Internet professionals: job skills for an on-line age

The paper explores the increasing popularity of the Internet technology Singapore. It argues that the diffusion of Internet technology to South-East Asia would create new duties and responsibilities for human resource (HR) managers. One such duty is the identification of the skills which professional Internet staff would need to perform their work effectively in organizations. Using a triangulation research method, empirical study has identified the new professional Internet jobs which have emerged the IT industry in Singapore and the skills that professional Internet personnel require do their jobs effectively. Analysis of the findings indicates that professional Internet skills involve both technical and creative abilities and that, in explaining or defining professional Internet skills, it is necessary to use both the technical and the social conceptions of skill. This argument is based on the view that the creative skills include tacit skills so that a definition based solely on the technical conception of skill cannot capture the various dimensions of Internet skills. The implications of the research findings for human resource managers are raised.     

Competing for scarce talent in a liberalised environment: evidence from the aviation industry in Africa

Although the last few years have witnessed a burgeoning stream of research on interfirm mobility of employees, the extant research has remained relatively silent on both its dynamics and effects on the performance of firms domiciled in emerging economies. Using a qualitative case study approach, this article attempts to illuminate our understanding of both issues. It places particular emphasis on the examination of the dynamics of employees' interfirm mobility in the airline industry in Africa. The findings reveal the diverse ways in which the liberalisation in the industry has created a new competitive landscape with far-reaching consequences for firms. Essentially, firms now have to compete intensely for the scarce human capital. The theoretical and managerial implications of these findings are discussed.     

BUYING VERSUS HIRING—AN INDIRECT EVOLUTIONARY APPROACH

On a symmetric homogeneous oligopoly market with stochastic demand, firms can either hire employees or buy their labor input on a competitive labor market. Whereas the wage of hired labor does not depend on the realization of stochastic demand, the price of ‘bought’ labor reacts positively to product demand. We derive the equilibrium price vector to define an evolutionary process, assuming that the number of hiring firms increases when they earn more than buying firms. We then derive and discuss the stationary distribution of this stochastic adaptation process.     

Symposium on the Industrial Organization of Higher Education

Review of Industrial Organization -     

Conventions,local interaction,and automata networks

This paper deals with the evolution of conventions in a finite population of boundedly rational players. We apply methods from the theory of automata networks to analyze the effects of different interaction structures. It is shown that the size of the reference group for each player has an important impact on the evolutionary stability of a particular convention, and that the interaction structure crucially determines the distribution of conventions in the population.     

Does more calculus improve student learning in intermediate micro- and macroeconomic theory?

Using a selection bias correction model with ordered probit, we estimate how a second semester of calculus affects students' grades in intermediate economic theory. Selection bias correction is needed because similar aptitudes and interests often lead students to enroll and do well in both mathematics and economics. A sample of students enrolled in 49 classes of intermediate micro and 41 classes of intermediate macro is used to estimate the model. The results show a predicted payoff from a second semester of calculus of about one whole letter grade in intermediate micro, but no payoff in intermediate macro. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Home market development and self-finance as basic elements of development policy

At the close of the Second Development Decade, 1971–1980, the Third World was able to record significant achievements in industrialization and external trade. But the army of jobless has swollen further; the urban slums have grown larger; and famine has claimed more, not fewer victims. The current development trends make it imperative to keep the masses on the land and to prevent a grave situation growing even worse. Jobs have to be created in the countryside; those who till the land must ensure supplies for themselves and the population at large. This article shows how these objectives can be approached.     

North-South interdependence: The case of the Federal Republic of Germany

This study examines economic relations between West Germany and the developing countries in the fields of trade, capital flows and migration of labour. Activity in most fields has expanded enormously since the mid-1960s; in addition the traffic has become markedly less one-way. For the purposes of analysis the developing countries are differentiated according to their economic capacity; prospects for co-operation with West Germany appear to differ markedly according to their stage of development. So German development policy, for its part, needs to employ a variety of different strategies. The more highly developed the partner country, the more the field can be left to private initiative, supported by a liberal foreign trade regime.