This thesis consists of three empirical essays within the field of labour economics. As a whole, it explores the (un)intended consequences of labour regulation, with each chapter providing an independent analytical contribution to a specific aspect of the field. Chapter 1 analyzes the effect of a reduction in standard working hours on employment tran- sitions. In this chapter, I study Chile's reduction of weekly working hours from 48 to 45, which was announced in 2001 but implemented in 2005. This policy was innovative, compared with those in other countries, because it isolated the reduction in working hours from other policy changes, such as working time flexibility and financial incentives to firms. Thus, this policy is an interesting example for other countries to study, especially those without the scale capacity to provide such incentives, as it allows them to identify its effects on employment. Our results, which are confirmed by several robustness checks, suggest that despite the pre-announcement of the policy, firms displayed non-anticipatory behaviour on key variables. Furthermore, we find that firms waited to implement the reduction in working hours until just before the deadline. Overall, we find that a reduction in standard hours had no significant effects on employment transitions, although we do find a significant e¤ect on hourly wages (i.e., wage compensation). Chapter 2 extends the analysis of Chapter 1 to health outcomes. This is important, as the health effects of reductions in working hours have not been addressed by the existing literature; instead, most of the empirical evidence concerns employment outcomes, family life balance, and social networks. Using panel data from France and Portugal, this chapter exploits the exogenous variation of working hours coming from labour regulation and estimates its impact on health outcomes. In this way, our contribution to the existing literature is threefold: first, this is the first evaluation of health outcomes of policies that reduce working hours. Second, we avoid the problem of endogeneity with health outcomes by using exogenous reductions of working hours. Third, as the effects on health might depend on the level of working hours, our analysis is performed for two different countries with differing weekly hour thresholds (France, 35 hours; Portugal, 40 hours). Our results suggest a non-monotonic relationship between weekly working hours and health outcomes. In particular, a negative (positive) effect is found for young men (women) in France, and no e¤ect is found in Portugal. Chapter 3 (coauthored by Eugenio Rojas and Mauricio Villena) examines childcare policies and analyzes who effectively pays for childcare when it is not publicly funded. This is interesting, since in several countries governments provide and fund childcare, but in many others it is privately funded, as labour regulation mandates that firms have to provide childcare services. For this latter case, there is no empirical evidence on the effects generated by the financial burden of childcare provision. In particular, there is no evidence about who effectively pays for childcare (i.e., firms or employees) and how it is paid for (i.e., via wages and/or employment). Our study is the first one to provide empirical evidence on the effects generated by the finan- cial burden of childcare provision. For this, we exploit a Chilean labour regulation requiring that firms with 20 or more female workers provide and fund childcare for their workers. Our hypothesis is that, in imperfect labour markets (e.g., oligopsonistic), firms will pass childcare costs on to their workers. To analyze this, we exploit a discontinuity in the childcare provision mandated by the Chilean Labour Code. Our results suggest that firms pass almost the entire childcare cost (nearly 90%) on to their workers via lower wages (not only to female but also to male workers) and not by altering the share of male workers within the firm.

This thesis discusses the relationship between identity and learning in cross-functional teams (CFTs). It focuses on how aspects of members’ identity affect the process of developing cross-functional (CF) teamwork and examines how emerging identity issues can account for different outcomes in the learning of CF teamwork. More specifically, the research focuses on what these emerging identity issues entail in terms of underlying and action-orienting meanings, and on how this can favour or hinder the learning of CF teamwork. This study argues that the collective process of learning how to operate as a CFT is influenced by relational, social and contextual issues. Theoretically, the thesis offers a number of contributions. A critique of current approaches to CF teamwork is provided, where a review of the relevant literature reveals a largely functionalist stance, with a main focus on researching the factors contributing to the effectiveness of CFTs. The thesis advocates an alternative interpretative stance to investigating the role of identity in learning cross-functionality, offering the possibility of an interpretation which is situated in the specific context and which is open to the understanding of emerging, possibly revealing issues. Furthermore, this thesis argues that, within this interpretative approach, by studying what favours or hinders the learning of CF teamwork, it may be possible to deepen our understanding of CFT dynamics. The learning of CF teaming has also been identified as one of the gaps in the relevant literature. The situated learning theory (SLT) and community of practice approach (Lave and Wenger, 1991) is thus adopted as an appropriate theoretical framework for researching the learning of CF teamwork, which is understood here as a practice. SLT suggests that individual learning should be thought of as emergent, involving opportunities to participate in the practices of the community as well as the development of a social identity which provides a sense of belonging and commitment (Lave and Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1998). Theoretically and empirically justified, the new insight and main focus of this research consists of the consideration of events occurring not only within a CFT, but also beyond and before it, which are able to shape the identities involved, at different levels. This is beneficial, since it explains the different ways of engaging with the practice of cross-functionality and consequently the different learning outcomes. Within the situated learning literature there is surprisingly little explicit reference to theories of identity construction (Handley et al., 2006). A conceptualization of identity is thus derived by tapping into theories of identity which have not yet been developed in SLT, but which represent a useful theoretical development in this arena of studies. These gaps and issues were addressed by conducting qualitative research in a medium-sized Italian firm manufacturing car parts. In particular, an ethnographic study was carried out, using complementary methods such as direct observation, semi-structured interviews and documentary data. Investigations concerned two skilled workers’ CFTs devoted to developing the product ranges respectively of joints and pumps, and a managers’ CFT whose task was to design a new pump for a particular client. Three identities emerged as especially significant for the meanings they entailed and for the influence they proved to have on learning this practice: the sense of identity derived from relationships characterized by paternalism with significant others at work (i.e. the leaders), and the sense of identity derived from being a worker from Brescia, the specific geographical location of the study, and from being a worker or a manager, understood in terms of occupation and social class.

Organization studies, including studies of control and identity, has to date been almost exclusively concerned with organizations where work is paid for. By contrast, this thesis considers the dynamics of control and identity when work is unpaid, through the presentation of a qualitative case study of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution. This organization relies mainly on volunteers operating in a dangerous working environment to fulfil their mission of saving lives at sea. By considering unpaid voluntary work, the thesis deepens understandings of the relationship between control, autonomy and organizational meaning and identity. There are four main themes of analysis: thick volunteering, perilous volunteering, community and offshore operations. I propose thick volunteering as a form of volunteering from which a significant sense of identity may be derived. Perilous volunteering is theorized to denote volunteering activities whereby the volunteer chooses to engage in dangerous activity which may result in serious harm up to and including loss of life. Thick and perilous volunteering together are shown to have complex effects upon the dynamic of control within the organization. The theme of community shows how volunteering is embedded in a web of social relations, rather than simply being a matter of individual choice, and these relations significantly affect meaning and identity. The 'offshore' theme demonstrates how control, meaning and identity play out differently when the volunteers are on operational duty. Overall, the thesis contributes to the theory of volunteering as well as to more general debates about organizational control, identity and meaning.

One of the main assumptions in the strategy field suggests that a manager's sequence of strategic decisions causes the evolution of resources and competitive positions to differ among firms over time. However, this evidence is not conclusive when Chief Executive Officers (CEO's) manage small firms which are located within markets with underdeveloped production of high-technology products and low technical knowledge required for production. This doctoral thesis concentrates on the investigation of how to support CEOs in their strategy development process related to an internationalisation strategy in small organisations - whose products and resources do not seem particularly unique - in giving them a competitive advantage over competitors in their target markets (e.g., fruit, wine, or fish industries). The present research has been conducted through two empirical investigations: an econometric analysis, and a case study research. The econometric analysis examines the tole played by CEOs in the export intensity of commodity-based small firms. Results from this study revealed that the CEOs' education is particularly relevant for explaining the export intensity. CEOs who developed capabilities from formal training, in companies that do not seem endowed with particular idiosyncratic resources, export intensively. The case study followed a facilitated modelling approach based on System Dynamic (SD) Modelling. This second inquiry focused on structuring, simulating, and evaluating the potential consequences of the internationalisation strategy developed by five CEOs. Findings emerging from this process provide evidence that SD modelling allowed the CEOs to identify more resources and their interrelated relationships (e.g., links, feedback, and delay effects) compared with using a simple description of the internationalisation strategy. Additionally, simulations that have emerged from SD models provided CEOs with scenarios closer to reality for both assessing strategic ideas and learning from simulated performance.

Repeated claims have been made since the early 2000s that UK energy, and its governance, is 'in transition'. In this thesis it is argued, using a conceptual framework informed largely but by no means exclusively by ideational institutionalism, that although UK energy governance, policy and associated institutions have been undergoing a period of continuous crisis, challenge and change, a policy paradigm shift cannot as yet be claimed. This is because UK energy governance processes have not fully rejected some of the ideas upon which the 'pro-market' system was founded in the early 1980s, and due to a lack of credibility in alternative frameworks and solutions. Governance practices do, however, appear to show tendential signs of policy paradigm change. This process of change has been initiated largely in response to public and political concerns about the security of energy supplies, which emerged in the mid 2000s, in addition to growing political support in the UK for measures to mitigate climate change. To the extent that any new 'norms' can be claimed it is suggested here that the emergence of an 'energy-security-climate nexus' in energy governance processes is of particular significance. This nexus reflects the appropriation of the idea that domestic energy production is more 'secure' by climate change protagonists looking to encourage support for increased renewable energy production in the UK. It also reflects a long-standing climate idea that decisions about energy and climate policy should be reached through inter-linked processes. This thesis provides an analysis of change and continuity in UK energy governance from 2000 to 2010 with a particular emphasis on the various ideas, about both energy and its governance, that have informed policymaking as well as the alternative narratives which have called for changes. The thesis is informed empirically by a range of policy documents, including White Papers, Acts, reports and formal reviews, presentations by policy-makers and analysts, and secondary literature. This material has been crosschecked against a limited number of unstructured interviews with policymakers, analysts, consultants and Government advisors. Academic, media, thinktank and other third party literature has also been used to inform and construct those narratives which have, over this period of time, presented critiques of and alternatives to the 'status quo' in energy policymaking.

In this thesis I characterise an optimal procurement contract for a government that purchases a good or service from a firm that has private information about its cost of production (its type) when the government has available the reports of a corruptible internal auditor and an honest but less well informed external auditor. In chapter 2 I assume that the government is constrained to offer the internal auditor a contract that consists of a penalty if the external auditor obtains evidence of misreporting. For the case of two cost types I show that an optimal contract exhibits a separation property: the government gives priority to achieving the first best (no private information) expected profit scheme over demanding the first best quantity scheme. For the case of a continuum of cost types I provide sufficient conditions under which this result is valid. In chapter 3 I allow the government to offer the internal auditor a contract that consists of a transfer, a reimbursement and a penalty. For the situation in which bribery takes place after the firm makes a claim about its type I demonstrate that the government can achieve the outcome of the first best contract if the sum of the expected penalties is positive and for every type of the firm the distribution of the outcome of the audit is not the same as that of the adjacent type. For the situation in which bribery takes place before the firm makes a claim about its type I argue that the contract design problem is the same as in chapter 2 and I prove that if the sum of the expected penalties does not depend on the extent of the misreporting then in an optimal contract bribery does not take place.

Many studies in the minority world have emphasized the potentially positive influences of supported as opposed to sheltered employment on the inclusion of persons with disabilities, including learning difficulties, into the mainstream economy and community. In 2007, Malaysia, as one of the developing countries which possesses a growing population of persons with learning difficulties, started to promote this form of employment hoping for similar outcomes. However, in the majority world where a country is designing policy for the first time and is at the relatively early stages of implementation, there has been little research to explore supported employment practices for persons with learning difficulties and offer empirical findings from real employment experiences. Thus, this thesis aims to fill this gap through providing some substantial evidence and new insights. The social theory of disability and the debates around it have been particularly influential in the past three decades. These have helped to shape the approach of this research into understanding the experiences of persons with learning difficulties in the labour market in Malaysia. The study also covers the general understanding of disability from an Islamic perspective. Theoretical approaches to career and career development are also discussed before specifically focusing on the barriers faced in accessing a working life and developing a career in paid jobs as well as achieving greater social integration. The empirical contribution of the thesis is through a study of supported employment initiated in Malaysia to enable persons with learning difficulties to work in the mainstream retail sector, and sets that experience in the context of relevant policy and practice. It aims to produce key insights into the ‘lived realities’ of employees with learning difficulties taking part in the scheme. It foregrounds their perceptions but also explores the viewpoints of government officials, managers and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) coordinators involved in the development of policy and practice relating to the scheme. The research participants were drawn from the 82 employees with learning difficulties engaged in the supported employment scheme in a retail company, together with seven managers involved with the scheme, eight government officials and three NGOs coordinators. One finding of the study is that, in general, supported employment is likely to help to reduce the stigma associated with having a disability. However, while most persons with learning difficulties believe themselves to have the ability to work in supported employment, others, including those who are providing support for their entry to the workforce, still have doubts. Notwithstanding enjoying many aspects of their working lives in supported employment, some employees face difficulties in developing interpersonal relationships in the workplace and achieving much better control of their own lives than is often assumed to result from having a job. The findings also suggest that stability in the political, economic and social environment facilitate the development of better policy in this complex area. Commitment from the company is vitally important to guarantee the success of the scheme. The existence of international policy frameworks are also helpful and cross-country collaboration has been tremendously beneficial, in particular that between Malaysian institutions and the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA). Further development of policy and practice is required, especially in enriching the understanding of disability issues among most government officials, managers and NGOs coordinators, taking greater account of the research evidence that points to the limited awareness of and specific knowledge about disability issues, particularly for persons with learning difficulties and their employability. The voices and views of persons with learning difficulties should also be better acknowledged in setting priorities for disability-related reform. Finally, in order to sustain and develop supported employment more effectively, there is a fundamental need to upgrade the education and training system for this group as well as to intensify collaboration between government departments.

No description available.

Understanding the opportunity identification process represents a core entrepreneurship domain research focus. Many studies focusing on traditional firm performance outcomes neglect the entrepreneurial human and social capital drivers that are linked to opportunity identification. Research on Higher Education Institutes (HEIs) has explored different dynamics associated with the formation of firms emanating from HEIs (e.g. from the perspective of the individual firm; by exploring support and influence offered by the parent organisation; and through analysis of the spinout process). The contribution from the individual entrepreneur in identifying an opportunity for commercialisation has not been fully explored. This study looks at how academic entrepreneurs from HEIs and non-academic entrepreneurs, from the same industrial sector, identify opportunities and accumulate resources for commercialisation during the formation of life-science firms in a geographical life-science cluster in Scotland. Entrepreneurship, studied from a human and social capital perspective, identifies how lead entrepreneurs and other team members use their individual and accumulated experiences to leverage resources. The Resource-Based View (RBV), traditionally used to examine the link between firms’ internal characteristics and competitive advantage, is extended to explore entrepreneurial behaviour during opportunity identification. Emerging themes from extant literature identify entrepreneurial team formation and the external environment as potential resource pools which aid the formation of firms. Using a process-based, case-study research approach, entrepreneurs and team members were interviewed to gather information about the identification of life-science opportunities. A lead entrepreneur’s general human capital, in the form of educational achievement, was found to be a key factor shaping the opportunity identification process. Further, a specific entrepreneurial and scientific human capital was leveraged to circumvent resource barriers. Social capital also facilitated the identification and leverage of scarce resources. Lead entrepreneurs with narrower resource profiles selected a resource munificent sponsored environment to gain access to additional resources. However, a dynamic, yet unreported in empirical research, was revealed from the data. Over time, lead academic entrepreneurs were encouraged to exit sponsored environments to enhance their independence whilst industry entrepreneurs generally sought sponsored environments for physical resources. Theory building ensued during the process of gathering data and analysing the data through comparison and iterating between existing theories.

Homo economicus has dominated mainstream Economics during the last century. One of the main assumptions of this model is that humans maximise their own utility functions. In other words, homo oeconomicus, before taking action, considers the consequences on their own future interests, which are generally assumed to be monetary. This thesis provides experimental results showing that human behaviour often differs from that of homo oeconomicus, particularly in environments where trust and reciprocity are salient concerns. To be precise, this dissertation analyses the employment relationship, focusing particularly on the importance of trust and the role of direct reciprocity in the relationship between managers and workers. Reciprocity is an important contract enforcement device in the presence of incomplete labour contracts. By reciprocity between employer and employee, what is meant is a predisposition, within the institutional context of defined employment tasks, to cooperate with the other party even at personal cost, and a willingness to punish the other party if they violate cooperative norms, even when punishment is costly to the individual. The original contribution of this thesis goes beyond this result and shows the impact of informal employment rules on reciprocity. In particular, it uses experimental methods to identify two distinct governance patterns for employment relationships: the rigid governance structure and the flexible governance structure. The former is characterised by task-centred rules and defines the boundaries of jobs in a much more specific way than the latter, which is characterised by function-centred rules, and gives rise to a more flexible and discretionary model of employment relationships. The most important original experimental result of this thesis is that rigid governance characterised by taskcentred rules and low reciprocity is better suited to one-shot transactions, whereas flexible governance characterised by function-centred rules and a high level of reciprocity is better suited to repeated transactions.