Journal Article

This article charts the future transformations of the Canadian labor force population using a microsimulation projection model. The model takes into account differentials in demographic behavior and labor force participation of individuals according to their ethnocultural and educational characteristics. As a result of a rapid fall in fertility, the Canadian population is expected to age rapidly as baby boomers start to retire from the labor market in large numbers. In response to declining fertility, Canada raised its immigration intake at the end of the 1980s, and immigration is now the main driver of Canadian population growth. At the same time, immigrants to Canada are becoming more culturally diversified. Over the last half century, the main source regions have shifted from Europe to Asia. Results of the microsimulation show that Canada's labor force population will continue to increase, but at a slower rate than in the recent past. By 2031, almost one third of the country's total labor force could be foreign‐born, and almost all its future increase is expected to be among university graduates, while the less‐educated labor force is projected to decline.

This article attempts to explain the surprising dual managerial interest of Action Learning, which is a method of collaborative intelligence in a small group of diverse people still little known and practiced in France, which is based on an exclusive questioning approach . This method makes it possible to solve quickly and creatively real problems, complex and relatively urgent experienced organizations effectively and simultaneously develop communication and leadership skills of the participants. To support his argument, the author relies on a qualitative and operational approach of the method using a set of mini-case real corporate use as well as an educational practice of a few years in programs a great school of management and in seminars with the board and coaching practitioners. Then, are discussed the main advantages and benefits but also the limits and conditions for operational success of this method of collaborative thinking and what distinguishes neighboring appearance of methods, including that of "co-development" of Canadian origin . Finally, the author points out that this method of team thinking is very consistent with the desired working mode by the new generations. [googletranslate_en]

We analyse the role of training in mitigating the negative impact of technical and organizational changes on the employment prospects of older workers. Using a panel of French firms in the late 1990s, we first estimate wage bill share equations for different age groups. As a second step, we estimate the impact of ICT, innovative work practices and training on employment flows by age group in the next period. Training appears to have a positive impact on the employability of older workers, but it offers limited prospects to dampen the age bias associated with new technologies and innovative work practices.

The introduction and diffusion of personal computers are widely viewed as a technological revolution. Using U.S. metropolitan area-level panel data, this paper asks whether links between PC adoption, educational attainment, and the return to skill conform to a model of technological revolutions in which the speed and extent of adoption are endogenous. The model implies that cities will adjust differently to the arrival of a more skill-intensive means of production, with the returns to skill increasing most where skill is abundant, and its return is low. We show that the cross-city data fit many of the predictions of the model during the period 1980-2000, the PC diffusion era.

This paper examines the major changes in income inequality in Canada since the 1970s and collects them as a distributional paradigm for Canada. It focuses on labour market changes in terms of shares of workers and earnings shares for lower earners, middle- class workers and higher earners in a flexible general framework. Polarization of full-time workers, loss of middle-class earnings share and increase in a higher earnings gap are highlighted. Changing returns to human capital, role of demographics and cohort effects and declining labour share are examined. The paper also reviews evidence of changing economic mobility and estimating the role of inequality of opportunity.

Self-determination theory introduces a multidimensional view of motivation and explains how the different types of motivation can be promoted or hindered. Following Gagné et al. (2014), the purpose of this study was to create an abbreviated version of the Multidimensional Work Motivation Scale (MWMS) and to study the psychometric properties of the instrument using data from 1,035 workers from three Mediterranean countries (Greece, Italy, and Spain). Factorial analyses indicated that the 18-item scale has the same factor structure across the three Mediterranean languages, reflecting common cultural idiosyncrasies and influences. Convergent and discriminant validity indicated that intrinsic and integrated forms of autonomous motivation had a positive relationship with job satisfaction, affective and normative commitment, prosocial behavior, perceived organizational support, job autonomy, and leader-member exchange. Controlled forms of motivation (e.g., social and material) were unrelated or negatively related to most of the variables examined, with the exception of continuance commitment (positive association). Lastly, amotivation was negatively related to all employee-related variables, except for continuance commitment. Practical implications and suggestions for the development of future research based on self-determination theory are discussed.

Few topics have generated in recent years much interest in public debate and in the social sciences as big data. Scanning a growing number of social activities regularly with new data and also supplies an intense reflection on the functioning of modern societies as well as the terms of the production of knowledge about them. Thus, much of the literature on big data in the social sciences is between two approaches. The first is to characterize instrumentally these data say mass as opposed to survey data, traditionally used by the researchers. She questions the use made of it (Kitchin, 2014) as one that could be made (Beer and Burrows, 2007; Boullier, 2015, Varian, 2014). The second approach opposes the excitement of the big data, mainly in the field of market activities, an analysis of the risks from the use of this type of data: the fear of obsolescence of the scientific method of data analysis called to be replaced by automated method without strong link with social theories (Anderson, 2008) but also, and above all, the emergence of a new form of society "led by the data" (Pentland, 2012), upsetting our ways of living, working and thinking (Mayer-Schönberger and Cukier, 2013), raising novel ethical issues (Boyd and Crawford 2012) and heralding the advent of a new "governmentality" social (Rouvroy and Berns, 2013). [googletranslate_en]

Rapid economic restructuring has led to the emergence of serious skill gaps in many transition economies. Such changes have been especially pronounced in the countries of the Western Balkans due to the break-up of the former Yugoslavia and the subsequent reorientation of previous patterns of economic activity. Structural unemployment has increased to high levels, yet the education and training systems have failed to adapt to the needs for new skills in service sectors and sectors subject to global technological change. This article investigates the use of various skills anticipation methods to inform education and training policy in the region. It argues that the information on skill gaps gathered through these methods are not being used effectively to address skill mismatch, and that existing supply-led matching policies have failed to meet the challenge of high levels of structural unemployment. An alternative demand-led approach is identified, which relies on more decentralized methods to place effective power and influence in the hands of users, whether employers, employees, job-seekers or discouraged workers. It is suggested that this would provide a more appropriate model for the improvement of workforce skills in the Western Balkan countries.

The relationship between ageing and skills is of growing policy significance due to population ageing, the changing nature of work and the importance of literacy for social and economic well-being. This article examines the relationship between age and literacy skills in a sample of OECD countries using three internationally comparable surveys. By pooling the survey data across time, we can separate birth cohort and ageing effects. In doing so we find literacy skills decline with age and that, in most of our sample countries, successive birth cohorts tend to have poorer literacy outcomes. Therefore, once we control for cohort effects the rate at which literacy proficiency falls with age is much more pronounced than that which is apparent based on the cross-sectional relationship between age and literacy skills at a point in time. Further, in studying the literacy-age relationship across the skill distribution in Canada we find a more pronounced decline in literacy skills with age at lower percentiles, which suggests that higher initial literacy moderates the influence of cognitive ageing.