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Digitized by Kansas Correctional Industries

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Economics, 1980. / Vita. / Bibliography : leaves 265-269. / by Julianne Marie Malveaux. / Ph.D.

This thesis examines the values and criteria American companies use in hiring or placing expatriate employees in China. These values and criteria affect the success or failure of expatriate employees and a company's bottom line - profitability. Investigating this topic required an examination of the history of the political, economic, and social philosophies that have shaped contemporary China. It was also necessary to examine expatriates and their role, and to define an American company. Cultural comparisons are made between the United States and China using Hofstede's Four Dimensions, Ronen and Shenkar's Country Clusters, and Hsu's analysis of internal versus external motivation. I explored the relationship between two primary personnel parties in an effort to define how success and failure are measured in overseas assignments. To this end, I interviewed 42 Americans working in China categorized into two groups - the Management Group and the Employee Group. AU participants were located in either Shanghai or Beijing. Based on the interviews, an analytic distinction was made between expatriates hired locally and those employees who were transferred from the United States to China. The results of this study found that local hires tended to be younger and have linguistic and cultural skills, while the expatriates sent from the United States tended to be older and have managerial and technical skills. Challenges confronting both managers and employees will be shown to primarily stem from: 1) External motivations, such lucrative compensation packages, not guaranteeing a successful assignment in China; 2) the focus of companies when hiring or placing an expatriate employee being based on technical and management expertise; 3) cultural and linguistic skills being important for successful expatriate assignments; and, 4) cultural and linguistic training positioning an expatriate to have a successful assignment. These findings lead to the following recommendations: 1) Top managers should be provided with cross-cultural training to understand the importance of cultural and linguistic skills; 2) companies in China should hire local expatriates who have linguistic, cultural, and adaptability skills; and, 3) an investment should be made in technical skills training for local hires rather than linguistic and cultural training for technical expatriate employees. / Graduation date: 2001

This dissertation examines entrepreneurship as a way to overcome labor market discrimination. Specifically, the three empirical essays of this dissertation introduce and evaluate entrepreneurship as a career choice for the formerly incarcerated population in the United States, by studying the antecedents and economic and social impacts of entrepreneurship for formerly incarcerated individuals. The first essay examines whether entrepreneurship is a response to labor market discrimination for formerly incarcerated individuals and establishes entrepreneurship as a route to achieve economic and social reintegration. I take advantage of a quasi-experimental setting using the staggered implementation of the “Ban-the-Box” policy in the United States to disentangle the underlying mechanism of how labor market discrimination affects formerly incarcerated individuals in their entrepreneurial choices. The findings suggest that formerly incarcerated individuals, especially those who are African American, are pushed into entrepreneurship due to the discrimination they face from employers. Yet, I also find that entrepreneurship is a viable alternative career choice for formerly incarcerated people, yielding higher income and lower recidivism rates. The second essay investigates the long-term impacts of entrepreneurship on subsequent employment outcomes for the formerly incarcerated population. This essay argues that entrepreneurship will benefit formerly incarcerated entrepreneurs in subsequent employment outcomes, because entrepreneurship provides a positive signal of commitment and fit to potential employers. Results suggest that, compared to formerly incarcerated individuals without any entrepreneurial experience, those with entrepreneurial experience have an increased likelihood of securing employment, regardless of actual entrepreneurial success. This is particularly true for formerly incarcerated individuals who are high school dropouts or racial, suggesting that entrepreneurship provides long-term benefits to those who are especially lacking in other positive credentials and, thus, are the most stigmatized by employers. The third essay studies the entrepreneurial barriers that formerly incarcerated individuals face in starting their businesses and the implications of such barriers on entrepreneurial outcomes. I find that formerly incarcerated individuals are far less likely to gain access to capital from financial institutions or the government compared to similar non formerly incarcerated individuals, having to rely on personal savings or capital from family and friends. This barrier to gaining resources from financial institutions is more pronounced for African American or Hispanic formerly incarcerated individuals. Furthermore, I find that such barriers to entrepreneurship negatively impact the ventures that formerly incarcerated individuals found regarding the industry, longevity, size, and legal form. These findings provide implications to understanding how such barriers to entrepreneurship can inhibit the role of entrepreneurship as an alternative pathway for discriminated individuals to achieve upward mobility and integration.

Using a national probability sample of approximately 1,000 Mexican American heads of household, we analyze a subsample of 253 Mexican American male wage earners and present evidence of the importance of phenotype, measured by skin color and physical features, on earnings, controlling for other factors known to affect earnings. Even after controlling these variables, individuals with a dark and Native American phenotype continue to receive significantly lower earnings than individuals of a lighter and more European phenotype. A decomposition of differences in earnings reveals that most of the differential in earnings between the darkest one-third of the sample and the lighter two-thirds is due not to differences in endowments but rather to labor market discrimination. When taken as a whole, Mexican Americans in all phenotypic groups remain far from having incomes comparable to those of non-Hispanic whites.

Thesis (M.C.P.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 1980. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND ROTCH. / Bibliography: leaves 103-108. / by Deborah Sharon Alexander. / M.C.P.

Thesis (M.C.P.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 1981. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND ROTCH. / Includes bibliographical references. / by Benjamin Franklyn Blakney. / M.C.P.

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Thesis. 1979. Ph.D.--Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND ROTCH. / Bibliography: leaves 334-339. / by Douglas Johnson. / Ph.D.