Sustainability of Labor Contracts, Negative Shocks and Job Protection
A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Economic and Business Aspects of Sustainability".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (1 December 2018) | Viewed by 16843
Special Issue Editors
Interests: institutional economics; behavioral economics; evolutionary economics; institutionalist theory of the firm; co-operative enterprises; social enterprises; non-profit organizations; third sector; social economy; environmental economics; sustainability; labor economics; human resource management; personnel economics; work practices; organizational fairness; procedural fairness; interactional fairness; worker motivations; job satisfaction; happiness economics
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: development economics; economics of cooperative enterprises and non-profit; migration; gender; labor economics
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
This Special Issue is concerned with the sustainability of the employment relation in terms of job protection and stability in the presence of negative shocks on the demand or cost side. The standard treatment of labor contracts predicts that labor is a perfectly flexible factor of production in the short run, and negative demand and cost shocks are absorbed through employment variability (layoffs). This Special Issue deals with the economic, contractual, and organizational factors that are able to modify standard expected results and lead to lower employment variability (job stability), in the presence of negative shocks as well. Different ownership and organizational forms are considered. Four main cases can be spelled out:
1) An endogenous solution in which turnover costs (search and matching, screening cost, and loss of specific human capital, costs deriving from industrial action and confrontation, etc.) are higher than the wage costs of redundant jobs, inducing an organization to prefer to hoard labor instead of laying it off. In addition, the gift exchange framework (Akerlof, 1984) can be brought to bear in this case;
2) Industrial relations based on concertation, not confrontation, in which worker representation (unions or plant/enterprises level representation) and firm owners bargain over the possibility that hours worked and/or wages are reduced to favor job retention and to preserve existing firm-specific human capital;
3) The German co-determination solution, in which employees elect up to 50% of the members of a supervisory board of directors. A direct channel tapping worker objectives into strategic choices of an organization is likely to reorient company decisions towards objectives that are closer to those of worker needs, among which job stability features prominently;
4) Worker cooperatives, worker-controlled firms, and employee-owned enterprises. Full worker control of an organization can require job protection to be included among the dominant objectives of the organization. Wage flexibility and flexible working times become standard tools aimed to face and absorb negative shock, wage. Inter-firm networks and cooperative groups can be added as tools aimed to distribute the risk conneted to negative shocks in a wider set of organizations.
George Akerlof. Gift Exchange and Efficiency-Wage Theory: Four Views. Am. Econ. Rev. 1984, 74(2), 79–83.
Prof. Dr. Ermanno Tortia
Dr. Cecilia Navarra
Dr. Marina Albanese
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- employment relation
- labor contract
- job protection
- layoff
- industrial relation
- concertation
- co-determination
- worker co-operatives
Benefits of Publishing in a Special Issue
- Ease of navigation: Grouping papers by topic helps scholars navigate broad scope journals more efficiently.
- Greater discoverability: Special Issues support the reach and impact of scientific research. Articles in Special Issues are more discoverable and cited more frequently.
- Expansion of research network: Special Issues facilitate connections among authors, fostering scientific collaborations.
- External promotion: Articles in Special Issues are often promoted through the journal's social media, increasing their visibility.
- e-Book format: Special Issues with more than 10 articles can be published as dedicated e-books, ensuring wide and rapid dissemination.
Further information on MDPI's Special Issue polices can be found here.