The overriding theme of my dissertation is the use of short-term weather fluctuations to study how people allocate their time across activities. In Chapter 1, a theoretical model is developed to distinguish malfeasant from legitimate forms of employee sickness absenteeism. In this model, individuals' marginal utility of indoor leisure is increasing in their sickness levels, while their marginal utility of outdoor leisure is an increasing function of the interaction of their health and the quality of outdoor weather. In equilibrium, sickness absenteeism occurs at both ends of the sickness distribution -- among the relatively sick and among the most healthy facing the best weather. The positive relation between marginal changes in weather quality and levels of sickness absenteeism in the workplace reflects the substitution of the inframarginal employees who are the least sick away from work activities towards outdoor leisure activities. The model in Chapter 1 suggests an empirical strategy to identify a shirking component in overall reported sickness absenteeism. Not only does this approach avoid attributing entirely legitimate forms of absenteeism to shirking, but unlike previous studies using employee dismissal rates, it is able to distinguish shirking activity whether or not that activity is detected by employers. In order to exploit exogenous weather fluctuations to identify shirking activity, we need a one-dimensional measure of weather “quality”. The primary objective of Chapter 2 is to construct a weather quality index that captures the influence of the weather on workers' preferences for outdoor leisure activity. The weather quality index takes into account the multifaceted nature of weather conditions, and measures how various weather elements -- temperature, humidity, precipitation, wind speed, and cloud cover -- come together to affect the propensity of employees to engage in high-utility outdoor recreational activities. The resulting index provides a ranking of different weather conditions in terms of their outdoor recreational values, which can then be used to capture the incentives of employees to shirk contractual work hours in response to purely exogenous weather changes. Chapter 3 empirically tests the existence of weather-induced substitution between work and outdoor leisure activities and examines how this type of behaviour varies across workers facing different shirking incentives. Linking 12 years of employee data from Canada's monthly Labour Force Survey (LFS), which queries reasons for employees' absences, to weather quality measured using the index constructed in Chapter 2, a clear positive relationship is found between the quality of outside weather conditions and short-term reported sickness absenteeism. Moreover, consistent with a key proposition of the theoretical model in Chapter 1, the empirical relation between weather and sickness absenteeism tends to be larger when existing shirking incentives are low, such as when sick pay is less generous and when probability of getting fired if caught shirking is high. There is, however, little evidence that firms are able to adjust shirking incentives through the payment of efficiency wages. Finally, Chapter 4 examines another type of substitution induced by weather shocks -- the substitution between outdoor and indoor physical activities. The Chapter begins with a theoretical model of the decision to participate in physical activities, which assumes that when adverse weather shocks deter outdoor physical activities, indoor physical activities are the only viable option for individuals to stay physically active. However, because the indoor options are more costly, substituting from outdoor to indoor physical activities is easier for higher-income individuals. This suggests an explanation for the stylized fact that rates of physical activity participation are low among lower socioeconomic groups. Linking time-use data from Canadian General Social Survey with archival weather data, the results of the empirical analysis in this chapter provides evidence of a positive income effect enabling substitution from outdoor to indoor physical activities when outside weather is not conducive for participating in outdoor activities. By exploiting the role that income plays in maintaining physical activity levels when less costly outdoor options are limited, this chapter formally illustrates a credible causal link between people's income levels and their participation in leisure time physical activities and provides direct evidence of this link. The results have important policy implications for promoting physical activities, especially among lower income population.

The main objective of this research is to estimate internal and external wage effects associated with a changing share of college graduates in Canada. This paper uses data drawn from the Canadian 1991, 1996, and 2001 Public Use Microdata File for 25 to 65 years old individuals working full-time and full-year in metropolitan areas. These workers are then separated into four different levels of education groups in order to estimate the effect of change in the share of college-educated workers on their earnings. <p>The Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) estimates, controlling for potential work experience, total years of schooling, individual occupation, employment industry, immigration status, visible minority status, show a significant positive relationship between the percentage change of the share of college-educated workers and the percentage change of individuals real weekly wage rates. We found that one percentage point increase in a census metropolitan areas share of college-graduated workers was associated with a 0.35 percentage change in all workers wage rates in that city. For separated education groups, our results showed that a one percentage expansion in the supply of college-graduated workers raised less than high schools wage rate by 0.245 percent, raised high-school graduates wage rate by 0.363 percent, raised more than college-educated workers wage rate by 0.385 percent, and raised college-educated wage rate by 0.326 percentage. These results are consistent with the conclusion arrived at by E. Moretti, (2004) that all types of workers earnings increased when a citys share of college graduates rose.

From establishing government in 1949, Communist Party of China had pursuing a socialist system. However, over-emphasis on equal distribution lead to the individual income and the individual performance are not proportional, so that the mainland China was under the circumstances of "usually used in negative two half kilogram," and was near to the border of collapse. After Deng Xiaoping came back to power, threw away the past ideology of equal distribution, and he changed the economic system. China's economy began to advance by leaps and bounds. Nowadays, the mainland China¡¦s eco-nomic potentiality has surpassed Japan and it becomes the second economy which is only inferior to the U.S. economy. However, in so dazzling economic performance of mainland China's, the achievement of economic growth is not generally reflected in the labor standards on wages, The wages of workers in China still ranked among the last level of the world's wage classes. However, the average wage in the low social workers, the Gini coefficient is close to the bottom line of social tolerance. That is, how to set up wage growth mechanism, straighten out the relationship between income distribution has became a top priority of mainland authorities. This pay for performance system for the mainland legal system are based on the mainland of the State Council "pay for per-formance on the compulsory school system guidance," analysis to explore the subject, to be addressed. This paper is divided into seven chapters around: Chapter 1 Introduction, describes the study of this motivation, purpose, scope, methods, limits, and proposed research framework. Chapter 2 is to explore the mainland of the basic principles of pay for per-formance system, Chapter 3 of the mainland of the administrative organization of pay for performance system. Chapter 4 is to explore the mainland China of pay for perfor-mance system administrative privileges. Chapter 5and Chapter 6,are respectively to ex-plore the mainland China of performance pay system and monitoring of relief, and in Chapter 7 are conclusions and recommendations of pay for performance system

The Research on Flexible Staffing Arrangements in High-tech Industry Given the excess supply in the global market and the pressure of little gross margin in the foreign high-tech business, the major high-tech businesses can no longer enjoy a market with high growth rates and high profit earnings. The business, as the industry matures or even slows down, starts to seek for solutions to shorten its supply chain, to lower the cost of products, and to increase competitiveness. The technology industry has been facing cyclical fluctuations and fluctuations in demand in recent years. To sustain competitiveness in this market and to secure its core worker, it has to adjust with changes of time in the management of human resources, enhance the R&D and technology levels, and pay much more attention to long-term human resource development. Thus, in terms of human capital management, the major challenges the technology industry is currently facing are the issues of flexibility in the human resource department, the most efficient use of these resources, and how to adapt the planning and development of these departments. The goal of the thesis is to provide an in-depth study and analysis of 1) the status quo of the internal/external human resources management in the technology industry, 2) the relations between the characteristic of the organization and flexible staffing arrangements, and 3) the effect of flexible staffing arrangements on the organizational performance. This study uses the questionnaire adopted by Professor Jhy-Jer Ko in the study of The Flexibility of the Labor Market and the Atypical Work Arrangement(2003). 387 copies of the questionnaire were sent out to high tech companies and 115 were returned (112 valid, 3 invalid). The return rate was 28.9%. The results of the analysis are as the following: 1.Remarkable differences of functional flexibility are found among different characteristics of the organization. The larger the organization is, the greater functional flexibility it has. Organizations with over 500 workers have better functional flexibility than those with under 100 workers. 2.Remarkable differences of numerical flexibility are found among different characteristics of the organization. The lower the ratio of the labor cost to the total expenditure, the better for the organization to use outsourcing. 3.Remarkable differences of wage flexibility are found among different characteristics of the organization. The larger the organization is, the greater the wage flexibility is. Companies with lower ratios of labor cost compared to total expenditure have a higher tendency to adopt variable salary. 4.Functional flexibility has great effects on turnover rate of full-time employee. The greater functional flexibility is, the lower the full-time employee turnover rate is. In addition, the implementing of the practice of numerical flexibility can lower full-time employee turnover rate. 5.Functional flexibility and diversified skills-training opportunities have great effects on organizational performance. The greater functional flexibility is, the better the performance is. 6.Numerical flexibility has enormous effects on organizational performance. The use of outsourcing has a positive effect on the increase of the company¡¦s profit gains. Moreover, the use of dispatch has a positive effect on lowering employee turnover rate. 7.Wage flexibility has great effects on organizational performance. A higher rate of variable salary for full-time employees has a reverse effect on the lowering of labor cost. That is, adopting wage flexibility may increase labor cost. Keywords¡GFlexible Staffing Arrangements , Functional Flexibility, Numerical Flexibility, Wage Flexibility, Organizational Performance

This research focuses on the relationship between workforce flexibility and organizational performance of the cooperative subcontractors in the Steel Industry, and compares the differences between ¡§S¡¨ and China Steel Corporations. The questionnaires were mailed to 161 of the ¡§S¡¨ Steel Co.¡¦s subcontractors and 77 were returned; so the response rate is 48 %. Other 108 data were from survey data of the China Steel Co.¡¦s cooperative subcontractor, which are from my advisor. I deleted the overlapping cooperative subcontractors between the two steel corporations. Total survey size is 181. The results are shown as follows: 1. Deployment of workforce flexibility Characteristics of the functional flexibility of the Cooperative Subcontractors include development of multi-skill, horizontal and vertical mobility. The numerical flexibility is represented by the fact that average 80 percents of temporary workers among all the full time jobs, but there exists substantial difference. 16 percent of the subcontractors contracted out at least part of their jobs. The design of wage structure had flexibility. The ratio of variable wage is about 20 %. The subjective organizational performance was above average. As to the objective organizational performance, the contracting ratio of steel sales was nearly 50 %. The main reason for obtaining the deal were quality, customer satisfaction, delivery speed, and price. The turnover rate on average was not low (nearly 10 %). The reasons for the high turnover rate were the high proportion of temporary workers, and rapid change in demand, but the turnover rate was negatively related to the amount of capital and the number of regular workers. 2. The relationship between the organizational characteristic, the use of workforce flexibility and the performance of organization The different characteristics of organization including the number of divisions, the types of subcontractors, the number of regular workers, and the amount of capital have caused significant differences on the proportion of temporary workers and subcontractors. The smaller the size of regular worker of cooperative subcontractors is, the more likely the use of temporary workers will be. The labor subcontractors were more likely to use temporary workers, but the engineering subcontractors were more likely to outsource. The amount of capital and the dependence of subcontractors upon the steel company caused significant differences on the design of wage flexibility and the proportion of variable wage. The amount of capital of subcontractors has significant impact on the organizational performance, and the turnover rate. The number of regular worker caused significant differences on the operational performance and the turnover rate. The proportion of subcontracting from the steel company caused minor difference on operational performance. These show that the larger the amount of capital, the size of employees, the better the subjective organizational performance; whereas the smaller the organization, the higher the turnover rate. 3. The relationship between the use of workforce flexibility, other influential factors and the performance of organization The functional flexibility and the wage flexibility had positive association with the subjective organizational performance. The horizontal and vertical mobility had positive association with the turnover rate. The numerical flexibility was not associated with the organizational performance, but the proportion of temporary workers has significant positive impact on the turnover rate. The influential factors such as horizontal and vertical mobility, the dependence of subcontractors on the steel corporation, and the flexible wage design would influence the organizational operational performance. The influential factors such as wage flexibility, the amount of capital, and the length of time of cooperation with the steel company will influence the organizational production performance. But the proportion of temporary workers would directly influence the turnover rate.

In a freedom, international and global market, companies are under an intense competitive environment and with hi-pressure than before, besides increase the product and service quality, cost is a very important factor for operation. Since the margin of product is uncontrollable, personnel¡¦s cost controlling becomes a surviving criterion for businesses; therefore the typical employment relationship is no longer applicable to current challenging environment. In order to keep flexible to rapidly response the environment and sustain competitiveness, company¡¦s organization and staff placement are demanded adjustment. The goal of the thesis is to provide a retail business study and analysis of: 1) The status of the l human resources management in supermarket and hypermarket. 2) The relations between the characteristic of the organization and flexible staffing arrangements, and 3) The effect of flexible staffing arrangements on the organizational performance. 4) The influence of different management attitude between standard and non-standard workers. During this study, there are 38 copies of the questionnaire were sent out to HR supervisors of supermarket and chain-hypermarket stores, 30 were returned (no invalid). The return rate was 78.9%, nine of the HR supervisors had accepted an interview for opening questions about outsourcing training and flexible manpower policy. The results of the analysis are as the following: 1. Remarkable differences of numerical flexibility are found among different characteristics of the organization. The lower ratio of the labor cost of the organization is, the greater functional flexibility it has. 2. Remarkable differences of management attitude are found among different characteristics of the organization. The fewer layers of the organization is, the little difference of management attitude between various type workers. 3. Remarkable differences of organizational performance are found among different characteristics of the organization. The fewer layers of the organization has a positive effect on the higher customer satisfaction. 4. Functional flexibility has enormous effects on organizational performance. The diversified job arrangement of full-time worker has a positive effect on management effectiveness. 5. Functional flexibility has enormous effects on organizational performance. The independence of job arrangement of full-time worker has a positive effect on the increase of staff productivity. 6. Functional flexibility has enormous effects on organizational performance. Training supply of full time worker has a positive effect on the increase of staff productivity, company¡¦s profit gains, management effectiveness, customer satisfaction and decrease the ratio of labor cost. Base on the result of this research, here are our suggestion to business: 1) Considering company¡¦s long-term objective when planning the functional flexibility to cultivate and retain core workers. 2) Continue conducting training to increase organizational performance.3) Design a complete human resource management policy to increase effort and decrease the negative effect of non-standard worker. 4) Apply Wage flexible in company.

Abstract Japan is the second largest economic power in the world. It has a great deal of FDI outflows but few FDI inflows. Therefore, Japan is in the serious situation of ¡§FDI balance of payments deficit.¡¨ In terms of inward FDI stocks as a percentage of GDP and gross fixed capital formation, Japan is the lowest place of G-7. The purpose of this research is focusing on discussing the shortage of FDI inflows and causing factors which lower the desires of investments in Japan by using the simplest way which is based on the actual situation and the limit of the information in Japan. This paper takes the quarterly data of Japan from 1978 to 2005 and four variables (wage index, real exchange rate, trade and FDI inflows). In this research, the unit root test is used to check if the data have the stationarity or not, and then it uses vector autoregression model (VAR) to proceed impulse response function and forecast error variance decomposition. According to the result of these two approaches, we can figure out the influences of four variables for each other, and then find out the causing factors which lead Japan to have less FDI inflows. The calculation shows that the reason which leads Japanese wages to increase gradually results not only from real exchange rate, trade and FDI inflows, but also from Japanese labor system (lifetime employment system and payment according to working seniority) and the labor quantities. The causality runs from real exchange rate to trade is greater than vice versa. Trade has a positive impact from the real exchange rate which means that the depreciation can accelerate trade. However, the main factor of hindering FDI inflows is Japanese high wages rather than real exchange rate or trade. Therefore, in order to get rid of the depression which was caused by the bubble economy in 1990s, Japanese government not only opens up the restrictions in policy but also takes the control of the prime costs into the most important consideration.

ABSTRACT UNEMPLOYMENT EXPERIENCE OF YOUTH IN ANKARA AND SANLIURFA &Ccedil / elik, Kezban Ph.D., Department of Sociology Supervisor : Assoc. Prof. Sibel Kalaycioglu September 2006, 367 pages This thesis aims to analyse how joblessness is experienced by unemployed youth, which factors are involved in this experience, what are their coping strategies and results. Final objective is to understand the relationship between wage work, adulthood and citizenship for young people who are in the process of learning how to be adult. The study is based on the interviews conducted in Ankara and Sanliurfa with 329 young people, who had registered to iSKUR in the last quarter of 2003 and who were approached after six months of registration, 30 families of the unemployed youth and 21 decision-makers of both provinces. The results of the study represent only the survey group. The study found that &amp / #8216 / family&amp / #8217 / is the most important institution in the experience of unemployed youth due to the scarce welfare state implementation and limited number and low quality of jobs created in the labour market. Therefore, family resources are crucial in the management of unemployment experience. It is not a reason itself for unemployment, but poor resources increase the need for wage work of youth labour. Youth who are heavily dependent on family support cope with unemployment in two ways: early adulthood or postponed adulthood. They try to overcome their unclear stage between childhood and adulthood through finding a job accompanied by other criteria of being adult. The former leads to the reproduction of earlier family patterns and intergenerational transfer of poverty, while the latter means to postpone the exercise of adult rights. With heavy dependence on family, unemployed youth learn to be &amp / #8216 / good family members&amp / #8217 / . This has an eroding effect on their trust and respect towards the state and its institutions as expressed by one interviewee, my State is my father. As a result, their chance to become active, participatory, responsible, entrepreneur individuals as required by new system decrease dramatically. Keywords: Wage work, youth unemployment, experience of unemployment.

Informality has been a widespread fact in most of developing countries. Especially after the implementation of liberalization policies in the 1980s, informal sector has expanded, and informal employment has been more attractive in the Turkish economy. The aim of this thesis is to examine whether there is wage gap between formal and informal employment in Turkey for the years 2007 and 2008. In order to test if the determinants of wages are different, selection corrected wage equations are estimated for manufacturing and service sectors for men and women separately by using the Household Labor Force Survey micro level data of TURKSTAT. We also estimated Multinomial Logit model in order to be able to take the sector selection process into account. According to our estimation results, there was a significant wage gap between formal and informal employment in Turkey for the years 2007 and 2008, even after controlling for a number of individual-specific characteristics. This indicates the existence of the segmented labor market in terms of wages in Turkey, as it is asserted by the number of researchers arguing against the neo-classical labor market theory.

Amid the transformation of operating environmental conditions and the changes in market, a business organization must think how to construct flexible manpower in order to respond to the changes in industries and markets. The traditional organization of hierarchy, which lacks flexibility, doesn¡¦t induce the flexible use of manpower and thus is ineffective in meeting the trends of industries and the market. Atkinson advocates demolishing the rigid system and, based on the characteristics of business production activities, dividing the organization into the core and periphery manpower so that the two sections can be complementary and each possible combination of manpower can be optimal. However, there exists the combination of three types of manpower in the shamrock organization mentioned by Handy, namely, professional core worker, temporary worker, and subcontract worker. The professional core worker can be compared to the core manpower mentioned by Atkinson, and the temporary and subcontract worker correspond to Atkinson¡¦s periphery manpower. The combination of these three types of manpower can be used to produce the foundation of the business¡¦ profitability. In addition, the current human resource arrangement should be adjusted in order to respond to the changes in the market in a timely manner. It is available to implement task flexibility, numerical flexibility, working-time flexibility, and wage flexibility to meet the practical work demands. This research based itself on the preceding concept, conducted interviews with China Steel Corporation and its subcontractors, and collected data through survey questionnaires administered to the subcontractors. The survey was conducted to understand how China Steel Corporation and its subcontractors divided their core and periphery manpower, how they constructed the shamrock organization, and how they used their manpower flexibility. The research also investigated whether there existed differences between China Steel Corporation and its subcontractors with regard to manpower flexibility. The analysis and synthesis of the data have led to the following findings: China Steel Corporation (CSC): 1.China Steel Corporation adopted for its main production line the shift system and mutual support of manpower to meet the requirements of the changing market and job demands, while the engineering and the equipment department adopted subcontracting to meet the change in the demand of manpower. 2.China Steel Corporation did not use temporary workers, but its subcontractors employed a large number of temporary and subcontract workers. As a result, the workers of China Steel Corporation and the temporary and subcontract workers of its subcontractors operate together at CSC, like the operation of a shamrock organization. 3.Without the worry of impeding quality, quantity, and safety, the job at the technical level was divided into core and non-core, with the core job emphasizing the creation of additional value. 4.The non-core job was carried out by the periphery workers, who consisted of the employees of subcontractors specialized in operation, construction and environmental protection and of other contractors. 5.China Steel Corporation enhanced the use of task flexibility through the use of task grouping, task changing, and job rotation, and expanded the scope of task flexibility through transferring and assigning personnel to auxiliary companies. At the same time, education and training were implemented to support the use of task flexibility. 6.With respect to the use of numerical flexibility, China Steel Corporation adopted subcontracting as the major measure of response. 7.With respect to the use of time flexibility, China Steel Corporation adopted such systems as flexible reporting and leaving time, shift, overtime, and optional leave instead of overtime pay. 8.As to the use of wage flexibility, China Steel Corporation raised the percentage of mobile wage, added wage flexibility, and used the bonus system to reflect the merits of the company and individual employees. Subcontractors: 1.Faced with the changes in the market and job requirements, they used temporary and subcontract workers as the major measure of response. Dependent on networks of interpersonal relationships, they hired temporary workers and provided support to subcontractors so that they tied closely into a shamrock organization. 2.About 30% of the CSC¡¦s subcontractors cultivated their employees to become their own subcontractors. The success of this plan depended on the limiting conditions for fund investment, the vitality of the industry, and the support made available by the CSC¡¦s subcontractors. 3.Monetary compensation was the major factor of retaining the core manpower, and the promotion system accounted for only 29.4% of manpower retention, which was related to the flat organizational structure. 4.More than half of the CSC¡¦s subcontractors assigned additional work, work requiring less training, and unimportant work to temporary workers. More then 60% of CSC¡¦s subcontractors would complete work requiring special skills or equipment through subcontracting. 5.With respect to the use of task flexibility, 70.2% of the CSC¡¦s subcontractors that implemented task flexibility experienced such a difficult situation in which a new hand was unable to handle his work. Only 32.7% of the subcontractors would give relevant training in advance, indicating that education and training did not support the use of task flexibility. 6.With respect to the use of numerical flexibility, 69% of the subcontractors hired temporary employees, and 62% of them used subcontracting. 7.With respect to the use of working-time flexibility, most CSC¡¦s subcontractors used overtime, shift, and varied time block as the major measure, for they had to coordinate operation with CSC and could not be independent in terms of working time. 8.With respect to the use of wage flexibility, the percentage of wage base linked to merit was low, and skills were more important than merit in deciding the wage of a temporary worker. 9.There existed no significant differences in wage and promotion between the core and periphery workers of the CSC¡¦s subcontractors. 10.There existed differences in benefits and training between the core and periphery workers of the CSC¡¦s subcontractors. Differences in the Use of Manpower Flexibility Between China Steel Corporation and Its Subcontractors: 1.China Steel Corporation had a high percentage (64%) of core workers and a relatively low percentage (36%) of periphery workers. In contrast, its subcontractors had a high percentage of periphery workers (including 34% subcontracting and 28% temporary workers, totaling 62%) and a low percentage (38%) of core workers. 2.As to the difference in task flexibility, China Steel Corporation had subsidiary companies and could expand the scope of task flexibility. In contrast, their subcontractors had no subsidiary companies and their task flexibility was restricted to the same enterprise. In comparison, China Steel Corporation invested more in education and training and was more competent in supporting task flexibility. 3.With respect to the difference in numerical flexibility, China Steel Corporation cared about the legality of using temporary workers while its subcontractors neglected this issue more or less and was less bound by labor unions with regard to using temporary workers or subcontracting. In practice, the CSC¡¦s subcontractors had more numerical flexibility than China Steel Corporation. 4.With respect to the difference in working-time flexibility, China Steel Corporation abided by the regulations regarding working overtime while its subcontractors did not pay attention to these restrictions. 5.With respect to the difference in wage flexibility, the wage structure at China Steel Corporation is institutionalized, about 30% belonged to mobile wage and was linked to the company¡¦s operation and individual employees¡¦ merit. On the contrary, the questionnaire survey collected from its subcontractors indicated that only a few of them assessed the wage base on merit.