The aim of this thesis is to determine the degree of discrimination of mothers in the Czech labor market during employee selection. We conduct an Internet field experiment which allows us to study the effect of the different lengths of parental leave on the probability of being invited for a job interview. We test three years long parental leave, a typical length in the Czech environment, against two years long parental leave as the shortest usual length, using a mother long after parental leave as our third control group. We found a slight preference for the three years parental leave, but we cannot confirm the hypothesis of three years leave being significantly preferred to two years leave at conventional confidence levels. The most significant is the result where resume of high-quality was sent. The results about the role of social norms from a survey among hiring specialists indicate that from two opposing effects - losing knowledge and working experience the longer a mother is on parental leave, versus losing flexibility at work the younger her child is - none is of higher concern if comparing three years leave and two years leave. JEL Classification C81, C93, J71, J13, M51 Keywords discrimination, decision making, experimental economics, hiring, mothers, parental leave Author's e-mail...

V České republice se v 90. letech objevil v oblasti přeshraničního zaměstnávání pracovníků nový fenomén, a sice mezinárodní pronájem pracovní síly. Práce sumarizuje ošetření této struktury jednak v oblasti pracovněprávní a imigrační, ale zejména v oblasti daně z příjmů. Pro úplnost jsou zmíněny i aspekty související s daní z přidané hodnoty a opomenuta nejsou ani pravidla v oblasti povinného sociálního a zdravotního pojištění. Na závěr je mezinárodní pronájem pracovní síly stručně porovnán s jinými alternativami zaměstnávání pracovníků, kterými jsou přímé zaměstnání na základě uzavřené pracovní smlouvy a vyslání pracovníků v rámci poskytování služeb.

This thesis is composed of four chapters and addresses the contracting issue under strategic experimentation. The first chapter presents an overview of the thesis and introduces the strategic bandit model, which is commonly adopted in the other three chapters. The chapter also previews the main results and implications of the thesis. The second chapter discusses the contracting issue between a principal and a team of agents where the actions of agents are unobservable to the principal. The main contribution of this chapter is to fill the gap of strategic experimentation literature by introducing the free-rider problem in teamwork. The chapter first deals with the optimal hiring choice of the principal under perfect information. Since the belief of the state being good decreases if no one succeeds over time, the paper shows that the principal tends to hire fewer agents in response to the downward-adjusted posterior belief. When the principal can neither monitor the agents' actions nor distinguish the agents who succeed, this chapter shows the optimal incentivising contract consists of an upfront payment from the agents to the principal, a bonus to every agent conditioning on success and a stopping time. Under this contract, the principal can implement first-best experimentation and incentivise all agents to work until the optimal stopping time. The third and fourth chapters discuss the financial contracting issue in innovation where an innovator requires external funding from an investor. The third chapter adopts a \bad news" exponential bandit to study the financial contracting under adverse selection between the innovator and the investor. The innovator, owns the innovation project, is privately informed of either a high or low prior belief of the good state but seeks a large amount of external investment from the less-informed investor. Experimentation is conducted by the innovator using internal funding before the external investment. The posterior belief about the good state increases in the amount of internal funding if no bad news arrives during experimentation, but the project will be abandoned as long as bad news arrives. The chapter shows that the amount of internal funding can be used by the investor to separate the agents with different priors. Under the unique least-costly separating equilibrium, the high-prior innovator spends even more than the low-prior first-best internal funding in order to deter the low-prior one from mimicking, and the low-prior one remains at his first-best. This chapter enriches the financial experimentation literature by proposing internal funding as a novel signalling tool and establishing a Pareto dominating separating equilibrium. The fourth chapter studies a multi-stage innovation financing problem between an agent and an investor with asymmetric information on the progress of the project. The innovation is comprised of two stages where the agent needs to complete the first development stage in order to proceed to the second experiment stage. The model assumes that the completion of the first stage can be early or late following a binary distribution, and the arrival of success in the experimentation stage follows a "good news" exponential bandit. Each period, a fixed amount of investment is needed from the investor. However, the investor can not observe nor verify the project progress. The chapter shows that the optimal incentive-compatible contract consists of differential maximum funding periods in the event of early and late completion of the first stage respectively and subsequent bonuses to the investor conditioning on a success in the second stage. We prove that the first-best experimentation time is attainable as long as the bonus of the late completion exceeds that of the early completion, and the difference between the two bonuses should be confined within a certain range. In the extension, we consider the case when the first stage completion time is informative such that an early completion indicates a higher prior in the good state than the late completion. Under imperfect information, the agent has a stronger incentive to mimic the early completion if the first stage is completed late as a longer experimentation time will be granted according the first-best contract. The chapter proves that the first-best is still achievable under a similar bonus contract but the difference between the two bonuses becomes smaller. This chapter contributes to the experimentation financing literature including the information imperfectness on project progress and multi-stage spillover effects.

Few women in academia occupy the leadership role of chief information officer (CIO), yet little is known about the underlying causes for gender disparity in this role. The purpose of this causal comparative study was to investigate whether gender stereotypes may impact perceptions about managerial characteristics of CIO candidates in academic settings. The theoretical foundation for this study was Schein's 'Think Manager, Think Male' paradigm and Acker's gendered organization theory. Data were acquired from 48 hiring officials from four-year public, private, and nonprofit colleges, universities, and research institutions in the Northeastern region of the United States who completed the Schein Descriptive Index. Data were analyzed using ANOVA to determine whether gender of the hiring authority was associated with the perceived managerial skills of male, female, and non-gender-specific CIO candidates. Data analysis revealed no significant difference in male and female hiring officials' ratings of male, female, and non-gender-specific CIO candidates. The findings demonstrated the theoretical construct of Schein's 'Think Manager, Think Male' paradigm are outdated and Acker's gendered organization theory persistently exists where males' dominant in organizations and roles deemed masculine. Implications for positive social change in the area of public policy are increasing awareness to hiring officials and women seeking the role of CIO in academia about other factors such as age, ethnicity, and experience that may affect candidate selection in the role of CIO.

The improper promotion of police officers who lack effective police management skills results in poor supervisor/employee relationships and could have a further negative effect on the relationships between officers and citizens. Yet, few police departments utilize leadership testing in making promotional decisions. The purpose of this quantitative, descriptive study was to explore whether servant leadership, from the perspective of police officers, is viewed as an effective leadership strategy. In particular, the focus of this study was on the element of humility as part of servant leadership theory. Data were collected by distributing the Servant Leadership Survey (SLS) to 2,794 police officers of a large metropolitan area law enforcement agency, resulting in 386 useable surveys. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and factor loading analysis. Findings indicated that most, approximately 60 percent, of police officer participants perceive that their supervisors engage in servant leadership practices related to humility. Further, findings suggest the humility score from the SLS could be used to measure perceptions from subordinates as part of a police manager promotional process. Thus, the use of the SLS Questionnaire for measuring the humility construct within the context of servant leadership was determined to serve as a robust measure. The positive social change implications stemming from this study include providing recommendations to the law enforcement executives of this agency to engage in training and promotional processes that focus on servant leadership in order to promote strong working relationships between officers and supervisors, which in turn may improve relations with the public.

<p>Labour mobility can in theory be an efficient channel for knowledge transfer between cluster firms, thus contributing to growth and competitiveness. In the thesis labour mobility in two Swedish ICT clusters is studied. The purpose of the thesis is to develop an understanding of processes of labour mobility in clusters and to investigate whether mobility can be regarded as a cluster advantage. Both interview data and extensive registry data are used in order to analyse processes of mobility at three levels: individual, firm and cluster level.</p><p>The results show that labour mobility can to some extent be considered a cluster advantage for Swedish ICT firms, since cluster firms are likely to experience a higher level of labour mobility. It is also shown how mobility to and from the clusters contributes to the upgrading of formal competencies within cluster firms. However, the firms themselves are shown to rather focus on staff retention than turnover. </p><p>To some degree, labour mobility in the Swedish clusters in focus is presumably constrained by the formal institutional framework, as well as by informal rules and agreements between cluster firms. It is argued nonetheless that the sheer potential for mobility and the viability of informal hiring practices in clusters may be viewed as cluster advantages, besides the actual extent of labour mobility.</p>

Labour mobility can in theory be an efficient channel for knowledge transfer between cluster firms, thus contributing to growth and competitiveness. In the thesis labour mobility in two Swedish ICT clusters is studied. The purpose of the thesis is to develop an understanding of processes of labour mobility in clusters and to investigate whether mobility can be regarded as a cluster advantage. Both interview data and extensive registry data are used in order to analyse processes of mobility at three levels: individual, firm and cluster level. The results show that labour mobility can to some extent be considered a cluster advantage for Swedish ICT firms, since cluster firms are likely to experience a higher level of labour mobility. It is also shown how mobility to and from the clusters contributes to the upgrading of formal competencies within cluster firms. However, the firms themselves are shown to rather focus on staff retention than turnover. To some degree, labour mobility in the Swedish clusters in focus is presumably constrained by the formal institutional framework, as well as by informal rules and agreements between cluster firms. It is argued nonetheless that the sheer potential for mobility and the viability of informal hiring practices in clusters may be viewed as cluster advantages, besides the actual extent of labour mobility.

Despite the great advances science has made in developing selection decision aids practitioners’ generally remain reluctant to adopt them. This phenomenon is considered today one of the greatest gaps in industrial, work and organizational psychology. This thesis adopts a psychological approach to practitioners’ resistance toward hiring procedures with high predictive validity of work performance. Consequently, three specific research questions were examined, two of which highlighted aspects of self-regulation, and one focused on agency relation in order to study outcomes in terms of actual use of hiring procedures and intention to change hiring procedures. The present thesis comprises three studies. Questionnaire data is used in two studies (Study I and II) to study how 1) prototype beliefs and ability to evaluate the quality of own performance is related to use of selection decision methods; and also how 2) behavioral intention to change hiring practice is related to self-efficacy beliefs, causal attribution and past behavior. Data collected with semi-structured interviews is used in Study III in order to study practitioners’ experiences in collaborative contexts in employee selection. Study I found that prototype beliefs and task quality ambiguity perceptions varied across various hiring practices. The results from Study II showed that self-efficacy beliefs, external attributions of success and internal attributions of failure were related to intention to change hiring practices. Study III highlighted the prevalence of separate self-interests over more general organizational interests in the agentic relation between practitioners. In conclusion, the present thesis has implication for theory as well as practice when it concludes that conscious steered cognitive mechanisms are important for understanding practitioners’ resistance towards high standardized hiring practices. / <p>At the time of the doctoral defense, the following papers were unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 1: Manuscript. Paper 3: Manuscript.</p>

The purpose of this study is to explore the beliefs, attitudes, and practices of principals with regard to equity and inclusion specific to hiring teachers from diverse backgrounds. A qualitative design and narrative analysis guided this study. Twelve principals and vice-principals from six high schools in one school district in Ontario participated in the study by answering questions on a self-completion web questionnaire. The findings were analyzed using four categories with regard to hiring diverse teachers: 1) current understanding of diversity in the school community; 2) current practices for diversity hiring; 3) beliefs and attitudes for diversity hiring and existing barriers; 4) solutions and future learning opportunities. Data were analysed using thematic analysis. The overall themes that emerged from the data were: a) valuing the importance of diversity, equity, and inclusion; b) not valuing diversity and providing rationale for not considering diversity and equity. The findings revealed that principals were able to define diversity in their own words. However, principals did not always value diversity in teacher candidates in their hiring practices. The questions used by principals to interview teachers – based on those recommended by the school board’s interview questions – did not include questions that would elicit and support responses from teacher candidates with regard to teaching diverse students or that reveal the value of their own diversity. The findings revealed that there are various barriers due to biases, hiring attitudes and current practices. Finally, the findings revealed that some principals are resistant to additional learning and professional development activities, saying they see no barriers for diverse teacher candidates being hired. However, some principals are open to more training and learning opportunities and see professional development as a catalyst in bringing positive change with respect to hiring practices and valuing diversity. A discussion of the findings with reference to current literature is provided. In conclusion, questions and approaches for further studies are identified.

This dissertation explores the perceptions of different groups of people (subsystems) who affect and are affected by the phenomenon of day labourers in Tshwane. Three "day labourer sites" were identified. Businesses, residents, police, metro-police and the municipality directly connected to these sites were interviewed. Their perceptions were analysed using the systemic frame of reference. The data was processed to describe perceptual relational patterns between the day labourers and the different subsystems. The following themes amongst these relational patterns were identified and described: employment, law and order, contact between subsystems, sharing the environment / community and resources / facilities. These themes were described in relation to the Bill of Rights (Chapter 2 of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996). This research aims to highlight some of the voices of the groups affecting and affected by the phenomenon of day labourers. / Social Work / M.A. (Mental Health)