The purpose of this thesis is to examine if there is a difference between Swedish urban and rural regions in terms of job-matching efficiency. The thesis employs the Beveridge curve with unemployment rate as the dependent variable as a framework and a longitudinal dataset covering 60 regions and the period 1998-2015. Two aspects of the job-matching efficiency are considered; the determinants of unemployment and the temporal changes in the job-matching efficiency. Considering the determinants of unemployment, some differences between urban and rural regions are detected. The results indicate that the mean age of a region’s population is negatively related to the unemployment rate while the share of women in the labor force is positively related in both types of regions. According to the Beveridge curve, this implies that the job-matching efficiency increases with a higher mean age while a higher share of women in the labor force decreases the matching efficiency. However, both variables are significantly stronger related to the unemployment rate in urban regions. Education is found to be positively associated with unemployment rate in urban regions while insignificant in rural ones. Lastly, no major difference between the two types of regions regarding the changes or position of the Beveridge curve are found. This implies that the job-matching efficiency is similar and change simultaneously in both urban and rural regions.

Employee turnover is a fairly common phenomenon across organizations throughout the globe, which creates both direct and indirect costs to companies (Lambert et al., 2012). Though numerous authors have investigated the problem, only a small number have studied the Canadian labour market. Furthermore, few have examined how various hiring or screening tests during the hiring process affect worker attrition. The thesis aims to complement existing research about employee voluntary turnover (vs. involuntary turnover) and retention by further investigating some of the root causes and potential solutions from a Canadian perspective. Using longitudinal data from the Workplace and Employee Survey (WES) supplied by Statistics Canada through an 8-year period, it explores 5 hypotheses relating to the initial hiring process (ten screening tests), the gender and marital status of employees, compensation, and employees’ seniority in the company. The survey datasets are based on respondents of, on average, 6,268 companies and 20,387 corresponding workers from 1999 to 2006. Logit and probit regression models are employed for the empirical tests. The results are surprising, and seem to differ from most studies in other countries. In Canada, it appears wage has no effect on workers’ turnover at all, employee engagement programs negatively affect workers’ decisions to stay, women are more likely to quit than men are, married employees are no more likely to quit than anyone else, children seem to have no impact on employee attrition, and workers with lower status in the company are more likely to stay. The concluding chapter discusses implications of these findings and how they might help Canadian organizations deal with employee voluntary turnover.

Employee turnover is a fairly common phenomenon across organizations throughout the globe, which creates both direct and indirect costs to companies (Lambert et al., 2012). Though numerous authors have investigated the problem, only a small number have studied the Canadian labour market. Furthermore, few have examined how various hiring or screening tests during the hiring process affect worker attrition. The thesis aims to complement existing research about employee voluntary turnover (vs. involuntary turnover) and retention by further investigating some of the root causes and potential solutions from a Canadian perspective. Using longitudinal data from the Workplace and Employee Survey (WES) supplied by Statistics Canada through an 8-year period, it explores 5 hypotheses relating to the initial hiring process (ten screening tests), the gender and marital status of employees, compensation, and employees’ seniority in the company. The survey datasets are based on respondents of, on average, 6,268 companies and 20,387 corresponding workers from 1999 to 2006. Logit and probit regression models are employed for the empirical tests. The results are surprising, and seem to differ from most studies in other countries. In Canada, it appears wage has no effect on workers’ turnover at all, employee engagement programs negatively affect workers’ decisions to stay, women are more likely to quit than men are, married employees are no more likely to quit than anyone else, children seem to have no impact on employee attrition, and workers with lower status in the company are more likely to stay. The concluding chapter discusses implications of these findings and how they might help Canadian organizations deal with employee voluntary turnover.

Software start-ups make media headlines daily, suggesting that it may take only a garage and two engineering students to begin such companies, and that these same people will constitute the core of the executive team until these organizations become multinational giants. Despite these spontaneous starts, newly formed entrepreneurial ventures have many obstacles to overcome in their resource and cultural environments when establishing their practices. These obstacles vary depending on the local institutional contexts and can exert relevant pressures on how, where and why start-ups recruit and select certain candidates for their executive teams. Based on interviews conducted in Silicon Valley and Stockholm with 40 key hiring and intermediary actors – entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, board directors, CEOs and executive recruiters - the general aim of this work is that of disclosing step-by-step the process of executive recruitment and selection in start-ups. At the same time, this study seeks to analyze how institutional environments, through the actions of states, governments, universities, professional associations and society in general, shape start-up practices. Finally, the work aims at testing the explanatory power of institutional theories in sociology. The analysis of the interviews shows that different local institutional environments differently and crucially shape organizational actors' interests, roles and patterns of behavior when constructing their practices. Two distinct ideal-typical dominant logics surface among key actors in the two geographical contexts. On one side, Silicon Valley actors recruit and select their executives by using a business logic based on an efficiency rationale. On the other side, Stockholm actors make use of a personal logic based on a rationale of cultural fit when calculating which specific candidate better matches a certain executive position.

This study investigated the effects of job preference and job match on job performance among four 19-to 20-year-old young adults with developmental disabilities placed in community-based job conditions. Prior studies have examined the effects of job preference on community-based job performance without the job-matching component. The researcher identified high-preference, high-match and low-preference, low-match job conditions and tasks using a video web-based assessment program. Each participant was subsequently placed in a randomized sequence of 30-min sessions on one high-preference, high-match job condition performing a preferred task and one low-preference, low-match job performing a non preferred task. Job coaches instructed and prompted participants throughout the study, teaching job tasks based on criteria specified by the employer or industry standard. Data collectors recorded data on (a) on-task performance, (b) productivity, (c) quality and quantity of work, (d) job satisfaction as measured through participant judgment of preferred and well-matched jobs, and (e) an independent observer's judgment of well-matched jobs. The researcher found higher productivity, accuracy, and job satisfaction across all participants on the high-preference, high-match jobs as well as higher quantity of work completed for three of the four participants. On- task levels remained high in both job conditions for three of the four participants. Results are discussed in terms of variables in and limitations to this study as well as suggestions for future research.

The purpose of the study is to investigate the collaboration between the Swedish Public Em-ployment Service and the municipalities in southern Halland (Falkenberg, Halmstad, Hylte, Laholm) based on Huxham and Vangen's theory of the benefits of collaboration, "Theory Of Collaborative Advantage". The theory is suitable for studies of organizations and is based on the fact that there are different incentives or motives for starting a collaboration. The various motives give collaboration the prerequisite for success. In addition to the motives for collabo-ration, it is required that the partens who collaborate meet some of the criteria that Huxham and Vangen call the seven different perspectives. The authors believe that collaboration is difficult and very complex, but by analyzing which points work in collaboration, the chance of achieving the common goal is greater. By analyzing the collaboration between the Swedish Public Em-ployment Service and the municipalities in southern Halland with Huxham and Vangen's theory about the benefits of collaboration, it emerges that through local agreements there is a function-ing collaboration. On the other hand, it turns out that in the operational part of collaboration for those who are far from the labor market and receive financial assistance, there is still difficulty in making collaboration work optimally, and this is due to poor communication between the officials who work directly with decisions and planning for that group.

<p>Labour and its conditions is a subject constantly in focus. Therefore this study aims to shed some light on different factors which constitutes the basis for the definition of optimal labour conditions, as well as creating a need for change of labour conditions. In this case these factors are changes in society and cultures. The study describes how different levels of society - government, employer and employee – are affected by, or wishes to affect the labor conditions in terms of location, working hours and leisure. In brief this study concerns how different goals and interests results in different definitions of the optimum at the different levels. For instance the goal of the state is to increase its GNP to better compete with other nations. The goal of the employer is, among other things, to increase the company’s profits and conquer the market. The employee’s interest, on the other hand, is mainly to get resources for survival and better terms of life.</p>

Labour and its conditions is a subject constantly in focus. Therefore this study aims to shed some light on different factors which constitutes the basis for the definition of optimal labour conditions, as well as creating a need for change of labour conditions. In this case these factors are changes in society and cultures. The study describes how different levels of society - government, employer and employee – are affected by, or wishes to affect the labor conditions in terms of location, working hours and leisure. In brief this study concerns how different goals and interests results in different definitions of the optimum at the different levels. For instance the goal of the state is to increase its GNP to better compete with other nations. The goal of the employer is, among other things, to increase the company’s profits and conquer the market. The employee’s interest, on the other hand, is mainly to get resources for survival and better terms of life.

M. Tech. (Department of Information Technology, Faculty of Applied and Computer Sciences), Vaal University of Technology. / With a rapid growth of internet technologies, many companies have transformed from the old traditional ways of recruiting employees to electronic recruitment (e-recruitment). E-recruiting channels achieved a solid advantage for both employers and job applicants by dropping advertising cost, applying cost as well as hiring time. Job recommender systems aim to help in people – job matching. In this research, a proposed mobile job employment recommender system is a client – server application that uses content – based filtering algorithm to enable the initial selection of a suitable leisure job seeker to a temporary job at a particular place and vice versa. A prototype of a mobile job recommendation application was developed to evaluate the algorithm. The evaluation matrix used to assess the prototype are precision, recall and the F-measure. The precision value was found to be 0.994, the recall value was 0.975 and the F1- score was 0.984. The experimental results of the proposed algorithm show the effectiveness of the system to recommend suitable candidates for jobs at a specified area. The recommender system was able to achieve its main aim of enabling the initial selection of suitable temporary job seekers to a temporary job at a particular place and vice versa. Thus, the results of the proposed algorithm are satisfactory.

Cette thèse de doctorat examine les principales défaillances du marché du travail qui entraînent que les travailleurs n’arrivent pas à obtenir la pleine rémunération potentielle qui corresponde à leur capital humain. Il y a « inefficacité salariale » lorsque le salaire obtenu est inférieur au maximum atteignable. Dans un tel cas, les salariés reçoivent un salaire injuste par rapport au capital humain disposé. Cela décourage à investir dans son capital humain ce qui aura tendance à réduire la productivité totale, à affaiblir la compétitivité et à nuire à la croissance économique du pays. La contribution que nous apportons à travers ce travail est de trois ordres. Dans un premier temps, nous proposons un nouveau regard par rapport à l’intégration des jeunes sur le marché du travail. Plutôt que d’examiner si les individus obtiennent un contrat de travail stable ou non, nous adoptons une approche qui s’intéresse à la qualité de l’appariement « emploi – compétences » de jeunes entrant fraîchement dans la vie active. Nos travaux fournissent des résultats empiriques qui mettent en évidence les différentes théories de recherche d’emploi. Dans un second temps, en raison du considérable défi que représente l'identification et l'évaluation des pratiques discriminatoires sur le marché du travail, nous proposons une approche innovatrice et efficace pour examiner le phénomène du plafond de verre (barrière invisible à l’accès des postes de décision mieux rémunérés). Dans la dernière partie de cette thèse, nous proposons un modèle économétrique théorique qui améliore la correction du problème de biais de sélection pour les modèles de frontière stochastique. / This doctoral thesis addresses issues related to employees’ imperfect information on the labour market and discrimination, generally all direct consequences of labour underpayment or “earnings inefficiency”. Workers are in a situation of earnings inefficiency when they do not receive the full potential remuneration corresponding to their human capital endowment: unfair pay for greater stock of human capital. This situation is problematic from a policy-makers point of view as it could weaken work incentives, discourage investments in human capital, and harm economic growth and competitiveness. It could also widen inequality within the society and contribute to the increase in relative poverty.The contribution we make through this work is threefold. First, we examine the integration of young people into the labour market from a new angle. Instead of examining whether individuals obtain stable employment or not, we use an approach that focuses on the quality of the job matching for young people entering the workforce and lacking labour market information. This first chapter provides empirical evidence on job search theories. In a second chapter, because of the considerable challenge of identifying and assessing discriminatory practices in the labour market, we propose an innovative and effective approach to examine the phenomenon of the glass ceiling (an invisible barrier to management positions associated with higher earnings). Finally, the last part of this doctoral thesis is devoted to improving the econometric approach we use. We propose a theoretical econometric model that improves correction for sample selection bias with stochastic frontier models.