Tesis sobre el tema "Capital humain – Psychologie"

Si l’étude des pratiques organisationnelles favorables à la performance et à l’implication des travailleurs a suscité un grand intérêt de la part des chercheurs, celle des pratiques favorables à leur santé psychologique est encore à ce jour en gestation. L’objectif général de la présente thèse était de contribuer à l’enrichissement de ce champ de la littérature scientifique au travers de : (1) la conceptualisation des Pratiques Organisationnelles Vertueuses (POV) fondée sur le modèle Psychologically Healthy Workplace de l’Association Américaine de Psychologie (AAP), (2) la création d’un outil permettant de mesurer les POV et (3) l’identification des liens existant entre les POV d’une part et le bien-être psychologique, les intentions et les comportements des travailleurs d’autre part. Pour atteindre ces objectifs, trois études ont été conduites. La première étude, composée de trois sous-études, a consisté à développer une mesure psychométriquement valide des POV (i.e., l’Inventaire des Pratiques Organisationnelles Vertueuses, IPOV) auprès d’une population de travailleurs français issus des secteurs privé, public et associatif. La deuxième étude a démontré que les POV étaient positivement associées à la satisfaction au travail, à la croissance professionnelle et à l’équilibre entre vie professionnelle et vie privée, via la médiation du capital psychologique. Enfin, la troisième étude a mis en évidence que les POV étaient associées positivement à l’intention de rester et aux comportements de citoyenneté organisationnelle des travailleurs, via la médiation de l’adéquation personne-organisation. Ce travail doctoral apporte une contribution novatrice à la littérature scientifique consacrée aux déterminants organisationnels du bien-être psychologique, des attitudes et des comportements positifs des salariés et propose aux acteurs de terrain un outil intégratif et valide de mesure des pratiques organisationnelles vertueuses
While the study of organizational practices favorable to the performance and involvement of workers has aroused great interest among researchers, the study of practices favorable to their psychological health is still in gestation. The general purpose of this doctoral dissertation was to contribute to the enrichment of this field of scientific literature through: (1) the conceptualization of Virtuous Organizational Practices (VOP) based on the Psychologically Healthy Workplace model of the American Psychological Association (APA), (2) the development of a tool to assess VOP, and (3) identification of the existing links between VOP on the one hand, and the psychological well-being, intentions and behaviors of workers on the other. To achieve these aims, three studies were conducted. The first, comprising three sub-studies, developed and validated a reliable tool to assess VOP (i.e., Virtuous Organizational Practices Inventory, VOPI)among a population of French workers from the private, public and associative sectors. The second study demonstrated that VOP were positively associated with job satisfaction, thriving at work and work-life balance, through the mediation of psychological capital. Finally, the third study found that VOP positively impacted the person-organization fit, which in turn promoted the intention to stay and the organizational citizenship behaviors of workers. This doctoral dissertation makes an innovative contribution to the scientific literature on organizational determinants of psychological well-being, positive attitudes and behaviors of workers and offersactors in the field an integrative and reliable tool to assess virtuous organizational practices

This dissertation consists of three essays concerning the effects of human capital and health capital on the labor market. Chapter 1 presents a structural model that incorporates a health capital stock to the traditional learning-by-doing model. The model allows health to affect future wages by interrupting current labor supply and on-the-job human capital accumulation. Using data on sick time from the Panel Study Income of Dynamics the model is estimated using a nonlinear Generalized Method of Moments estimator. The results show human capital production exhibits diminishing returns. Health capital production increases with the current stock of health capital, or better current health improves future health. Among prime age working men, the effect of health on human capital accumulation is relatively small. Chapter 2 explores the role of another form of human capital, noncognitive skills, in explaining racial gaps in wages. Chapter 2 adds two noncognitive skills, locus of control and self-esteem, to a simple wage specification to determine the effect of these skills on the racial wage gap (white, black, and Hispanic) and the return to these skills across the wage distribution. The wage specifications are estimated using pooled, between, and quantile estimators. Results using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 show these skills account for differing portions of the racial wage gap depending on race and gender. Chapter 3 synthesizes the idea of health and on-the-job human capital accumulation from Chapter 1 with the idea of noncognitive skills in Chapter 2 to examine the influence of these skills on human capital and health capital accumulation in adult life. Chapter 3 introduces noncognitive skills to a life cycle labor supply model with endogenous health and human capital accumulation. Noncognitive skills, measured by degree of future orientation, self-efficacy, trust-hostility, and aspirations, exogenously affect human capital and health production. The model uses noncognitive skills assessed in the early years of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics and relates these skills to health and human capital accumulation during adult life. The main findings suggest individuals with high self-efficacy receive higher future wages.

In recent years, there has been a growing commitment to studying the economic lives of the poor by better understanding their psychological lives (Banerjee and Duflo, 2007; Schilbach et al., 2016). These developments stem from the failure to empirically detect poverty traps, which have been at the core of the development literature for decades (Dean et al., 2017). Instead, empirical studies document the existence of very large rates of returns to investment, which, however, are not matched by observed consumption growth rates (Kremer et al., 2019). Several behaviors of the poor, which do not fit with traditional models, puzzled economists. Why do poor micro-entrepreneurs keep borrowing at extremely high interest rates instead of saving some of their profit to borrow less with each passing day (Ananth et al., 2007)? If using fertilizer has such high rates of return, why don't poor farmers purchase it (Duflo et al., 2008)? If the poor remain poor because they do not get enough calories, why do they spend their money on other things besides food (Banerjee and Duflo, 2007)? Such questions led to the rise of the subfield of Behavioral Development Economics, which applies insights from psychology and behavioral economics to study the economic behavior of the poor; trying to explain why and how it departs from standard economic models. Behavioral biases, studied extensively in Behavioral Economics, may be much more consequential for the poor. Failing to resist to the temptation of a hedonistic reward after a hard day of work will have very different implications for a poor person than for a rich one. This thesis aims to contribute to this new strand of literature, in particular to one of its branches titled "the psychology of poverty", which studies the impact poverty has on cognitive function and economic behavior. One influential theory in this field is the scarcity/mental bandwidth theory (Mullainathan and Shafir, 2013), which states that poverty implies not only lack of financial resources, but also lack of mental resources to focus on other things besides pressing concerns. At any time, a poor person's mind will be preoccupied with worries about bills, school fees or health problems; and how to best manage all of them with very limited resources. While this makes the poor better at decisions regarding the pressing issue at hand (Mullainathan and Shafir, 2013), it also makes them neglect other important domains which may not appear urgent enough (Shah et al., 2012, 2015). While the theory may help explain many puzzling behaviors of the poor, up to now there has been little evidence on real-world economic outcomes. The first two chapters of this thesis try to bring the framework closer to real-world economic decisions even though restricted to the lab setting. The main challenge with studying the psychology of poverty outside the lab is the fact that even exogenous changes in income will affect several other channels besides mental bandwidth, making it very challenging to pin down the precise mechanism. Given this, the first two chapters are limited to varying mental bandwidth in a lab setting, keeping income fixed. The novel aspect is that the decisions participants make mimic closely everyday life purchasing decisions, involving real products. I note however, that due to limited funding and ethical considerations, in both chapters decisions are only weakly incentivized: only 1% of participants actually receive the goods they selected. The first chapter explores the relationship between the psychology of poverty, investment in human capital, and financial incentives. Empirical evidence indicates that the poor are less attentive parents, investing less in the human capital of their children (McLoyd, 1998; Evans, 2004). This contributes to the inter-generational transmission of poverty because investing in human capital has extremely high rates of return, highest in early childhood (Cunha and Heckman, 2007; Cunha et al., 2010). The question is why don't the poor invest more? Traditional answers to this question put the blame on lack of knowledge of parenting practices, wrong beliefs on the expected returns or lower altruism. We propose an alternative explanation based on the scarcity theory. Poor parents may fail to invest the required time and resources in their child because their minds are preoccupied with other more urgent concerns. When there is uncertainty about how the next bill will be paid, spending time doing educational activities with the child may shift out of focus. When such behaviors keep repeating on a regular basis, a gap emerges between poor and non-poor children in the amount of cognitive and emotional stimulation they receive. The challenge is how to test this hypothesis. Given the identification issues with disentangling such channels with observational data, we bring it to the lab. Parents of toddlers, living in the UK, are invited to participate in an online experiment. First, they are asked to answer how their family would deal with various hypothetical financial scenarios which vary in severity (hard for the treatment group, easy for the control group). Among the treated, the scenarios aim to bring financial worries to mind, trying to capture what people living in poverty experience on a regular basis. After completing the scenarios, parents receive a budget of pounds 30 to be spent as they choose in an experimental market on 3 types of goods: necessities, child investment goods, and luxury goods. Half of parents are incentivized to purchase more child investment goods by being offered a 50% discount. This treatment investigates if financial worries change how parents respond to such incentives, and is motivated by the results in Das et al. (2013) which find that accounting for household re-optimization in response to a policy is crucial when evaluating its effects. We find that the incentive increases investment in human capital among lower income parents only when financial worries are not salient. When worries become salient, low income parents do not invest more but instead use the additional money to increase their demand of necessities. In addition, they also lower their demand for luxury goods to zero. When no discount is offered, we do not find financial worries to lower investment, which is likely to be explained by floor effects. Among higher income parents, financial worries do not affect behavior. The effects among lower income participants are driven by those who were further away from their last paycheck at the time of the experiment - an indicator of real world monetary scarcity. This finding increases the external validity of our main results. The second chapter departs from studying the human capital of children, focusing instead on the human capital of adultsootnote{However, the behavior studied is likely to have negative externalities also on children (e.g. domestic violence).}. Addictive (or temptation) goods have been at the core of academic and policy debates for decades. With Becker and Murphy (1988), addiction was rationalized as a utility maximizing decision where the individual fully internalizes the costs of consuming such goods. In this framework, the only scope for intervention is to balance out the externalities -- the costs that individuals place on society through consumption decisions (e.g. healthcare costs). Gruber (2001) questioned theoretically and empirically the rational framework, showing that with inconsistent time preferences, individuals do not fully internalize the cost of their behavior. Further studies have confirmed these findings which increased the scope of policy interventions (Gruber and Kőszegi, 2004; O’Donoghue and Rabin, 2006; Allcott et al., 2019a). The most widely used policy tools to limit the over-consumption of temptation are "sin" taxes, popular among governments because they bring large revenues. However, such taxes have sparked debates regarding their effects on income distribution. Since the poor tend to spend a higher share of their budget on temptation, they are likely to pay a higher cost. On the other hand, they are also the ones expected to benefit more in terms of health by consuming less. Traditionally, such taxes were placed on tobacco and alcohol. Recently, several governments have started adding taxes also on the consumption of unhealthy foods, such as sugary drinks and beverages. Crucial to determining the effect of the tax is the elasticity of demand with respect to price and the degree to which individuals are not internalizing their choices (Allcott et al., 2019a). The second chapter integrates the economics of temptation with the scarcity theory, and investigates if financial worries affect (i) the demand for temptation and (ii) the elasticities of demand with respect to price (sin taxes). The first question is not straightforward in the scarcity framework. While poverty is scarcity of financial resources, it is also scarcity of immediate gratification. The poor have stressful lives and jobs which are often less rewarding and highly physically demanding. Compensating for these struggles is harder since they can only access a small set of potential alternatives to addictive goods (e.g. going to nice restaurant and travelling are not really in the choice set of the poor). Following a similar design as in the first chapter but with a less specific population (adults living in the UK), we randomly trigger financial worries before asking participants to choose between necessities and temptation goods in an experimental market. The basket of temptation goods offered includes tobacco, alcohol and unhealthy foods and we simulate "sin taxes" by randomly increasing the price of temptation by 10% or 20%. We find that triggering financial worries lowers the demand for temptation but also dampens demand elasticities. The effects are stronger among low income participants. When financial worries are salient, their demand curve is actually slightly upward sloping. The finding is puzzling: financial worries appear to limit over-consumption of temptation, but they also hurt the poor the most when additional taxes are introduced. We find suggestive evidence that both effects are mediated by an increased focus on urgent necessities. The first two chapters integrated the scarcity framework into public policies. The results are very consistent across studies and have clear policy implications. Among the poor, when monetary concerns are top of mind: (i) incentivizing investments in human capital may not achieve its desired outcome, (ii) (dis)incentivizing consumption of temptation through new taxes may harm the poor the most since they do not lower their demands in response to price increases, which leads, through taxation, to a transfer of funds from the poor to the nonpoor without having any corrective effects (see Bernheim and Rangel, 2004; Bernheim and Taubinsky, 2018). However, I must note that both chapters make only speculative policy recommendations given that they lack the normative counterfactual. Further research is needed to rigorously establish the welfare implications of financial worries. The third chapter takes a step back from economic decisions to studying how violence exposure affects cognitive function in children. Unfortunately violence and poverty are closely linked in a vicious cycle. Economically deprived neighborhoods are in general also more violent. In addition to monetary concerns, the minds of the poor are likely to be preoccupied with safety concerns. This study attempts to apply the framework in Mullainathan and Shafir (2013), focusing on security concerns instead of monetary ones. While the link between the scarcity framework and violence as scarcity of security is novel and up for debate, the chapter is closely connected with the literature on the impact of emotions on cognition and decision making (Loewenstein and Lerner, 2003; Lerner et al., 2003, 2015; Callen et al., 2014; Bogliacino et al., 2017). In a lab-in-the-field experiment, primary school children in El Salvador are randomly assigned to recall episodes of violence exposure before or after taking cognitive tests. I find that recalling violence exposure before taking the tests, increases cognitive performance by 0.2 standard deviations, effect significantly stronger for children reporting higher exposure. The estimates contrast previous findings on the effect of violence and cognitive function (Sharkey, 2010; Sharkey et al., 2012; Bogliacino et al., 2017) and call for further research in the field.

In recent years, there has been a growing commitment to studying the economic lives of the poor by better understanding their psychological lives (Banerjee and Duflo, 2007; Schilbach et al., 2016). These developments stem from the failure to empirically detect poverty traps, which have been at the core of the development literature for decades (Dean et al., 2017). Instead, empirical studies document the existence of very large rates of returns to investment, which, however, are not matched by observed consumption growth rates (Kremer et al., 2019). Several behaviors of the poor, which do not fit with traditional models, puzzled economists. Why do poor micro-entrepreneurs keep borrowing at extremely high interest rates instead of saving some of their profit to borrow less with each passing day (Ananth et al., 2007)? If using fertilizer has such high rates of return, why don't poor farmers purchase it (Duflo et al., 2008)? If the poor remain poor because they do not get enough calories, why do they spend their money on other things besides food (Banerjee and Duflo, 2007)? Such questions led to the rise of the subfield of Behavioral Development Economics, which applies insights from psychology and behavioral economics to study the economic behavior of the poor; trying to explain why and how it departs from standard economic models. Behavioral biases, studied extensively in Behavioral Economics, may be much more consequential for the poor. Failing to resist to the temptation of a hedonistic reward after a hard day of work will have very different implications for a poor person than for a rich one. This thesis aims to contribute to this new strand of literature, in particular to one of its branches titled "the psychology of poverty", which studies the impact poverty has on cognitive function and economic behavior. One influential theory in this field is the scarcity/mental bandwidth theory (Mullainathan and Shafir, 2013), which states that poverty implies not only lack of financial resources, but also lack of mental resources to focus on other things besides pressing concerns. At any time, a poor person's mind will be preoccupied with worries about bills, school fees or health problems; and how to best manage all of them with very limited resources. While this makes the poor better at decisions regarding the pressing issue at hand (Mullainathan and Shafir, 2013), it also makes them neglect other important domains which may not appear urgent enough (Shah et al., 2012, 2015). While the theory may help explain many puzzling behaviors of the poor, up to now there has been little evidence on real-world economic outcomes. The first two chapters of this thesis try to bring the framework closer to real-world economic decisions even though restricted to the lab setting. The main challenge with studying the psychology of poverty outside the lab is the fact that even exogenous changes in income will affect several other channels besides mental bandwidth, making it very challenging to pin down the precise mechanism. Given this, the first two chapters are limited to varying mental bandwidth in a lab setting, keeping income fixed. The novel aspect is that the decisions participants make mimic closely everyday life purchasing decisions, involving real products. I note however, that due to limited funding and ethical considerations, in both chapters decisions are only weakly incentivized: only 1% of participants actually receive the goods they selected. The first chapter explores the relationship between the psychology of poverty, investment in human capital, and financial incentives. Empirical evidence indicates that the poor are less attentive parents, investing less in the human capital of their children (McLoyd, 1998; Evans, 2004). This contributes to the inter-generational transmission of poverty because investing in human capital has extremely high rates of return, highest in early childhood (Cunha and Heckman, 2007; Cunha et al., 2010). The question is why don't the poor invest more? Traditional answers to this question put the blame on lack of knowledge of parenting practices, wrong beliefs on the expected returns or lower altruism. We propose an alternative explanation based on the scarcity theory. Poor parents may fail to invest the required time and resources in their child because their minds are preoccupied with other more urgent concerns. When there is uncertainty about how the next bill will be paid, spending time doing educational activities with the child may shift out of focus. When such behaviors keep repeating on a regular basis, a gap emerges between poor and non-poor children in the amount of cognitive and emotional stimulation they receive. The challenge is how to test this hypothesis. Given the identification issues with disentangling such channels with observational data, we bring it to the lab. Parents of toddlers, living in the UK, are invited to participate in an online experiment. First, they are asked to answer how their family would deal with various hypothetical financial scenarios which vary in severity (hard for the treatment group, easy for the control group). Among the treated, the scenarios aim to bring financial worries to mind, trying to capture what people living in poverty experience on a regular basis. After completing the scenarios, parents receive a budget of pounds 30 to be spent as they choose in an experimental market on 3 types of goods: necessities, child investment goods, and luxury goods. Half of parents are incentivized to purchase more child investment goods by being offered a 50% discount. This treatment investigates if financial worries change how parents respond to such incentives, and is motivated by the results in Das et al. (2013) which find that accounting for household re-optimization in response to a policy is crucial when evaluating its effects. We find that the incentive increases investment in human capital among lower income parents only when financial worries are not salient. When worries become salient, low income parents do not invest more but instead use the additional money to increase their demand of necessities. In addition, they also lower their demand for luxury goods to zero. When no discount is offered, we do not find financial worries to lower investment, which is likely to be explained by floor effects. Among higher income parents, financial worries do not affect behavior. The effects among lower income participants are driven by those who were further away from their last paycheck at the time of the experiment - an indicator of real world monetary scarcity. This finding increases the external validity of our main results. The second chapter departs from studying the human capital of children, focusing instead on the human capital of adultsootnote{However, the behavior studied is likely to have negative externalities also on children (e.g. domestic violence).}. Addictive (or temptation) goods have been at the core of academic and policy debates for decades. With Becker and Murphy (1988), addiction was rationalized as a utility maximizing decision where the individual fully internalizes the costs of consuming such goods. In this framework, the only scope for intervention is to balance out the externalities -- the costs that individuals place on society through consumption decisions (e.g. healthcare costs). Gruber (2001) questioned theoretically and empirically the rational framework, showing that with inconsistent time preferences, individuals do not fully internalize the cost of their behavior. Further studies have confirmed these findings which increased the scope of policy interventions (Gruber and Kőszegi, 2004; O’Donoghue and Rabin, 2006; Allcott et al., 2019a). The most widely used policy tools to limit the over-consumption of temptation are "sin" taxes, popular among governments because they bring large revenues. However, such taxes have sparked debates regarding their effects on income distribution. Since the poor tend to spend a higher share of their budget on temptation, they are likely to pay a higher cost. On the other hand, they are also the ones expected to benefit more in terms of health by consuming less. Traditionally, such taxes were placed on tobacco and alcohol. Recently, several governments have started adding taxes also on the consumption of unhealthy foods, such as sugary drinks and beverages. Crucial to determining the effect of the tax is the elasticity of demand with respect to price and the degree to which individuals are not internalizing their choices (Allcott et al., 2019a). The second chapter integrates the economics of temptation with the scarcity theory, and investigates if financial worries affect (i) the demand for temptation and (ii) the elasticities of demand with respect to price (sin taxes). The first question is not straightforward in the scarcity framework. While poverty is scarcity of financial resources, it is also scarcity of immediate gratification. The poor have stressful lives and jobs which are often less rewarding and highly physically demanding. Compensating for these struggles is harder since they can only access a small set of potential alternatives to addictive goods (e.g. going to nice restaurant and travelling are not really in the choice set of the poor). Following a similar design as in the first chapter but with a less specific population (adults living in the UK), we randomly trigger financial worries before asking participants to choose between necessities and temptation goods in an experimental market. The basket of temptation goods offered includes tobacco, alcohol and unhealthy foods and we simulate "sin taxes" by randomly increasing the price of temptation by 10% or 20%. We find that triggering financial worries lowers the demand for temptation but also dampens demand elasticities. The effects are stronger among low income participants. When financial worries are salient, their demand curve is actually slightly upward sloping. The finding is puzzling: financial worries appear to limit over-consumption of temptation, but they also hurt the poor the most when additional taxes are introduced. We find suggestive evidence that both effects are mediated by an increased focus on urgent necessities. The first two chapters integrated the scarcity framework into public policies. The results are very consistent across studies and have clear policy implications. Among the poor, when monetary concerns are top of mind: (i) incentivizing investments in human capital may not achieve its desired outcome, (ii) (dis)incentivizing consumption of temptation through new taxes may harm the poor the most since they do not lower their demands in response to price increases, which leads, through taxation, to a transfer of funds from the poor to the nonpoor without having any corrective effects (see Bernheim and Rangel, 2004; Bernheim and Taubinsky, 2018). However, I must note that both chapters make only speculative policy recommendations given that they lack the normative counterfactual. Further research is needed to rigorously establish the welfare implications of financial worries. The third chapter takes a step back from economic decisions to studying how violence exposure affects cognitive function in children. Unfortunately violence and poverty are closely linked in a vicious cycle. Economically deprived neighborhoods are in general also more violent. In addition to monetary concerns, the minds of the poor are likely to be preoccupied with safety concerns. This study attempts to apply the framework in Mullainathan and Shafir (2013), focusing on security concerns instead of monetary ones. While the link between the scarcity framework and violence as scarcity of security is novel and up for debate, the chapter is closely connected with the literature on the impact of emotions on cognition and decision making (Loewenstein and Lerner, 2003; Lerner et al., 2003, 2015; Callen et al., 2014; Bogliacino et al., 2017). In a lab-in-the-field experiment, primary school children in El Salvador are randomly assigned to recall episodes of violence exposure before or after taking cognitive tests. I find that recalling violence exposure before taking the tests, increases cognitive performance by 0.2 standard deviations, effect significantly stronger for children reporting higher exposure. The estimates contrast previous findings on the effect of violence and cognitive function (Sharkey, 2010; Sharkey et al., 2012; Bogliacino et al., 2017) and call for further research in the field.

This dissertation presents three empirical studies on how to improve human capital in the public sector. In reverse chronological order, the essays ask who is attracted to public sector jobs (Paper 3); consider who can actually get a public sector job (Paper 2); and evaluate how current civil servants can be more effective at doing their job (Paper 1). In doing so, the dissertation presents tools that public managers can use to improve human capital within the constraints of government. Paper 1 focuses on the rising trend of teleworking options in the US federal government. Using eight years of rich administrative data on 10,000 employees at the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), I evaluate the impact of instituting a program that allows employees to work from home full time, not only on those who telework, but also on their peers who remain in the office. I find considerable impact on organizational effectiveness. Teleworkers display increased retention and two divergent effects on output: while productivity per hour of examination time goes down, teleworkers examine more applications per quarter because they spend more of their workday examining cases and fewer hours in meetings. Interestingly, having more teleworking peers increases productivity for those who stay in the office, but it also increases their sick leave and attrition, a proxy for burnout. I hypothesize that this is due to increased monitorability and task visibility in the office. This study shows that teleworking programs affect organizations beyond their direct impact on teleworkers and that these additional effects must be incorporated into the overall evaluation of whether teleworking works for organizations. Paper 2 considers how to improve diversity in the civil service, with a focus on the police. The paper reports the results of a randomized controlled trial (RCT) conducted in cooperation with a UK police force that was experiencing a disproportionate drop in minority applicants at one stage in its assessment process, the Situational Judgment Test (SJT). Drawing on insights from the literatures on stereotype threat (Steele & Aronson, 1995), belonging uncertainty (Walton & Cohen, 2007), and values affirmation exercises (Harackiewicz et al., 2014), we redesigned the wording on the email inviting applicants to participate in the SJT. The results show a 50 percent increase in the probability of passing the test for black and minority ethnic applicants in the treatment group; the intervention had no effect on white applicants. Therefore, the intervention closed the racial gap in the probability of passing the test without lowering the recruitment standard or changing the assessment questions. Paper 3 considers how to increase the number and diversity of people who are attracted to the police in the first place. The study presents the results of a field experiment that varied job advertisements on a postcard. The results suggest that, contrary to popular wisdom, public service motivation (PSM) messages are ineffective at attracting candidates that would not have applied anyway. Rather, messages that focus on the challenge of being a police officer are twice as effective at attracting new candidates, bringing in 16 out of the 70 new applicants compared to eight who received a PSM message. Non-white individuals disproportionately respond to messages that focus on the challenge and career advancement. Overall, messages that focus on the personal benefits of applying to a job are three times as effective at getting individuals to apply as messages that focus on serving the community, without an observable loss in applicant quality.
Public Policy

Organisations worldwide spend a substantial proportion of revenue on salaries and benefits (compensation) as an investment in employees who are regarded as human capital. The justification behind this investment is the theoretical assertion that investments in human capital predict financial performance but empirical support for this relationship is limited. The present study contributes to the extant literature by examining the relationship between human capital effectiveness (HCE) and financial performance. A further contribution of the research is to consider alternative criteria of financial performance as findings may be dependent on operationalisation of the criterion. The relationships we tested were between Human Capital Return on Investment (HCROI) and (1) Return on Assets and (2) Return on Equity. Drawing on the Resource Based View theory, we conducted a study using 10 years of data from a sample that comprised the Global 1000 (highest revenue, listed firms domiciled across 45 countries). We used a retrospective correlational study. Spearman Correlation (rs) analysis revealed significant effects for the relationships we investigated in all years. Moreover, meta-analysis showed these effects to be significant on average across the 10 years, showing moderate strength and relative stability. A corollary of the study is that we established global benchmarks for HCROI and provided the first empirical evidence that supports a positive relationship between HCE and financial performance. These findings may be useful to investors who seek possible indicators of expected financial performance from HCE. In doing so, the study suggests we should expand financial reporting to include HCE indicators. Implications of findings and study limitations are noted.

This doctoral thesis discusses the competence structures and the development of human capital in the graphic arts and media sector. The study has focused on exploring the new media landscape and in particular the structural changes that influence the sector, the print-versuselectronic- media debate and the future of print media. The influence of new technologies and management concepts on the graphic arts and media sector has also been investigated, as has the role and the importance of people in new societal and industrial settings as well as new ways of managing and developing people in changing media environments.

The primary research objective was to identify the competence requirements and characteristics for existing and potential employees in the graphic arts and media sector and, in particular, the areas of digital printing and cross-media publishing. The second objective was to elucidate the various actions and strategies established and applied for the professional development of people in the graphic arts and media sector, such as further training, recruitment policies and the evaluation and certification of competence. The third objective of the study was to suggest the formation of a strategy for the professional development of people in the graphic arts and media sector – namely the creation of a human capital development strategy. An important issue was to identify the various components (or substrategies) of the strategy and determine if it was possible to integrate them under a common platform.

The work has been based on literature studies, industry reports and observations, market analyses and forecasts, and empirical studies. Participatory research methods have also been used. In addition, case-study research has been performed at the company and sector levels. Human resource management and development concepts have been surveyed to determine whether they are efficient for the professional development of people in the entire spectrum of an industry sector.

The graphic arts and media sector – including print media – will remain active for the foreseeable future; however, the results presented here show that the sector has been significantly influenced by structural changes that have taken place over the last decade, affecting organizations, companies and people involved in the sector, and this process of change will continue.

The study shows that there is indeed a need for new competence in people employed in or to be recruited to the graphic arts and media sector. The initial identification and description of the competences for the new structure of the graphic arts and media industry is proposed. Various actions for the development of people in the sector, mainly regarding education, further and continuous learning, and recruitment, are also identified. However, these activities have been established mainly at the national level by various organizations (educational institutes, industrial partners and the governmental/European Union authorities).

Finally, the principal characteristics of a human capital development strategy are described, and components (or substrategies) that form a strategy that could be introduced for the graphic arts and media sector in Europe are proposed.

Keywords: Graphic arts and media sector, digital printing, cross-media publishing, human capital, intellectual capital, human resource management and development, human capital development strategy.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the processes of formulation and implementation of policies regarding the integration of disabled children in the mainstream schools of a Brazilian South-eastern State Capital. The investigation was carried out through a documentary analysis and through the application of a questionnaire and an interview to 25 head teachers of the primary State schools of VitOria. The intention was to identify gaps between what is mandated by laws or suggested by other relevant documents and what is actually reported as practice by the head teachers, and how integration was being interpreted and defined at the school level in that Capital. In doing so it was hoped that some of the problems in making integration policies would be identified and practical suggestions for their solutions would be likely to be provided. The study also included a comparative part in which integration policies of four European countries (Spain, Denmark, Holland and the U.K.) were analysed and differences and similarities were highlighted in an attempt to further illustrate and discuss some of the main issues of policy-making in and practice of integration which at the time were being debated world-wide.

Thesis (MComm)--Stellenbosch University, 2012.
ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The management of human capital requires meaningful measures of human capital effectiveness that enable better strategic human resource decision-making. Existing measures, such as Human Capital Return on Investment (HCROI), allow human resource managers to quantify the bottom-line impact of human capital expenditure, but little is known about how HCROI varies within the population of listed companies. As a result, users of these metrics rarely know how they ‘measure up’ against their competitors in the absence of normative information. If human capital is considered a source of competitive advantage, measures of human capital effectiveness should also allow for normative comparisons. The present study extracted audited financial data from McGregor BFA (2010) and described the central tendency and dispersion of HCROI of Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) listed companies (N = 319). In doing so, it established a set of benchmarks for human capital effectiveness measures across industry and company size categories, as well as described temporal changes over the financial years surveyed (2006 - 2010). Even though South Africa is considered to have a very low labour force productivity level compared to other countries (Schwab, 2010 in World Competitive Report, 2010/2011), the results showed that the grand median HCROI ratio for South African listed companies was higher (M = 3.03) than those from published figures from the USA, EU and UK (PwC Saratoga, 2011). This descriptive research also explored the influence of company size (small, medium or large) and company industry (N = 42) on human capital effectiveness (as indexed by HCROI). No statistically significant differences (p > .05) between the median HCROI ratios across company size categories were found, although notable differences in medians of HCROI across company industry categories were observed. HCROI also showed temporal fluctuations over the study period, reflecting economic cycle influences, but year-on-year changes were bigger when the mean HCROI was used — median HCROI remained relatively stable year-on-year. From the research, several recommendations are made regarding the appropriate use of these HCROI benchmark data. Also, this descriptive study lays a solid foundation for future explanatory research aimed at investigating the antecedents, correlates and consequences of human capital return-on-investment (HCROI) as an indicator of human capital effectiveness. The present study contributes to human capital metrics literature by demonstrating how human capital effectiveness indicators can be calculated from audited financial results available in the public domain, and in doing so, attempts to encourage greater use of human capital reporting in financial reporting standards.
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Die bestuur van mensekapitaal vereis betekenisvolle metings van menskapitaaleffektiwiteit wat beter strategiese menslike hulpbron-besluitneming tot gevolg het. Bestaande metings, soos Menskapitaalbeleggingsopbrengs (HCROI), laat menslike hulpbronbestuurders toe om die finansiële impak van die menskapitaaluitgawe te kwantifiseer, maar min is bekend oor hoe menskapitaalbeleggingsopbrengste tussen die populasie van gelyste maatskappye varieer. Die gevolg is dat die gebruikers van hierdie metrieke aanduiders (metrics) selde weet hoe hulle ‘opmeet’ teen hul mededingers in die afwesigheid van normatiewe inligting. Indien menskapitaal as ‘n bron van ykmerk (benchmark) oorweeg kan word, moet die meting van menskapitaaleffektiwiteit ook normatiewe vergelykings toelaat. Die huidige studie het geouditeerde finansiële data vanaf McGregor BFA (2010) onttrek en die sentrale neiging en verspreiding van menskapitaalbeleggingsopbrengs van die maatskappye wat op die Johannesburgse Effektebeurs gelys is (N = 319), beskryf. Sodoende het dit ‘n stel ykmerke vir menskapitaaleffektiwiteit-metings daargestel oor die industrie- en maatskappy-grootte kategorieë heen, sowel as om reële veranderinge oor die finansiële jare (2006 – 2010) wat ondersoek is, te beskryf. Alhoewel Suid-Afrika met ‘n baie lae arbeidsmag produktiwiteitsvlak geag word in vergelyking met ander lande (Schwab, 2010 in World Competitive Report, 2010/2011), het die resultate getoon dat die algehele mediaan menskapitaalbeleggingsopbrengs ratio vir Suid-Afrikaans-gelyste maatskappye hoër (M = 3.03) was as die gepubliseerde syfers van die V.S.A., Europa en die Verenigde Koninkryk (PwC Saratoga, 2011). Hierdie beskrywende navorsing het ook die invloed van maatskappy-grootte (groot, medium of klein) en maatskappy-sektore (N = 42) op menskapitaaleffektiwiteit (soos geïndekseer deur die menskapitaal-beleggingsopbrengs) ondersoek. Geen statistiese beduidende verskille (p > .05) is tussen die menskapitaalbeleggingsopbrengs mediaan ratio’s oor die maatskappy-grootte kategorieë gevind nie, alhoewel daar noemenswaardige verskille in die mediaan van menskapitaalbeleggingsopbrengs oor die maatskappy-sektor kategorieë waargeneem is. Menskapitaalbeleggingsopbrengs het ook temporale skommelinge oor die studieperiode getoon, wat ekonomiese siklus-invloede reflekteer het, maar jaar-op-jaar veranderinge was groter indien die gemiddelde (mean) menskapitaalbeleggingsopbrengs gebruik was – mediaan menskapitaalbeleggingopbrengs het relatief stabiel van jaar-tot-jaar gebly. Uit hierdie navorsing word verskeie aanbevelings gemaak rakende die toepaslike gebruik van die menskapitaalbeleggingsopbrengs ykmerk-data. Die beskrywende studie lê ook ‘n vaste fondament vir toekomstige verklarende navorsing wat daarop gerig is om die voorafgaande veranderlikes (antecedents), korrelate en gevolge van menskapitaalbeleggingsopbrengs as ‘n indikator van menskapitaaleffektiwiteit te ondersoek. Die huidige studie dra tot die menskapitaalmaatstawweliteratuur by deur te demonstreer hoe menskapitaaleffektiwiteit indikatore vanaf geouditeerde finansiële resultate kan bereken word wat op die openbare domein beskikbaar is. Daardeur word gepoog om groter gebruik van menskapitaalrapportering in finansiële verslagdoeningstandaarde aan te moedig.

Les individus confrontés à des circonstances adverses en contexte socioprofessionnel recourent de manière plus ou moins consciente, afin de les affronter, à différents cheminements au nombre desquels la résilience, le coping et les parcours à caractère autopraxéologique (autodidactie par la pratique) occupent une place de moins en moins contingente dans un monde où la gestion de la force de travail laisse progressivement place à une modalité qu’on voudrait de plus en plus affinée de la gestion des ressources humaines.

Cette « G.R.H. » ne concerne d’ailleurs plus uniquement la sphère de travail stricto sensu, mais s’étend désormais de plus en plus nettement à la formation professionnelle ainsi qu’aux efforts consentis, en aval et en amont de celle-ci, en vue de favoriser la réinsertion socioprofessionnelle, voire la « simple » réactualisation de l’employabilité des travailleurs effractés, par exemple à la suite d’un terme précocement – et souvent brutalement – posé à leur engagement dans la vie active.

Quels sont les aspects normatifs des parcours convoqués par cette recherche ?

Nous posons d’abord que le récit de soi (récit ipsatif), sous quelque forme qu’il s’exprime, constitue un ressort majeur des démarches à caractère potentiellement résilient, copyant ou autopraxéologique (proposé comme non résilient), ces différents cheminements pouvant être empruntés par une même personne, après qu’elle ait dépassé le stade de la sidération, soit au moment d’envisager une réappropriation de son parcours (agentivité).

Afin d’offrir aux accompagnants et formateurs quelques outils nouveaux d’une gestion des ressources humaines davantage centrée sur l’intégration à long terme que sur la réalisation « immédiate » de statistiques, nous posons que les indices de mise en récit scriptural ou verbo-comportemental de son ipséité par celui qui s’exprime, recourent partiellement à des images fictionnelles, voire à des auto-mensonges légitimes qu’il convient donc de considérer.

Les récits, fictionnels ou non, de dix auteurs justifiant, à nos yeux, de l’un au moins des parcours envisagés, sont analysés dans le cadre de cette recherche afin de souligner autant que faire se peut la qualité, la chronologie et les constituants de leurs récits, partant, la place qu’ils occupent dans la reconstruction à tout le moins partielle dont ils justifient au terme de leur exercice scriptural de sublimation.

Normative aspects of the (non) resilient self-praxeological pathways

The individuals confronted to adverse circumstances within a socio professional context resort, more or less consciously, to several trails in the confrontation with those events. Amongst those trails, the resilience, the copying and the self-praxeological pathways (self-education by the practice) play a less and less contingent part in this world where the management of the labour's strength shows a progressive evolution to a human resources management wished as always more refined.

Anyway, this "HRM" does not anymore concern the work sphere strictly speaking, but henceforth increasingly expand to vocational training as well as to the efforts made, down and uphill, in order to foster the socio-professional reintegration, nay the "simple" updating of the employability of the workers affected for instance by precocious – and often rough – ending imposed to their involvement in the active life.

What are the normative aspects of the pathways related to the present research?

We first consider that the telling in itself (ipsative story), in whatever form it is expressed, represents a major energizer of the potentially resilient, copying or self-praxeological approach (proposed as non resilient). Those different pathways can be adopted by the same person, after the stage of stupefaction, at the time of envisaging a reappropriation of its development (agentivity).

In order to offer to the accompanying persons and trainers some new tools for a human resource management more oriented on a long term integration than on an "immediate" production of statistics, we consider that the signs of scriptural or verbo-behavioural telling of its selfhood by an individual is partly based on fictional pictures, nay legitimate self-lies that must be taken into consideration.

The stories - fictional or not - from ten writers, relevant, up to our perception, to at least one of the pathways envisaged, are analysed in the framework of this research in order to underline, as far as possible, the quality, the chronology and the constitutive aspects of their text, and therefore the place they hold in the reconstruction, at least partial, they attest at the end of their scriptural exercise of sublimation.

Doctorat en Sciences politiques et sociales
info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Bien que le succès de carrière s’apprécie aussi de façon subjective, il semble de plus en plus crucial, dans un contexte économique changeant, de comprendre les déterminants du succès de carrière objectif. Le capital culturel et le capital humain sont des prédicteurs connus du succès de carrière objectif. Mais les organisations ont changé. Les carrières se déroulent dans des contextes ambigus, ininterrompus et valués. Dans de tels contextes, le succès dépend de l’usage fait des capitaux culturel et humain plutôt que de leur possession. Les individus doivent créer le sens des décisions à prendre et des opportunités à construire. À cette fin, ils utilisent un répertoire des schémas cognitifs qui constituent un cadre de référence de carrière. Les hypothèses A suggèrent que le cadre de référence de carrière est un modérateur de l'influence des capitaux humain et culturel sur le succès de carrière objectif. Réciproquement, les trajectoires et les organisations donnent forme au cadre de référence de carrière. Les hypothèses B suggèrent donc que le type de carrière a une influence sur le cadre de référence de carrière. Une pré-enquête qualitative, le développement d'échelles et la cartographie cognitive ont été utilisées pour vérifier ces hypothèses. 602 sujets ont participé. Les cartes cognitives ont été construites grâce à une technique nouvelle qui évite les biais inhérents à ce type d’outil. Les analyses factorielles montrent que le cadre de référence de carrière est un construit à quatre dimensions. Ces quatre dimensions décrivent les mondes de carrière, c'est-à-dire les parties-prenantes qu’un sujet considère impliquées dans son parcours et les croyances qu’il leur associe. Les données montrent la radicalisation des différences de succès objectif parmi les cadres français. L'hypothèse A est partiellement validée par les données. Le succès de carrière objectif est prédit par le capital humain, mais cette influence est modérée par le cadre de référence de carrière. Les compétences ne suffisent donc pas pour atteindre le succès objectif. Le cadre de référence de carrière a une efficacité pragmatique mais aussi symbolique. Le cadre de référence des sujets qui réussissent valide les normes sur l'efficacité du marché de l'emploi libre et la justesse de la compétition entre les salariés. L'hypothèse B est validée par les données. Le type de carrière a une influence sur le cadre de référence de carrière
Career success is traditionally defined as objective or subjective. In a complex and changing economy, it is more and more important to understand the determinants of objective career success. Human capital and cultural capital are regular predictors to objective career success. But organizations have changed. Careers unfold in ambiguous, but ongoing and valued contexts. In such contexts, individuals must make sense by themselves concerning decisions to be made, opportunities to be constructed or occurrences that may be undergone. For this purpose they use a repertoire of cognitive schemas that constitute a career frame of reference. Hypotheses A suggest that the career frame of reference is a moderator of the influence of human capital and of cultural capital on objective career success. Reciprocally, careers and organizations shape the career frame of reference. Thus, hypotheses B claim that the type of careers has an influence on the career frame of reference.Three methods were used: qualitative pre-survey, scales development and cognitive mapping (602 individuals). Cognitive maps were constructed thanks to a new technique that helps avoiding the biases. Factorial analyses show that the career frame of reference is a four-dimensional construct. The four dimensions describe the “career worlds”, i.e. the shareholders and the associated beliefs involved in one’s career. Data collected show the radicalization of objective career success differences among French executives. Hypotheses A are partially supported by the data. Objective career success is predicted by human capital, but it is moderated by the career frame of reference. Competencies are not enough to reach objective career success. Career frame of reference has a pragmatic and symbolic efficiency: successful careerists’ frame of reference validate norms and ideologies about the efficiency of free job markets and fair competition among employees for achievement. Hypotheses B are supported by the data. The type of careers leads to specific career frame of reference

A qualitative transcendental phenomenological methodology was used to identify the essence of healthcare workers' perceptions at the workplace. In-depth interviews were conducted on 25 physical therapists and physical therapist assistants consisting of over 214 years of clinical experience representing 11 clinical sites in the South Florida area. The perceptions towards their coworkers and managers during times of change were explored from a variety of angles and yielded an insightful essence of the work they do on a day to day basis as front-line medical professionals. There were eight major concerns identified as influential factors that impact job performance, coworker and manager relationships, and patient care in this segment of the healthcare system. Based on the essence derived from the therapists' and assistants' experiences, 14 functional propositions were posited and lay the foundation for future research. Managerial recommendations along with the Healthcare Workers Systematic Daily Flow Model were offered to guide in the development of the recommended initiatives.

This thesis is broadly concerned with the future of the Human Resources function within organisations. The nature of these concerns is two-fold: first, how can Human Resources deal effectively with the challenges of organisational life today; second, how can Human Resources convince senior management that it is both relevant, and necessary, to the economic success of the enterprise, and so assure its future as an internal organisational function. This thesis posits that not only does an involvement in the knowledge management process hold considerable benefits for an organisation through a direct and positive influence on the �bottom-line�, but that such an involvement takes on a specialised set of aims and objectives within the human resource perspective that should not be ignored. The argument is that Human Resources, with its own knowledge-awareness and overview of the structures, manpower, performance and reward systems, and training and development programs, is uniquely placed to be instrumental in creating the open, unselfish culture required to make a success of Knowledge Management, and secure its own future as a trusted and valued strategic partner, fully contributing to the enhancement of organisational performance, and ultimately, the organisation�s place in the world. The thesis commences with an overview of how Human Resources has defined its role within organisations since the 1980s. The challenges and concerns of human resources professionals are discussed, and the opportunity for them to take the lead in developing the social networks that are vital to the capture and transfer of knowledge is foreshadowed. An examination of knowledge and knowledge management concepts and principles, and a discussion of the specialised aims and objectives that a knowledge management system can be argued to have within a human resources management perspective in the 21st century is discussed next. As learning from experience with the aim of improving business performance is one of the uses of knowledge management, a discussion of �learning� and the concepts of the �learning organisation� follows. The chapters in the first part of the thesis contain the theoretical material concerning knowledge and knowledge management, learning and the Learning Organisation, and the argument that Human Resources is in a position to play a major role in moving the organisation's culture to one of value creation and valuable strategic decision-making capability, through its awareness of the concept of knowledge and its implementation of knowledge systems, policies, and practices. The second part of the thesis is more empirically based, and reports the results of recent research by the author into the levels of awareness of the knowledge concept, and the degree to which knowledge management systems, policies, and practices are being implemented. The purpose of the study was to test a number of hypotheses about knowledge and knowledge management and the role of the Human Resources function vis-a-vis these issues. The results and their implications are subsequently discussed. The thesis concludes with some reflections on the concepts of knowledge and learning, and the specialised role that the Human Resources professional can play in knowledge work.

Highly qualified individuals are leaving the Caribbean and relocating to the United States and other developed countries. Researchers describe this resulting flight of human capital, or brain drain, from the Caribbean as a problem which has no clear definition or immediate solution. This phenomenological study explored perceptions of government senior executives in the United States Virgin Islands (USVI) of the cause and impact of brain drain. Burns' and Bass's transformational and transactional leadership theories were used as the framework for this study. Data were collected through a demographic questionnaire and semistructured interviews with a snowball sample of 10 participants. Data were analyzed using the phenomenological method of thematic coding. Data indicated that leaders perceived a lack of opportunities for educated individuals in the USVI. Government senior executives acknowledged an imbalance in the workforce as the majority of workers are older individuals. Government senior executives recommended an increased budget allotment to educate, retain, and attract younger Virgin Islanders to decrease and prevent brain drain. These results indicate that policymakers and organizational leaders can create positive social change by creating job opportunities and improving the island's physical and social infrastructures, thus, ensuring future organizational success.

Orientação: Isabel Vilaça
Neste estudo, investigamos como é que o capital psicológico positivo é influenciado pelo empenhamento organizacional, procurando encontrar antecedentes do capital psicológico positivo, tal como sugerido por outros investigadores. Quatrocentos e vinte e oito indivíduos com vínculo laboral a organizações dos sectores público, privado e cooperativo e social responderam a um questionário de autorresposta constituído pelo PsyCap Questionnaire (PCQ-24), pela Escala de Empenhamento Organizacional de Rego (EEO) e por um questionário sociodemográfico. Verificámos que o empenhamento organizacional é preditor do capital psicológico positivo e que a componente afetiva do empenhamento organizacional tem um efeito positivo no capital psicológico positivo. Adicionalmente, verificámos que o sector de propriedade dos meios de produção das organizações surte influência sobre o capital psicológico positivo, encontrando indícios de que o envolvimento dos membros organizacionais num propósito social se pode traduzir em maiores níveis de capital psicológico positivo.
In this paper, we investigated how positive psychological capital is influenced by organizational commitment and sought positive psychological capital antecedents, as suggested by other researchers. Four hundred and twenty-eight individuals with employment contracts with organizations in the public, private, and cooperative and social sectors responded to a survey made up of the PsyCap Questionnaire (PCQ-24), Regos’ Organizational Commitment Scale (EEO) and a socio-demographic questionnaire. We found that organizational commitment is a predictor of positive psychological capital and that the affective component of organizational commitment has a positive effect on positive psychological capital. As well as this, we found that the property sector of organizations’ means of production influences positive psychological capital, finding evidence that the involvement of organizational members in a social purpose can translate into higher levels of positive psychological capital.

O conceito de igualdade de oportunidades pressupõe que todas as pessoas têm acesso às mesmas oportunidades independentemente da sua etnia ou género, o que nem sempre acontece. Registam-se inúmeros casos em que algumas pessoas são alvo de discriminação devido a aspectos como o género, a etnia, a orientação sexual, a deficiência e a idade. Algumas Sociedades, conscientes dos escassos efeitos da simples proclamação da igualdade de oportunidades, optaram por implementar medidas activas de tratamento preferencial com vista à reposição da equidade social. A equidade compreende a aplicação de medidas de forma a evitar a perpetuação de estados de equilíbrio social intrinsecamente injustos. Em contexto de emprego, estas medidas configuram-se naquelas que visam assegurar a representação proporcional de determinados grupos ou a retribuição, assente apenas em critérios meritocráticos. O presente estudo procura verificar se os sistemas de discriminação positiva para as minorias étnicas produzem efeitos na reposição da equidade social ou se apenas operam no domínio retórico. Para tal, agrupámos países Europeus com sistemas de discriminação positiva para minorias étnicas, no acesso ao emprego, num cluster e países sem estes sistemas num outro e testámos eventuais diferenças entre variáveis que considerámos relevantes na apreciação dos efeitos a que se destinam as medidas. Os resultados indicam que o sistema de discriminação positiva surte efeitos positivos no acesso ao emprego qualificado para as minorias étnicas. Conclui-se pela eficácia dos sistemas de discriminação positiva pois parecem estar a servir o propósito a que se destinam: atingir a equidade social.
The concept of equal opportunities assumes that every one has the same opportunities disregard of their race, ethnicity or gender. This assumption is far from being demonstrated. Some people are prejudiced due to aspects such as gender, ethnicity, race, sexual orientation, handicap or age. Some countries, aware of the ineffectiveness of the simple proclamation of equal opportunities, adopted active measures of preferential treatment in order to achieve social equity. Equity means applying measures as fair as possible in order to avoid injustice. In working environment, measures that aim to ensure proportional representation of targeted groups, based only on meritocratic criteria, must be considered. This study aims to verify if positive action measures contribute to uphold social equity or if they are mere rhetoric. In order to do so, we have clustered some European countries known to have positive action measures in the working context, and their counterpart in another cluster: countries that have generic equality of opportunity measures. Results show that positive action measures do have positive effects granting ethnic minorities’ access to qualified jobs. Positive action measures are fulfilling their purpose: that of attaining social equity.

Orientação: Isabel Vilaça
A presente investigação tem como objetivo central compreender a relação entre o capital psicológico positivo e o engagement no trabalho, numa amostra de 112 trabalhadores de uma empresa do setor metalúrgico. Procura igualmente avaliar se as variáveis sociodemográficas dos respondentes determinam diferenças significativas nos níveis de capital psicológico e nos de engagement no trabalho. Os participantes no estudo foram inquiridos por meio de questionário, composto pela escala Utrech Work Engagement Scale (para avaliação do engagement no trabalho), pelo PsyCap Questionnaire (para determinação do capital psicológico positivo) e por um conjunto de questões de caraterização demográfica e profissional. Os resultados obtidos evidenciam níveis elevados de capital psicológico positivo e de engagement no trabalho, bem como uma relação positiva entre os dois constructos em análise. Estes resultados sugerem que o investimento no otimismo, na resiliência, na perceção de autoeficácia e na esperança resultam em maiores níveis de engagement dos colaboradores organizacionais.
This research was aimed to understanding the relationship between the positive psychological capital and work engagement, on a sample of 112 workers of a company in the metallurgical sector. It also seeks to assess whether the sociodemographic variables of the respondents determine significant differences in levels of psychological capital and of work engagement. Study participants were surveyed using a questionnaire, consisting on the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (for work engagement assessment), the PsyCap Questionnaire (for determination of positive psychological capital) and a set of issues of demographic and professional characterization. The results show high levels of positive psychological capital and work engagement, and a positive relationship between the two constructs under review. These results suggest that investment in optimism, resilience, in the perception of self-efficacy and hope result in higher engagement levels of the organizational employees.

Hong Kong and Taiwan, similar to each other, have open economies, encourage foreign and multi-national investment and are dependent on externally oriented industries. To be able to find international markets,the two territories need to continue to improve efficiency and quality in production throughout the economy if they are to compete successfully in an era of rapid economic and technological change. Moving to high value-added production requires skills and adaptability. One way of raising productivity is through education and training.

The study explored a model that integrates human capital, family resource, employment and psychosocial factors to explain variation in economic self-sufficiency (ESS) among single mothers. A sample of 851 single mothers on Aid to Families with Dependent Children was selected from the Washington State Family Income Study data base. Data from a three-year period (6/88-5/91) were utilized to describe and analyze single mothers in transition from welfare. When compared to a sample of non-poor single mothers, mothers on public assistance differed significantly in several ways: They were younger, had more children and were more likely to have parents who received public assistance. Educational levels were significantly lower, as was employment activity. Economic self-sufficiency was measured as the ratio of welfare benefits to household income. Degree of ESS improved over the three-year period: While 60 percent of single mothers relied on welfare for more than half their income in the first year, only 45 percent did by the third year. In analyzing differences in degrees of economic self-sufficiency among single mothers, the following groups of mothers had significantly higher degrees of welfare reliance: never-married and divorced mothers; mothers with a child under age two; mothers with three or more children; non-white mothers; and mothers living in public housing. A path analysis was conducted to determine the relative influence of human capital, family resource, employment and psychosocial factors on later economic self-sufficiency. Number of children and receipt of subsidies positively affected welfare reliance. Education, number of adults in the household and number of months employed negatively affected degree of welfare reliance. A key finding was that, after controlling for differences in human capital, family resources and employment activity, workplace support retained a highly significant, inverse relationship with degree of welfare reliance. Sense of personal control and social support had both direct and indirect effects on degree of welfare reliance, establishing that psychosocial factors mediate impacts of human capital, family and employment factors on economic self-sufficiency. The results support the viability of utilizing stress models to examine objective economic outcomes in future research.
Graduation date: 1993

The consequences of disaster can take many forms; and relocation adds particular complexities to community recovery. Relocation, as is mostly intended, is to avoid or reduce physical susceptibility to future disasters, however, it can also create social and cultural challenges for relocated communities. The present study investigated the communities and their members, which were relocated following the 2010 eruption of the Merapi volcano in Indonesia. The present study aimed to explore the consequences of relocation for sense of community and connection to place.