This study explores the complex factors that contribute to low youth education attendance in Malawi. While current education and youth policy is framed in terms of providing access to quality education for all Malawians, this has proved challenging to implement in practice. A qualitative approach involving a range of stakeholders was adopted. 341 respondents participated in one–to-one and group interviews and provided in-depth insights into the issues affecting educational attendance. Data was thematically coded using NVivo and network analysis was used to determine the complexity of the interrelationships of the factors undermining youth attendance. Human capital theory (HCT) underpins the design of the study and the analysis of the data collected; however, HCT alone was insufficient to account for patterns in the data and therefore post-colonial, women's empowerment, motivation, decentralization, corruption and media development theories were used to complement and extend HCT in the analysis undertaken. Furthermore, while, in HCT, education and training are considered strategies for empowering people to make informed choices, enter employment and contribute to personal and national development, a central concern of the Malawian education system is the preparation of young people, and particularly young women, to undertake traditional roles. This study demonstrates that youth, especially young women in rural settings, face many challenges to their remaining in education and achieving employment outcomes beyond traditional expectations. This also limits the potential for wider-ranging social changes and economic development. Examples provided illustrate how sector-wide patterns of educational resourcing and provision, organisational issues, teacher and learner attitudes, and cultural practices interact. Policy formation and evaluation in Malawi are driven by external funder priorities and political expediency rather than being evidence-based. This study, contrastingly, offers an empirical basis for policy formation and decision-making vis-a-vis youth education, and proposes a strategic plan to improve levels of education attendance.

This thesis examines the relationship between education, experience, and earnings in the context of human capital theory in the manufacturing sector of Iran. Using a sample of 15755 full-time male workers clustered within 35 firms, both single-level and multilevel statistical techniques were employed to evaluate the contribution of education and experience to earnings. The research also examines the advantages of applying a multilevel method of analysis to investigate the above relationship. This study has shown that, in the manufacturing sector of Iranian industry, the amount of education and experience is significantly and systematically associated with the earnings of employees. This helps to corroborate the notion that human capital acquired through education and experience provides individual economic benefits through improving the earning capacity of individuals. These findings are consistent with many other analyses of earnings based on human capital theory. The multilevel analysis showed that data used are affected by a hierarchical or clustered structure and the relationship between human capital variables and earnings varies across firms. As a result, as argued by multilevel methodologists and confirmed by our findings, the application of the OLS models in a hierarchical structure leads to incorrect inferences. This study has also shown that the relatively new statistical technique of multilevel modelling provides a powerful tool for examining earnings differentials and some of the effects of labour market structures on earnings. In general the use of a multilevel model provides evidence for the pecuniary externality effects of human capital. By treating individual firms as second level units of analysis, it has been shown that part of the differences in earnings can be attributed to the firms in which individuals are working. In particular clusters of highly educated people seem to have a positive effect on the amount of human capital created through experience. It would be interesting to see whether this finding has wider application. The multilevel technique also strengthens the explanatory power of human capital variables. Using qualitative methods, this research also examines the question "why does investment in human capital increase earnings?" The main findings tend to support the human capital interpretation of education rather than pure screening.

M.B.A / The aim of this study is to conduct a literature study on knowledge management with specific reference to the Human Resources environment and compare these practices in the various identified companies that operate In the Chemical Sector in South Africa. Knowledge management has demonstrated to be an essential contributor to business success in many global companies. As an evolving discipline within organisations, the Human Resources function can benefit from this by adopting the appropriate knowledge management tools and principles to ensure maximum Human Capital output is achieved. The foundation of this dissertation is based on the literature review, where the researcher attempts to highlight important aspects relevant to this topic. These include concepts associated with the Human Resources function - but are viewed in perspective of a knowledge-driven organisation. The focus will be primarily on Learning and Development, Compensation and Benefits, Recruitment and Placement, and Performance Management and associated concepts that support these Human Resources technologies. In order to gain a better understanding of currant practices in the identified South African companies, the researcher will survey these companies. Both the providers of Human Resources services (Human Resources Professionals) and recipients of the Human Resources services (Employees) will be surveyed. From the findings, the researcher will provide appropriate recommendations based on the expertise provided by the authors in the literature review so that the companies may adapt and implement these. Since South Africa is a developing economy, these companies can learn from the tried and tested methodologies as illustrated in the literature review, to enhance their competitive edge.

Background: One expected consequence of population aging in Europe is the shrinkage of the labor force. Most existing labor force projections allow only inferences about the size and age structure of the future labor force. Objective: In comparison to existing labor force projections, which disaggregate only by age and sex, these projections include information about the highest level of educational attainment (tertiary vs. non-tertiary education), so that an additional level of heterogeneity in labor force participation is considered. This heterogeneity enters the projection methodology through population projection data as well as labor force participation data, since both components are decomposed in the three dimensions of age, sex, and education. Based on data from the European Labor Force Survey (EU LFS), three scenarios were designed to project the economically active population for 26 EU countries up to 2053. Results: Adding the educational dimension to labor force projections discloses a significant shift towards tertiary education degrees between 2008 and 2053. This educational upgrading of the European labor force is not driven by developments in a few large countries but can be expected to take place in each of the 26 analyzed countries. Conclusions: A better educated but shrinking labor force is likely to be able to alleviate some of the anticipated economic consequences of population aging. The presented projections of education-specific labor supply can serve as inputs into forecasts of economic growth that include educational differentials in labor productivity. (author's abstract)

From Introduction: Education, in the broadest sense of the term, is as old as man himself, but the attention devoted to it has fluctuated to extremities over time. The "Economics of Education", as a separate study, has suffered the same cyclical life, but has in recent years experienced a prolonged revival of interest, eapecially with regard to the concept of "Human Capital".

We are living in an era of inconceivable knowledge, skills and talent paucity as technology continue to revolutionise the world, creating new and diverse economic opportunities and changing the perception of work, its environments and the skills and knowledge demanded in organisations. This phenomenon has resulted in global competition for skilled and knowledge workers as the new world of work morphs enigmatically, leaving organisations vulnerable, and unable to deal with this complex issue. Organisational leaders are cognisant of the changes, but are grappling with the problems of managing, retaining, and creating a resilient workforce. If talent is put onto the back burner and left unattended, it has the potential to create overwhelming turmoil in the South African economy and the economies throughout the world. The global changes will impact directly on how we approach workforce challenges in the future. Today, human capital is regarded as the distinct wealth contributor and creator for economic and organisational prosperity (Meyer, 2004). Hence, Human Capital Planning is crucial for every organisation, including Eskom, to ensure that its strategic objectives are met through the effective management and utilisation of its human resources in order to maintain its competitive advantage and ensure its sustainability into the future. Globally, as well as in South Africa, various contributing factors have resulted in skills shortages throughout the energy industry. Eskom has embarked on several growth initiatives requiring additional manpower, diverse specialist knowledge and skills-sets, and a more robust pipeline of technically qualified employees across all levels in the organisation firstly, to sustain itself, and secondly to embed the transition of a high performing organisation by attracting and acquiring the right skills and talent in the right jobs (Eskom Business Plan, 2010). Human Capital Planning is therefore crucial especially for Eskom Distribution, Southern Region to ensure that its strategic objectives are met through the effective management and optimisation of its human resources, whilst simultaneously cognisant of the changing landscape both internally, viz. within the region and the broader Eskom, and externally in South Africa and the global markets.

The human resource department in many organisations is at a crossroad of relevance, constantly being faced with the challenge to prove that it can add value towards the objectives of the business. The Human Resource (HR) department is also faced with a reality that, if the department does not add value to the organisation, it will be farmed out to independent contractors, who can deliver the HR functions at a more efficient and cost effective way. However, organisations have a great opportunity to achieve excellence and competitive advantage through the utilisation of the organisation‟s human resources. Many scholars and authors argued that organisations can achieve the most out of its human resources if the HR department is a Strategic Business Partner (SBP) in these organisations. A thorough literature review has led to the discovery that, despite the appraisal of the Strategic Business Partners (SBP) approach to the management of human resources, little progress has been made with the reinvention of the HR departments from support function towards being a SBP (Lawler & Morhman, 2003; Keith, 2007). The slow progress in the transformation of the HR department was attributed to a wide range of factors including the lack of competencies to take up Strategic Business Partnership roles, lack of management support, and incongruent organisational cultures (Keith, 2007; Sanders & Frenkel, 2009; Ulrich & Brockbank, 2005). Semi-structured interviews were conducted with HR professionals, Managing Directors and other Directors, who sit on a strategic table, to identify the challenges and opportunities the HR department faced as a SBP in organisations. A self-administered questionnaire, based on an existing questionnaire (Ulrich & Cornell (1997) HR role assessment survey) was used to gather the perception of employees regarding the roles the HR departments play in organisations. In this study organisational culture was identified as having a huge impact towards the implementation of HR departments as SBPs. The study also identified the competencies needed for the effective execution of SBP roles, the challenges HR departments may face in the process as well as the important roles the HR department should be devoting most of its time and resources to.

This thesis provides both theoretical and empirical evidence to identify why the effect of human capital on economic growth differs across countries. Chapter 1 provides a theoretical explanation of the weak effects of human capital on economic growth in a dynamic general equilibrium model of corruption and growth where the bureaucrats acts as the agents of government to administer public policy. Corruption in this model arises from the incentive of the bureaucrat to appropriate (steal) public resources, thereby reducing the provision of public services. The decision of the corruptible bureaucrat affects public finances and hence the capital accumulation in the economy. Education has two opposing effects, a positive productivity enhancing effect and a negative bureaucratic stealing efficiency of corrupt bureaucrats. If the latter dominates the former the net effect may result in an insignificant (or even negative) effect of human capital on growth. The second chapter explains empirically why previous studies do not find link between human capital and economic growth, again looking at the role of corruption. In this chapter, we provide cross sectional evidence on this issue by explicitly introducing the role of corruption together its interaction with human capital. The empirical analysis first revisits the Rogers (2008) study, where he uses an arbitrary level of corruption to divide the full sample of countries into subsamples of high and low corruption countries and concludes that human capital matters only in low corruption countries. However, using a range of corruption data and sample periods, our results do not confirm his findings. Our preferred specification allows the effects of human capital to be conditional on the level of corruption, which is implemented through the inclusion of both a corruption measure and its interaction with human capital. Although we generally find the expected positive sign on human capital and a negative sign on the interaction term, these often lack in significance. We repeat the analysis using instrumental variable estimation and find a similar pattern of results, and hence conclude that cross sectional evidence is uninformative for empirical analysis of the role of human capital in economic growth. In the third chapter, we employ panel data analysis to investigate the relationship between human capital and economic growth by considering an exhaustive range of institutional measures, along with corruption. These various institutional measures are used to capture different aspects of institutions on the impact of human capital on economic growth. Our growth regressions include the interaction of institution and human capital, in addition to the direct effect of institution and human capital. The coefficient on interaction term can be interpreted as showing whether human capital and institutions appear to be compliments or substitutes for their impact on growth. Our results generally show positive and significant coefficients on human capital and institutions, with a negative coefficient on the interaction term. The results suggest that, for policy purposes, the government needs to carefully identify the level of human capital to be pursued in relation to the quality of institutions.

El objetivo de la presente tesis es delimitar los factores determinantes de las exportaciones peruanas de servicios de software hacia Latinoamérica en el periodo 2011-2018. El objetivo es confirmar las variables que influyen positivamente en una industria que cada año es más relevante a nivel mundial. La investigación se basa en estudios de PROMPERÚ realizadas por el área de exportación de servicios. Dichas presentaciones resaltan que el software es uno de los sectores más demandados en exportaciones, ya que en el 2017 el valor exportado fue de 50.92 millones de dólares y en el 2018 fue de 67.50 millones de dólares. El estudio se delimita en tres factores fundamentales: apoyo del gobierno, capital humano y contar con certificaciones internacionales, ya que el sector de software es muy amplio y existen más factores que pueden explicar su continuo crecimiento. La investigación tiene un enfoque mixto. Por la parte cualitativa, se realiza entrevistas a profundidad a los tres actores claves de la industria (Gobierno, expertos en el tema y empresa reconocida del sector). En la investigación cuantitativa se realiza un análisis descriptivo y factorial con base a encuestas a una muestra de 42 empresas exportadoras asociadas a APESOFT (Asociación Peruana de Software y Tecnologías). Asimismo, los resultados de la encuesta aplicada en el presente estudio corroboran que las variables como el apoyo del gobierno, el capital humano y contar con certificaciones internacionales factores son influyentes en las exportaciones peruanas de servicios de software. / The objective of this thesis is to define the determining factors of Peruvian exports of software services to Latin America in the period 2011-2018. The objective is to confirm the variables that positively influence an industry that every year is more relevant worldwide. The research is based on PROMPERÚ studies carried out by the service export area. These presentations highlight that software is one of the most demanded sectors in exports, since in 2017 the exported value was 50.92 million dollars and in 2018 it was 67.50 million dollars. The study is delimited in three fundamental factors: government support, human capital and international certifications, since the software sector is very large and there are more factors that can explain its continued growth. The research has a mixed approach. On the qualitative side, in-depth interviews are conducted with the three key players in the industry (Government, experts in the field and recognized company in the sector). In the quantitative research, a descriptive and factorial analysis is carried out based on surveys of a sample of 42 exporting companies associated with APESOFT (Peruvian Association of Software and Technologies). Likewise, the results of the survey applied in this study confirm that variables such as government support, human capital and having international certification factors are influential in Peruvian exports of software services. / Tesis

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