Collaborative work groups that span multiple locations and time zones, or "follow the sun," create a growing demand for creating new technologies and methodologies that enable traditional spatial and temporal separations to be surmounted in an effective and productive manner. The hurdles faced by members of such virtual teams are in three key areas: differences in concepts and terminologies used by the different teams, differences in understanding the problem domain under consideration, and differences in training, knowledge, and skills that exist across the teams. These reasons provide some of the basis for the delineation of new architectural approaches that can normalize knowledge and provide reusable artifacts in a knowledge repository.
{"title":"Leveraging Knowledge Reuse and System Agility in the Outsourcing Era","authors":"Igor Crk, Dane Sorensen, A. Mitra, Amar Gupta","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.1017183","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1017183","url":null,"abstract":"Collaborative work groups that span multiple locations and time zones, or \"follow the sun,\" create a growing demand for creating new technologies and methodologies that enable traditional spatial and temporal separations to be surmounted in an effective and productive manner. The hurdles faced by members of such virtual teams are in three key areas: differences in concepts and terminologies used by the different teams, differences in understanding the problem domain under consideration, and differences in training, knowledge, and skills that exist across the teams. These reasons provide some of the basis for the delineation of new architectural approaches that can normalize knowledge and provide reusable artifacts in a knowledge repository.","PeriodicalId":142467,"journal":{"name":"Labor: Human Capital","volume":"10 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2009-02-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127791995","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The growing adoption of outsourcing and offshoring concepts is presenting new opportunities for distributed software development. Inspired by the paradigm of round-the-clock manufacturing, the concept of the 24-hour knowledge factory (24HrKF) attempts to make similar transformations in the arena of IS: specifically to transform the production of software and allied intangibles to benefit from the notion of continuous development by establishing multiple collaborating sites at strategically selected locations around the globe. As the sun sets on one site, it rises on another site with the day’s work being handed off from the closing site to the opening site. In order to enable such hand offs to occur in an effective manner, new agile and distributed software processes are needed, as delineated in this article.
{"title":"Agile Software Processes for the 24-Hour Knowledge Factory Environment","authors":"Nathan Denny, Igor Crk, Ravi Sheshu","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.1017184","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1017184","url":null,"abstract":"The growing adoption of outsourcing and offshoring concepts is presenting new opportunities for distributed software development. Inspired by the paradigm of round-the-clock manufacturing, the concept of the 24-hour knowledge factory (24HrKF) attempts to make similar transformations in the arena of IS: specifically to transform the production of software and allied intangibles to benefit from the notion of continuous development by establishing multiple collaborating sites at strategically selected locations around the globe. As the sun sets on one site, it rises on another site with the day’s work being handed off from the closing site to the opening site. In order to enable such hand offs to occur in an effective manner, new agile and distributed software processes are needed, as delineated in this article.","PeriodicalId":142467,"journal":{"name":"Labor: Human Capital","volume":"73 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2009-02-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114697392","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Efficiency, effectiveness and survival of any organization anywhere, whether big or small, depend on the recently rediscovered human capital. Thus acquisition of qualified human resources, developing them and maintaining them becomes all the more important. Employee turnover not only reduces the human capital in an organization but also organizational productivity besides incurring the costs of acquiring human resources for replacement and developing them. Hence increased emphasis is being laid on retention of human resources now a days especially with the onset of recent Revolutions such as Information Technology, which is labor intensive in nature, supported by increased globalization. Text books on HRM suggest that retention problem is caused by organizational factors, lack of competitive compensation and rewards, inappropriate job design and work, lack of good employee relationships, etc. The prescriptions, by the text books, on retention intervention are: presenting the realistic job preview during the recruitment process, matching applicants to jobs, effective orientation and training after selection, giving competitive, fair and equitable pay, create opportunities for career advancement, fair and non-discriminatory treatment and enforcement of HR policies, etc. However this paper attempts to rediscover the Indian wisdom on HRM with special reference to the causes of employee turnover and the retention strategies as spelt out more than 5000 years ago in Panchatantra, a classical work on management, yet very relevant even to this day!
{"title":"Retention Strategies from 5000 Year-Old Indian Wisdom on Human Resource Management","authors":"Chendrayan Chendroyaperumal","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.1336026","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1336026","url":null,"abstract":"Efficiency, effectiveness and survival of any organization anywhere, whether big or small, depend on the recently rediscovered human capital. Thus acquisition of qualified human resources, developing them and maintaining them becomes all the more important. Employee turnover not only reduces the human capital in an organization but also organizational productivity besides incurring the costs of acquiring human resources for replacement and developing them. Hence increased emphasis is being laid on retention of human resources now a days especially with the onset of recent Revolutions such as Information Technology, which is labor intensive in nature, supported by increased globalization. Text books on HRM suggest that retention problem is caused by organizational factors, lack of competitive compensation and rewards, inappropriate job design and work, lack of good employee relationships, etc. The prescriptions, by the text books, on retention intervention are: presenting the realistic job preview during the recruitment process, matching applicants to jobs, effective orientation and training after selection, giving competitive, fair and equitable pay, create opportunities for career advancement, fair and non-discriminatory treatment and enforcement of HR policies, etc. However this paper attempts to rediscover the Indian wisdom on HRM with special reference to the causes of employee turnover and the retention strategies as spelt out more than 5000 years ago in Panchatantra, a classical work on management, yet very relevant even to this day!","PeriodicalId":142467,"journal":{"name":"Labor: Human Capital","volume":"25 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2009-02-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134555428","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
There is a widely accepted claim which insists that students’ performance at Ethiopian universities is constrained by poor educational input provided at high school level and especially by students’ limited capacity to communicate in English. For the specific course analyzed under this paper the impact of high school performance is found to be positive but very marginal. But based on Grade point average there is positive and significant association between high school performance and university performance, especially at freshman level. But this strong association is not specifically related to math or English performance per se but to over all performance.
{"title":"'After all, most of the 'myth' has some blurred empirical foundation' - Determinants of University Level Performance of Students: Case Study of Rural Development Course Covered in 2008 within Mekelle University","authors":"Taddese Mezgebo","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.1348054","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1348054","url":null,"abstract":"There is a widely accepted claim which insists that students’ performance at Ethiopian universities is constrained by poor educational input provided at high school level and especially by students’ limited capacity to communicate in English. For the specific course analyzed under this paper the impact of high school performance is found to be positive but very marginal. But based on Grade point average there is positive and significant association between high school performance and university performance, especially at freshman level. But this strong association is not specifically related to math or English performance per se but to over all performance.","PeriodicalId":142467,"journal":{"name":"Labor: Human Capital","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2009-02-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129382066","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In this paper we present: 1. The available data on comparative gender inequality at the macroeconomic level and 2. Gender inequality measures at the microeconomic and case study level. We see that market openness has a significant effect on the narrowing of the human capital gender gap. Globalization and market openness stand as factors that improve both the human capital endowments of women and their economic position. But we also see that the effects of culture and religious beliefs are very different. While Catholicism has a statistically significant influence on the improvement of the human capital gender gap, Muslim and Buddhist religious beliefs have the opposite effect and increase human capital gender differences. In the second global era, some Catholic Latin American countries benefited from market openness in terms of the human capital and income gender gap, whereas we find the opposite impact in Buddhist and Muslim countries like China and South Korea where women’s economic position has worsened in terms of human capital and wage inequality.
{"title":"Globalization and Culture Shaping the Gender Gap: A Comparative Analysis of Urban Latin America and East Asia (1970 - 2000)","authors":"Enriqueta Camps","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.1427760","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1427760","url":null,"abstract":"In this paper we present: 1. The available data on comparative gender inequality at the macroeconomic level and 2. Gender inequality measures at the microeconomic and case study level. We see that market openness has a significant effect on the narrowing of the human capital gender gap. Globalization and market openness stand as factors that improve both the human capital endowments of women and their economic position. But we also see that the effects of culture and religious beliefs are very different. While Catholicism has a statistically significant influence on the improvement of the human capital gender gap, Muslim and Buddhist religious beliefs have the opposite effect and increase human capital gender differences. In the second global era, some Catholic Latin American countries benefited from market openness in terms of the human capital and income gender gap, whereas we find the opposite impact in Buddhist and Muslim countries like China and South Korea where women’s economic position has worsened in terms of human capital and wage inequality.","PeriodicalId":142467,"journal":{"name":"Labor: Human Capital","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2009-02-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128673295","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
We present a model of intergenerational transmission of pro-social values in which parents have information about relevant characteristics of society that is not directly available to their children. Differently from existing models of cultural transmission of values (such as Bisin and Verdier, 2001, and Tabellini, 2008) we assume that parents are exclusively concerned with their children's material welfare. If parents coordinate their educational choices, a child would look at her system of values to predict the values of her contemporaries, with whom she may interact. A parent may thus choose to instil pro-social values into his child in order to signal to her that others can generally be trusted. This implies that parents may optimally decide to endow their children with values that stand in contrast with maximization of material welfare, even if their children's material welfare is all they care about.
{"title":"Why Do Parents Socialize Their Children to Behave Pro-Socially? An Information-Based Theory","authors":"Fabrizio Adriani, S. Sonderegger","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.1342591","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1342591","url":null,"abstract":"We present a model of intergenerational transmission of pro-social values in which parents have information about relevant characteristics of society that is not directly available to their children. Differently from existing models of cultural transmission of values (such as Bisin and Verdier, 2001, and Tabellini, 2008) we assume that parents are exclusively concerned with their children's material welfare. If parents coordinate their educational choices, a child would look at her system of values to predict the values of her contemporaries, with whom she may interact. A parent may thus choose to instil pro-social values into his child in order to signal to her that others can generally be trusted. This implies that parents may optimally decide to endow their children with values that stand in contrast with maximization of material welfare, even if their children's material welfare is all they care about.","PeriodicalId":142467,"journal":{"name":"Labor: Human Capital","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2009-02-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129913727","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The paper argues that significant progress has been achieved by SETAs and the Skills Development system. But that important challenges have emerged in this review with regard to the level of development of SETAs, the numerous complexities that persist in respect of implementation, effectiveness and efficiency, the shortcomings in the functioning of the training market, the underdeveloped capacity and functioning of the monitoring and evaluations systems, the lack of effective management information systems, the effectiveness of quality assurance mechanisms in the system all combine to suggest that the SETAs and the Skills Development system are still at a critical stage of institutionalisation.
{"title":"SETA Review","authors":"Carmel Marock, DPRU","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.1341630","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1341630","url":null,"abstract":"The paper argues that significant progress has been achieved by SETAs and the Skills Development system. But that important challenges have emerged in this review with regard to the level of development of SETAs, the numerous complexities that persist in respect of implementation, effectiveness and efficiency, the shortcomings in the functioning of the training market, the underdeveloped capacity and functioning of the monitoring and evaluations systems, the lack of effective management information systems, the effectiveness of quality assurance mechanisms in the system all combine to suggest that the SETAs and the Skills Development system are still at a critical stage of institutionalisation.","PeriodicalId":142467,"journal":{"name":"Labor: Human Capital","volume":"289 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2009-02-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123729432","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
We analyze four methods to measure unexplained gaps in mean outcomes: three decompositions based on the seminal work of Oaxaca (1973) and Blinder (1973) and an approach involving a seemingly naive regression that includes a group indicator variable. Our analysis yields two principal findings. We show that the coefficient on a group indicator variable from an OLS regression is an attractive approach for obtaining a single measure of the unexplained gap. We also show that a commonly-used pooling decomposition systematically overstates the contribution of observable characteristics to mean outcome differences when compared to OLS regression, therefore understating unexplained differences. We then provide three empirical examples that explore the practical importance of our analytic results.
{"title":"Unexplained Gaps and Oaxaca-Blinder Decompositions","authors":"Todd E. Elder, J. Goddeeris, Steven J. Haider","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.1342576","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1342576","url":null,"abstract":"We analyze four methods to measure unexplained gaps in mean outcomes: three decompositions based on the seminal work of Oaxaca (1973) and Blinder (1973) and an approach involving a seemingly naive regression that includes a group indicator variable. Our analysis yields two principal findings. We show that the coefficient on a group indicator variable from an OLS regression is an attractive approach for obtaining a single measure of the unexplained gap. We also show that a commonly-used pooling decomposition systematically overstates the contribution of observable characteristics to mean outcome differences when compared to OLS regression, therefore understating unexplained differences. We then provide three empirical examples that explore the practical importance of our analytic results.","PeriodicalId":142467,"journal":{"name":"Labor: Human Capital","volume":"167 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2009-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133544557","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Over the years several developed and developing countries have used television broadcasting as a tools to enhance the dissemination of specific educational programs, as well as information and values to a large segment of their population. This paper sets out to measure the social value of one of this initiatives in the context of a developing country, namely the Futura TV channel in Brazil. The Futura is a communication project, ran by a non-profit foundation financed exclusively by private sector donations in Brazil. With almost 10 years of existence, Futura broadcast reaches almost 50% of the Brazilian population, and has approximately 33 million regular viewers in the whole country. Contingency valuation (CV) techniques using the referendum design were used to estimate the willingness to pay of a representative sample of the Brazilian adult population. Using both parametric and non-parametric techniques this paper is able to estimate the population willingness to pay for Futura, even in a sample in which a 60% of the population choose not to consume the good. The analysis suggest that the willingness to pay for the channel is positive and at least 16 times greater than the channel operation cost. The average minimum willingness to pay estimated using the Turnbull nonparametric model was R$ 3.7 per month, while the parametric average willingness to pay estimated with the Spike model suggested a value of R$ 5.9. When multiplied by the 5 million households with at least one member willing to pay something for the Futura TV channel, the total annual social value of the channel ranges from 330 to 550 million reais. Moreover, the complementary social mobilization activities promoted by the Futura channel seems to have a positive impact on its social value, suggesting that the method was successful in terms of disentangling embedded effects.
{"title":"What is the Value of Educational Broadcast?","authors":"João Pedro Azevedo","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.1332786","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1332786","url":null,"abstract":"Over the years several developed and developing countries have used television broadcasting as a tools to enhance the dissemination of specific educational programs, as well as information and values to a large segment of their population. This paper sets out to measure the social value of one of this initiatives in the context of a developing country, namely the Futura TV channel in Brazil. The Futura is a communication project, ran by a non-profit foundation financed exclusively by private sector donations in Brazil. With almost 10 years of existence, Futura broadcast reaches almost 50% of the Brazilian population, and has approximately 33 million regular viewers in the whole country. Contingency valuation (CV) techniques using the referendum design were used to estimate the willingness to pay of a representative sample of the Brazilian adult population. Using both parametric and non-parametric techniques this paper is able to estimate the population willingness to pay for Futura, even in a sample in which a 60% of the population choose not to consume the good. The analysis suggest that the willingness to pay for the channel is positive and at least 16 times greater than the channel operation cost. The average minimum willingness to pay estimated using the Turnbull nonparametric model was R$ 3.7 per month, while the parametric average willingness to pay estimated with the Spike model suggested a value of R$ 5.9. When multiplied by the 5 million households with at least one member willing to pay something for the Futura TV channel, the total annual social value of the channel ranges from 330 to 550 million reais. Moreover, the complementary social mobilization activities promoted by the Futura channel seems to have a positive impact on its social value, suggesting that the method was successful in terms of disentangling embedded effects.","PeriodicalId":142467,"journal":{"name":"Labor: Human Capital","volume":"160 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2009-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114516168","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2009-02-01DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9701.2008.01149.x
M. Amiti, S. Wei
The practice of sourcing service inputs from overseas suppliers has been growing in response to new technologies that have made it possible to trade in some business and computing services that were previously considered non-tradable. This paper estimates the effects of offshoring on productivity in US manufacturing industries between 1992 and 2000. It finds that service offshoring has a significant positive effect on productivity in the United States, accounting for around 10 per cent of labour productivity growth during this period. Offshoring material inputs also have a positive effect on productivity, but the magnitude is smaller accounting for approximately 5 per cent of productivity growth.
{"title":"Service Offshoring and Productivity: Evidence from the US","authors":"M. Amiti, S. Wei","doi":"10.1111/j.1467-9701.2008.01149.x","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9701.2008.01149.x","url":null,"abstract":"The practice of sourcing service inputs from overseas suppliers has been growing in response to new technologies that have made it possible to trade in some business and computing services that were previously considered non-tradable. This paper estimates the effects of offshoring on productivity in US manufacturing industries between 1992 and 2000. It finds that service offshoring has a significant positive effect on productivity in the United States, accounting for around 10 per cent of labour productivity growth during this period. Offshoring material inputs also have a positive effect on productivity, but the magnitude is smaller accounting for approximately 5 per cent of productivity growth.","PeriodicalId":142467,"journal":{"name":"Labor: Human Capital","volume":"112 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2009-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127310622","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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