The impact of workplace support and identity on training transfer: a case study of drug and alcohol safety training in Australia

Previous research has indicated that the transfer climate of work organisations is an important factor in determining the degree to which knowledge, skills and abilities gained in training transfer to the workplace. In particular, workplace social support from supervisors and coworkers is consistently cited as an important factor that can facilitate or inhibit training transfer. However, research evidence regarding the impact of workplace social support on training transfer is mixed. In order to address this issue a study was conducted to identify under what conditions workplace social support impacts on training transfer. This study evaluated a workplace drug and alcohol training programme * * The training evaluated in this study is part of the Building Trades Group Drug and Alcohol Programme. This is a national drug and alcohol programme for the Australian Building and Construction Industry. For more information on this programme, visit: http//www.btgda.org.au .
to examine the impact of workplace social support and identification with workplace groups on training transfer. Results indicated that the influence of workplace social support on training transfer was moderated by the degree to which trainees identified with workplace groups that provided this support. This study supports the proposition that in order to fully understand training transfer, and to design effective training programmes, training research and practice needs to focus on both the personal and situational factors that may interact to influence learning and transfer.     

It's time to retire. Retirement

Companies have been so focused on down-sizing to contain costs that they've largely neglected a looming threat to their competitiveness: a severe shortage of talented workers. The general population is aging and with it, the labor pool. People are living longer, healthier lives, and the birthrate is at a historical low. During the next 15 years, 80% of the native-born workforce growth in North America--and even more in much of Western Europe--is going to be in the over-50 age cohort. When these mature workers begin to retire, there won't be nearly enough young people entering the workforce to compensate. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects a shortfall of 10 million workers in the United States in 2010, and in countries where the birthrate is well below the population replacement level (particularly in Western Europe), the shortage will hit sooner, be more severe, and remain chronic. The problem won't just be a lack of bodies. Skills, knowledge, experience, and relationships walk out the door every time somebody retires--and they take time and money to replace. And while the brain drain is beginning now, the problem is going to become much more acute in the next decade or so, when baby boomers--more than one-quarter of all Americans, amounting to 76 million people--start hitting their mid sixties. Based on the results of their yearlong research project, the authors of this article offer recommendations for gaining the loyalty of older workers and creating a more flexible approach to retirement that allows people to continue contributing well into their sixties and seventies. Companies can no longer afford to think of retirement as a onetime event, permanently dividing work life from leisure.     

Smooth convergence in the binomial model

In this article, we consider a general class of binomial models with an additional parameter λ. We show that in the case of a European call option the binomial price converges to the Black–Scholes price at the rate 1/n and, more importantly, give a formula for the coefficient of 1/n in the expansion of the error. This enables us, by making special choices for λ, to prove that convergence is smooth in Tian’s flexible binomial model and also in a new center binomial model which we propose. Ken Palmer was supported by NSC grant 93-2118-M-002-002.     

The Year in Review: Economics at the Antitrust Division, 2006–2007

In this paper, we evaluate the scope of Chadwick’s claim on the superiority of competition for the market over competition in the market under incomplete information. We firstly characterize the expected outcome achieved under competition in the market at a Cournot Bayesian-Nash equilibrium. Then we characterize the optimal expected outcome achieved under a competition for the market mechanism designed by a government facing a shadow cost of public funds. We show that a regulated monopoly selected by an auction mechanism results in higher expected welfare than does duopoly competition when the entry cost is low but that the opposite holds when the market size is small and the entry cost is high for some values of the shadow cost of public funds. These results are explained by the influence of adverse selection on the entry decision at the Cournot equilibrium and by the level of expected total fixed costs in both mechanisms.      

How Effective Are Second-Generation Road Funds? A Preliminary Appraisal

Underfunded, inefficient road maintenance is a perennial problemin many developing economies. To address it, some countrieshave created "second-generation" road funds that are financedby fuel levies and managed by boards representing the interestsof road users. Macroeconomists often oppose such funds, arguingthat this earmarking of revenue reduces fiscal flexibility.Some argue that such road funds should be seen as an interimstep toward fully commercialized road maintenance or good publicsector governance—and hence subject to sunset provisions.Decisions on whether to retain (or create) such funds shouldthen be based on their effects on resource allocation, operationalefficiency, and rent seeking. Using evidence on new road fundsin Africa, this article finds that they have not underminedfiscal flexibility. Moreover, they have improved the administrationof road funding (in terms of execution capability) and its outputs(in terms of road conditions). So, although criteria for assessingroad funds remain relevant, the funds should not automaticallybe considered temporary mechanisms. But when establishing newfunds, government's continued role in approving spending onroad maintenance should be explicitly recognized.