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This chapter presents empirical results of an analysis of the content of education reform globally in nine policy areas during the recent wave of neoliberal reforms between 1970 and 2018. It draws on data from the World Education Reform Database (WERD), the most comprehensive database to date of education reforms around the world. The results show a dramatic increase in policy reform discourse on improving educational quality compared to reforms in other policy areas between 1970 and 2018, with the pace accelerating from 1990 onwards. Expanding access to education remains an important priority. Access reform discourse slightly increases during the peak period of education reform from 1992 to 2009, before leveling off. The results also show a significant rise of reforms in policy areas related to accountability discourse. Overall, the descriptive trends presented in this chapter complement case study literature on neoliberal education reform and suggests directions further cross-national research.

This study aims to investigate whether social investment (SI) policies improve employment among single mothers.

This paper analyzes the potential effects of SI policies on vulnerable individuals and workers at the macro level by using the employment position of single mothers as a dependent variable. Time-series cross-national data from 18 OECD countries between 1998 and 2017 are analyzed. Multilevel model analysis is also used for robustness check.

I find that public spending on education and family support is positively associated with the employment rates of single mothers. In contrast, active labor market policy (ALMP) spending is negatively associated. ALMP’s negative effects stand out particularly with public spending on job training. Of all family support policies, family allowances are positively associated with single mothers’ employment, which runs counter to the conventional argument that family allowances are a disincentive for women’s or mothers’ employment. Paid leave (length and generosity) is also associated with higher employment for single mothers. There is also some tentative evidence that public spending on maternity leave benefits (spending level) may raise the odds of single mothers being employed, when individual-level factors are controlled for in multilevel analysis we implement for robustness check.

This paper does not analyze the effects of the qualitative properties of SI policies. Future research is necessary in this respect.

The effects of SI policies on employment among single mothers have not yet been examined in the literature. This paper seeks to be a first cut at measuring the effects.

This paper aims to assess the design of national-level flexible work arrangement (FWA) policies, evaluating their potential to serve as an effective resource for employees to work flexibly depending on how they set the stage for flexibility claims that will be subject to industrial and workplace dynamics.

Using a capability approach, the authors conceptualize and operationalize two aspects of FWA policy design, namely accessibility and availability. The authors' analysis allows for an understanding of how the availability and accessibility of national FWA policies explicitly and implicitly restrict or facilitate flexible working in a structural manner. The study focuses on countries with differing working time regimes and gender norms on work and care: the Netherlands, Spain and Slovenia.

The authors' findings highlight how FWA accessibility is broader when national policy is specified and FWA availability is not conditional to care. In Spain and Slovenia, access to FWAs depends on whether employees have care responsibilities, which reduces accessibility and reinforces gender imbalances in care provision. In contrast, the Netherlands provides FWAs universally, resulting in wider availability and accessibility of FWAs for employees regardless of their care responsibilities. Despite this universal provision, gender imbalances remain.

The originality of this paper lies in its conceptualization and operationalization of FWAs at the national level using a capability approach. The study adds to the existing literature on flexible working and provides insights for policymakers to design more effective FWAs.

The purpose of this research is to evaluate corruption in the context of India, spanning the period between 1988 and 2021. Additionally, it aims to provide an in-depth comprehension of the factors that drive its prevalence and to propose policy directives for addressing these underlying issues.

The study instead of relying on perception-based measures, takes a distinct approach by formulating a corruption index derived from reported instances, thus ensuring a more objective assessment. Furthermore, we employ stochastic frontier analysis to tackle the issue of under-reporting within the corruption index based on reported cases. Subsequently, an auto regressive distributed lag (ARDL) methodology is applied to ascertain the principal drivers of corruption, encompassing both long and short factors.

This study reveals that corruption in India is notably influenced by economic growth and income inequality. Conversely, government effectiveness and globalization display a tendency to mitigate corruption. However, our rigorous analysis demonstrates that financial development does not wield a substantial influence in our study. Moreover, our inquiry uncovers a nonlinear relationship between economic growth and corruption. Additionally, we ascertain that the long run and short run impacts of corruption remain relatively stable across both models utilized in our study.

This study differs from previous research in the subsequent manners. Primarily, we employed an objective measure to formulate the corruption index, coupled with addressing the underreporting issues via stochastic frontier analysis. Moreover, this study pioneers the identification of a non-linear relationship between corruption and economic growth within the Indian context, a facet unexplored in previous investigations.

This study aims to investigate the factors influencing the adoption of data analytics in performance management. By examining the role of organizational and environmental contexts, this study contributes to the existing literature by proposing a novel and detailed technology-organization-environment (TOE) model for the complex interplay between firm characteristics and the adoption of data analytics. The results offer valuable insights and practical implications for organizations seeking to leverage data analytics for effective performance management.

The research draws upon a data set encompassing over 21,869 companies operating across all European Union member states. A multilevel logistic regression model was developed to evaluate the influence of organizational and environmental factors on the likelihood of adopting performance analytics in organizations.

The findings indicate that the lack of awareness of the benefits of data analytics and its practical application to address specific business challenges is a significant barrier to its adoption. Organizational contexts, such as variable-pay systems, employee training, hierarchical structures and frequency of monetary rewards, also influence the adoption of data analytics.

The study informs managers about the strategic role of data analytics capabilities in performance management for improved business intelligence and driving data culture.

The study helps managers understand the strategic role of data analytics capabilities in performance management, leading to improved business intelligence and fostering a data-driven culture in five key areas: structural alignment, strategic decision-making, resource allocation, performance improvement and change management.

The study advances the TOE theory, making it a more detailed and complete framework, particularly applicable to the adoption of performance analytics. It identifies the main factors of adoption that play a crucial role in this process.

This study aims to examine the relative effects of three organizational brand types (product, employment and corporate social responsibility brands) on organizational attractiveness. The potential differences in the impacts exerted by each brand on organizational attractiveness between the US and Chinese job seekers are also examined.

A policy-capturing design was used among both US and Chinese participants to test the hypothesized relationships using multilevel modeling.

Results suggest that each brand type independently contributes to the prediction of attractiveness, with the employment brand a significantly stronger predictor than the other two. Besides, the strength of relationships between brands and organizational attractiveness varies among job seekers from different national contexts.

The findings contribute to the limited understanding of how different types of brands together influence organizational attractiveness among job seekers, and the role national context plays in it.

Due to their multifarious backgrounds, multinational enterprises from emerging economies offer unique research opportunities to push the boundaries of our understanding knowledge of diversity management in transitional contexts. In that regard, Central and Eastern European multinationals present a blind spot in diversity management research.

This article examines the extent to which context shapes the discourse on diversity management in the Oil and Gas industry across Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) through a qualitative approach based on content analyses of corporate communication data matched with data on national institutional contexts.

The data suggests a lack of effective pro-diversity pressures across CEE except for cultural pressure in European Union member countries. However, CEE Oil and Gas companies report a broader scope of diversity management than studies of Western counterparts suggest. Companies with subsidiaries in Western countries show convergence towards etic diversity approaches, while local and regional companies are more divergent.

This article defines the boundary conditions of diversity management in the Oil and Gas industry across nine CEE countries and how they impact the diversity discourse in the industry. This article also showcases the impact of foreign market presence in the West as a driver for diversity management reporting.

The purpose of this study is to, first, analyze the past years of research on international branding and, second, building on an early literature review, to analyze patterns in the field and suggest future research.

The analyzed papers were compiled using the Web of Science and Scopus databases. The author searched papers published between 2007 and 2023 that used terms related to international branding in their title, abstract and keywords.

This paper structures and identifies key institutions, papers, regions and authors in the field. It provides an overview of the past years of research in the area. The study identifies important gaps in the literature and suggests further research dealing with, for example, the B2B sector and emerging markets.

Despite the increase in international branding studies, few literature reviews have been published since 2007. This review fills this research gap. It identifies future research areas dealing with branding in the B2B sector, branding in emerging markets, branding process and implementation studies using longitudinal methods and more practical research.

This chapter analyzes detailed 24-hour diary data from the United States to provide evidence on the relationship between workers' effort and well-being while at work. In doing so, we first measure workers' effort in terms of the amount of on-the-job leisure, number of on-the-job leisure episodes, and the time working until consuming on-the-job leisure. Second, we link these three measures of worker effort to data on instantaneous well-being while at work. We find that the less time devoted to on-the-job leisure and the number of on-the-job leisure episodes, and the more time workers spend working until on-the-job-leisure, the higher the levels of stress during their work tasks. In analyzing workers' effort and stress during market work activities, we contribute to the scant literature on the determinants of worker happiness while at work, positing the consumption and the frequency of on-the-job leisure as affective factors.