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Individual Placement and Support (IPS) is an evidence-based employment model, effective in supporting individuals with severe mental health difficulties to gain competitive employment. Irish mental health policy recognises its value and IPS is being rolled out in a national programme. Employment is recognised an important contributor to mental health recovery and social inclusion. However, research on IPS has tended to focus on competitive job outcomes. The purpose of this study was to explore the non-vocational outcomes of IPS in an Irish context.

A qualitative research approach was used to interview participants taking part in IPS within community mental health teams. Twelve interviews were included in the data analysis process which was informed by a thematic analysis approach.

Participants experienced increased confidence and positivity, both within a work context and whilst job seeking. More purposeful time use, participation in activities and engagement with society were also experienced by those employed and those at the job search stage of IPS.

This study contributes to the literature about the non-vocational benefits of IPS within an Irish context, highlights the mental health recovery benefits of taking part in IPS and supports the need for ongoing development of IPS throughout mental health services in Ireland.

Perceptions of employment histories are important insofar as they influence future job prospects. Critically, in light of the current pandemic, wherein many individuals are likely to have unanticipated employment gaps and/or temporary work experiences, this exploratory study aims to seek a better understanding of the signal associated with temporary employment histories, which is particularly germane to individuals' employment trajectories and a successful labour market recovery.

Drawing primarily on signalling theory and using a simulated hiring decision experiment, the authors examined the perceptions of temporary employment histories, as well as the period effect of COVID-19, a major exogenous event, on the attitudes of fictitious jobseekers with standard, temporary and unemployment histories.

The authors find that prior to COVID-19 unemployed and temporary-work candidates were perceived less favourably as compared to applicants employed in a permanent job. During the COVID-19 pandemic, assessments of jobseekers with temporary employment histories were less critical and the previously negative signal associated with job-hopping reversed. This study’s third wave of data, which were collected post-COVID, showed that such perceptions largely dissipated, with the exception for those with a history of temporary work with different employers.

The paper serves as a reminder to check, insofar as possible, preconceived biases of temporary employment histories to avoid potential attribution errors and miss otherwise capable candidates.

This paper makes a unique and timely contribution by focussing and examining the differential effect of economic climate, pivoted by the COVID-19 pandemic, on perceptions of temporary employment histories.

This paper aims to explore how accounting is fostering neoliberal citizenship through the participants of Australia’s National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS). More specifically, this paper aims to understand how accounting discourse and the management accounting technique of budgeting, when intertwined with automated administrative processes of the NDIS, are giving rise to a pastoral form of power that directs people’s behaviour toward certain ends.

Publicly available data has been crafted into an autoethnographic case study of one fictitious person’s experiences with the NDIS – Mina. Mina is an amalgam created from material submitted to the Joint Parliamentary Standing Committee on the NDIS. Mina’s experiences are then analysed through the lens of Foucault’s concept of pastoral power to explore how accounting has contributed to marketising and digitising public disability services.

Accounting rhetoric appears to be a central part of rationalising the decision to shift to individualised disability funding. Those receiving payments are treated as self-governable, financially responsible subjects and are therefore expected to have knowledge of management accounting techniques and budgeting. However, NDIS’s strong reliance on the accounting concepts of funds, budgets, cost and price is limiting people’s autonomy and subjecting them to intervention and control.

This paper addresses calls to explore the interplay between accounting and current disability policies. The analysis shows that incorporating accounting into the NDIS’s algorithms serves to conceal the underlying ideology of the programs, subtly driving behaviours towards neoliberal objectives. Further, this research extends the Foucauldian accounting literature by revealing the contribution of accounting to reinforcing the authority of digital pastors in contemporary times.

Employment exchanges have been playing a significant role in the worldwide labor market for more than a hundred years now. In India, since 1946, millions of aspiring Indian youths have registered themselves with the government-run employment exchanges to find a job. About four million job seekers got registered at 1,000 employment exchanges in India, it is important to analyze the placement statistics of these exchanges. In recent years, new methods of job search have evolved. This study examines whether employment exchanges are effective in the changed scenario?

Using state-level employment exchange data for the period 2010–2011 to 2019–2020, this study analyzes the determinants of job placement at employment exchanges in India. A critical analysis of the functioning of employment exchanges along with recommendations to improve the job search ecosystem in India is also presented in the study.

This study found that increased share of service sector in the state economy negatively impacts placement at employment exchanges.

The absence of focus on the service sector requires policy intervention if Indian employment exchanges are to remain relavant.

The government administration should rethink that ignoring service sector employment potential is unaffordable for an emerging economy and employment exchanges should be aligned accordingly.

About 30 million people are unemployed in India. If employment exchanges are transformed, it can have far-reaching socio-economic advantages.

This study is the first sub-country level study on the institution of employment exchanges. This study comprehensively maps the landscape of career services in India. Empirically establishing the impact of sectoral structure of economy on efficacy of employment exchanges, and makes the case for policy intervention that is needed to keep the employment exchanges relevant in India.

COVID-19 has had various effects on women’s labour supply worldwide. This study investigates how women’s labour market outcomes in the MENA region have been affected by the stringency of governments’ COVID-19 responses and school closures. We examine whether women, particularly those with children at young age, reduced their labour supply to take care of their families during the pandemic.

To investigate whether having a family results in an extra penalty to women’s labour market outcomes, we compare single women to married women and mothers. Using the ERF COVID-19 MENA Monitor Household Surveys, we analyse the key conditions underlying women’s labour market outcomes: (1) wage earnings and labour market status including remaining formally employed, informally, unpaid or self-employed, unemployed or out of the labour force and (2) becoming permanently terminated, being suspended, seeing a reduction in the hours worked or wages, or seeing a delay in one’s wage payments because of COVID-19. Ordered probit and multinomial logit are employed in the case of categorical outcomes, and linear models for wage earnings.

Women, regardless of whether they have children or not, appear to join the labour market out of necessity to help their families in the times of crisis. Child-caring women who are economically inactive are also more likely to enter the labour market. There is little difference between the negative experiences of women with children and child-free women in regard to their monthly pay reduction or delay, or contract termination, but women with children were more likely to experience reduction in hours worked throughout the pandemic.

These findings may not have causal interpretation facilitating accurate inference. This is because of potential omitted variables such as endogenous motivation of women in different circumstances, latent changes in the division of domestic work between care-giving and other household members, or selective sample attrition.

Our analysis explores the multiple channels in which the pandemic has affected the labour outcomes of MENA-region women. Our findings highlight the challenges that hamper the labour market participation of women, and suggest that public policy should strive to balance the share of unpaid care work between men and women and increase men’s involvement, through measures that support child-bearing age women’s engagement in the private sector during crises, invest in childcare services and support decent job creation for all.

This study aims to unveil the impact of strategic renewal and its implications on employment during the COVID-19 pandemic. It explores the role of strategic renewal in mitigating the adverse effects of crises, fostering organizational adaptation and restructuring capabilities. Additionally, it examines the moderating effect of familiness on understanding the strategic renewal process and its importance to family firms during times of crisis.

The study utilizes data from the STEP Project Global Consortium, which collected information from 3,026 family firms operating in 75 countries and various sectors during the pandemic. Structural Equation Modeling was employed to test the authors' research hypotheses.

The authors' results reveal that strategic renewal significantly impacted employment growth during the COVID-19 pandemic of family firms. Strategic renewal plays a crucial role in mitigating the negative effects of that crisis on employment by helping firms adapt and restructure their capabilities. The study also found that synergies among family members positively influenced innovation in organizational resilience and enhanced the positive effects of strategic renewal on employment growth.

This study contributes to the literature by emphasizing the importance of strategic renewal of family businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic. It offers insights into mitigating vulnerability risks amidst crises and adds to the understanding of the strategic renewal process and its implications for the organizations. The findings hold theoretical implications for the field of strategic management and provide valuable insights into the unique challenges and opportunities faced by family firms in uncertain environments.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-11-2022-0771

This study aims to discuss the behavioral economics and Islamic economic joint criticisms against the conceptual and economic political view of the mainstream.

The purpose of this study is to examine the effectiveness of mainstream economic policies in addressing unemployment. Furthermore, it critically assesses the mainstream perspective on unemployment within the contexts of Islamic economics and behavioral economics, separately. The commonalities and disparities between the approaches of Islamic economics and behavioral economics regarding unemployment are evaluated. Subsequently, the conventional viewpoint on unemployment is scrutinized from the combined standpoint of Islamic economics and behavioral economics. This article employs a theoretical approach to address these concerns.

Although there are some differences, the recommendations and values of Islamic Economics and behavioral economics in the context of unemployment are almost the same. And, more importantly, both approaches are similar in their emphasis on the ineffectiveness and distance from human values of mainstream economic policies.

This article is the first to examine unemployment from the joint perspectives of Islamic economics and behavioral economics. It is also the first article to criticize the mainstream view of unemployment from the common framework of these two approaches.

Although employees' creativity is vital for firm innovation and overall performance, little is done to examine the potential association between creativity and employment. This paper investigates the contribution of employees' creativity, process and product innovations to firm-level employment growth.

The authors use data from World Bank Enterprise Survey and Innovation Follow-up Survey on 9503 firms covering the period 2012–2015 in 11 countries from sub-Saharan Africa and Heckman's two-stage estimation model.

This study's results indicate a positive role of creativity on firm-level employment growth. In addition, the authors find evidence for a complementary effect arising from the combination of creativity with managerial experience, staff level of education and their associated skills, in contrast, combining creativity with internal or external R&D results in a substitution effect. Interestingly, these synergy effects are pronounced for SMEs but absent for large firms.

Policy makers in developing economies of sub-Saharan Africa should stimulate company management to use free time offered to employees to be creative in the workplace as one of their key strategies to stimulate employment growth. This strategy is expected to be particularly fruitful among SMEs having some managerial experience and skilled stuff.

In contribution to innovative work practices and workforce creativity, the authors demonstrate that providing employees with free time could be an alternative way to enhance the focal firms' performance.

Many veterans struggle with the civilian world and the loss of identity associated with leaving the service. This research investigates the Building Heroes Charity's role in assisting service leavers transitioning to civil employment, in the United Kingdom (UK) and what can be learnt from the training and support.

An exploratory case study design was chosen to investigate the transition from military to civilian employment. The case study consisted of 12 in-depth interviews consisting of nine veterans, who had attended the Building Heroes courses and three course tutors.

The Building Heroes Charity does have an important role to fulfill in the transition of military personnel from the service to civilian work. There are positive outcomes that complement the work done by the Career Transition Partnership (CTP), but there still needs to be recognition that the needs of veterans do differ by age, transferability of competencies and the financial resources available.

The limitations of this research are the sample size is small and the majority of the veterans are from the Army. This is mostly because the Army is the largest of the services.

Though there is limited research into the employment of veterans, there is evidence to demonstrate that veterans are more likely to suffer from depression and potential homelessness than nonservice personnel. This research is unique in investigating the role of a charity whose main purpose is to improve the employability of veterans by reducing the competency skills gap between the military and construction industry.

This study deals with the main issues concerning the interplay between homeownership and labour market outcomes, namely (1) the relation between homeownership and labour market outcomes, at both the individual level and the aggregate level, and (2) the relation between homeownership and human capital.

This paper is both theoretical and empirical. A search and matching model of the labour market is developed to explain the strong relation between mortgage markets and wages. A regional panel analysis in Italy is used to verify the interplay between homeownership and wages.

Homeownership is not, by itself, a condition for receiving higher wages, but rather higher wages increase the probability to become a homeowner, since they positively affect the probability of acquiring a mortgage from the bank. Eventually, wages cause homeownership, but the reverse may not be true.

The paper focuses on the labour market, while the housing market model is restricted to the mortgage market.

The positive effect of homeownership on wages is hard to theoretically formalise and is not empirically proven. Before investigating a (potential) bidirectional relationship between homeownership and labour market outcomes, therefore, the related literature should assume a new theoretical link between homeowners and wages.

The result that “homeownership is not, by itself, a condition for receiving higher wages” has positive implications for human and social development. If homeownership could lead to better labour market outcomes, indeed, socio-economic inequalities would increase in the society, because homeownership would be the starting point of a “lucky” circle that increases the well-being of people who are already wealthy.

First, this study clearly explains why the microeconomic result that homeowners are more likely to be employed than tenants is consistent – at the aggregate level – with a negative relation between homeownership and better labour market outcomes. Second, the related literature has largely ignored the social implications of the topic. A potential bidirectional relation between homeownership and (better) labour market outcomes, indeed, could imply an increase in the well-being of people who are already wealthy.