmes may be substantial. The study cannot, however, provide any robust estimates of the likely size of such displacement effects on youth employment in Finland. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Establishment size and task-specific wages: Evidence from historical contract data

This study examines whether task-specific jobs are rewarded differently across establishments of different sizes and whether these rewards vary across distinct technologies. We found that the aggregate premium estimates on the impact of size on wages conceal significant differences between tasks and technologies and that these differences reflect unobserved individual heterogeneity. The role of self-selection of more productive workers into larger establishments is particularly substantial in the case of abstract tasks.     

The marketing strategy of a project-based firm: The Four Portfolios Framework

The purpose of this paper is to address the simultaneous management of multiple business relationships and multiple projects in the marketing strategy of the project-based firm. The research question is: How can the essence and interdependencies between the portfolios of relationships and projects be conceptualized as the marketing strategy of a project-based firm? We address this question by constructing a framework including two portfolios of relationships and two portfolios of projects, and by discussing how these portfolios may be interrelated. Combining the approaches of relationship management in project marketing on the one hand and the management of project portfolios on the other contributes a novel viewpoint to project marketing.     

No premature closures of debates,please: A response to Ahrens

In this response to Ahrens [Ahrens, T. (2008). Overcoming the subjective–objective divide in interpretive management accounting research. Accounting, Organizations and Society, 33(2–3), 292–297.] we clarify both the motivation and the core points of the Kakkuri-Knuuttila et al. [Kakkuri-Knuuttila, M.-L., Lukka, K., & Kuorikoski, J. (2008). Straddling between paradigms: A naturalistic philosophical case study on interpretive research in management accounting. Accounting, Organizations and Society, 33(2–3), 267–291.] paper. We remind the management accounting academia that we should be careful not to close prematurely examinations and debates on issues, which are not yet truly resolved.