Journal Article

The United States is one of the developed countries that have experienced the steepest declines of unionization and collective bargaining in recent decades. Its traditional industrial relations institutions, premised on the prevalence of “standard” employment relationships, have long been eroded by restrictive legislation and employer opposition. Meanwhile, precarious employment, sub-standard conditions and marginalization have become widespread features of the labour market, leading to the spontaneous emergence of alternative, often community- based initiatives to protect vulnerable workers using highly innovative strategies. “Worker centres”, in particular, have been very active to that end, often teaming up with formal trade unions to pursue their objectives.

Work ain’t what is used to be, and in the future, it won’t be what it is now. Standardization, mechanization, electrification, and now robotification and computerization have driven constant upheaval. At each stage observers have expressed alarm that worker dislocation will create a social nightmare of unemployment and financial ruin. The changes have been disruptive for many workers as jobs disappeared and skills became obsolete, and many communities suffered long-term decline when their dominant industries withered. But over time the economy adjusted, and new and often better-paying jobs were created. Still, many individuals and communities never recovered. The workforce moved from farm to factory to office to telecommuter. Productivity has increased, wealth has grown, many of the most arduous and dangerous jobs have disappeared, and many new and rewarding careers have thrived. The lesson that many draw is that change can be hard on some individuals, and even lead to significant social and economic disruption, but that it is beneficial to the society in the long-run. We can expect to see some people hurt by current and anticipated changes, but we should have faith that society will adapt to technological progress and that in the end society as a whole will be better off.

A conditional frontier approach is proposed to capture the role of the technology gap in explaining labour productivity differences in 211 European regions in eighteen countries over the years 1995–2007. Labour productivity growth is driven by capital accumulation and technical change. In lagging behind regions, productivity growth is mainly driven by capital accumulation. The technology gap does not play a role in driving labour productivity growth and remains stable across regions in the considered period. Cohesion policy seems more effective in terms of fixed investment rather than technological capabilities, while technology gap remains a source of unused potential productivity growth.

A number of industries underwent large and permanent reductions in employment growth at the beginning of this decade. We investigate the sources of these permanent changes in employment growth and what the consequences were for the U.S. economy. In particular, we find that relative declines in demand rather than technological innovations were the key drivers of the elevated levels of job destruction and permanent layoffs in the affected industries. In addition, most workers that were displaced in downsizing industries relocated to other sectors. While this process of reallocation led to large increases in productivity (and a reduction in labor's share of aggregate income) in industries shedding workers, it also resulted in prolonged periods of unemployment for many displaced workers, along with sizable reductions in earnings that were consistent with substantial losses in their specific human capital. Putting these pieces together, we estimate the costs to those adversely affected by these events to have been 1/2 percent to 1 percent of aggregate income per year.

The past two decades have seen the rise and fall of exceptional US productivity growth. This paper argues that labor and total factor productivity (TFP) growth slowed prior to the Great Recession. It marked a retreat from the exceptional, but temporary, information technologyfueled pace from the mid-1990s to early in the twenty-first century. This retreat implies slower output growth going forward as well as a narrower output gap than recently estimated by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO 2014a).

Due to demographic changes, the employee structure in companies is changing dramatically. It will be necessary to offer employees suitable, age-adequate jobs. As one of its foremost goals, optimized business management strategies must create conditions for guaranteeing a person’s health, work ability, and work motivation. In the context of corporate age management concepts, the literature recommends to retain and integrate older employees in the organization. This paper aims at developing an extended model of the relation between work motivation and health as affected by work ability and at deriving a host of measures that enterprises can apply as part of a corporate age management policy to counteract the impact of demographic changes. The model also takes into consideration factors influencing the relation between work motivation and health as affected by work ability (socio-demographic parameters, occupation, work-related stress). Additionally, the extended model translates the literature-based results into a corporate setting by way of a corporate age management program. The model comprises a process focusing on retaining and promoting work ability in order to maintain or boost work motivation and health. The host of measures presented serves as a basis to preventively counter demographic change on an individual, interpersonal, and structural level.

Using annual data on 21 industrial countries from the period 1985 to 2009 and a large number of controls, this paper empirically analyzes the impact of technological change on unemployment. As proxy for technological change, it uses the ratio of triadic patent families to population. According to the regression results, an increase in technological change substantially increases unemployment over 3 years. There is no long-term effect, though. The results are robust to both endogeneity and numerous variations in specifications. They support theoretical contributions according to which faster technological progress may increase unemployment, at least during a transition period.

The digital transformation of industrial sectors has become vital, as leverage essential not only competitive, but also their survival. That is why many of them engaged with the Association of strategic projects AFNeT digital processing based on international standards and on digital collaborative platforms, following the example of the aircraft and its BoostAeroSpace hub that 'using thousands of companies. The ambition is to "play group" to win together and lead all the companies of these "communities of fate" (especially SMEs) in the digital revolution. These projects allow industrial sectors to improve their competitiveness, because digital offers great opportunities and "business models" break to those who can exploit them and, on the contrary, serious source of danger for those who are incapable. These projects also help to better withstand the disruptive new actors "ubérisent" the economy, which came to power thanks to digital through customer relationship and gradually challenge upstream of the value chain. [googletranslate_en]

Analysis of the supply chain tends to focus on economic relations maintained by companies to ensure the availability of products to end customers. An abundant academic literature on this subject over the last thirty years. However, very little has been written about the role that can keep social relations maintained between individuals in a more efficient operation of supply chains. The article examines the influence of social relations in terms of organizational behavior of decision makers. It is based on field research conducted among French logistics providers which concluded that a major impact of social relationships on flow management and perceived performance. [googletranslate_en]