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In this paper data referring to the salience of life long learning policies for employees are presented. These data are gathered from people working in Dutch horticulture and Dutch dairy industry. The study focuses on the points of view these employees have regarding the need to invest in their employability through training. The results emphasise the importance of training on the job for these employees, which according to many of them actually is sufficient to grow into a good worker. This is not in line with the emphasis laid on training and investing in human capital in general in the growing employability literature. Thus much needs to be done to communicate this need (assuming that it is real indeed) to the workforce. Therefore, the conclusion is drawn that employability policies do not relate to economic theory, such as the human capital approach, but rather to social theory

The purpose of this paper is to explore the concept of employability as it has evolved over time and to propose a new definition which reflects the critical variables that contribute to employability at an individual level. It also offers suggestions for how to manage employability and careers at both an individual and an organisational level.

The paper reviews the literature on employability. It considers why employability has become a topic of interest, examines how the concept has evolved over time, and seeks to develop a working definition. It suggests a range of practical strategies for individual and organisations to ensure that employability is managed successfully.

Employability is as dependent on context as on the individual. Therefore the current emphasis on individual responsibility for employability needs to be re‐examined and a greater emphasis placed on how organisations can support employees to manage careers and employability. This shift in emphasis will benefit organisations by creating a more employable labour force as well as contributing to attraction and retention within an increasingly tight labour market.

This paper challenges current definitions of employability by focusing on contextual factors as well as individual characteristics. It suggests a new definition and a range of strategies for managing employability within current career and labour market contexts.

This paper reviews recent reforms to the UK’s main active labour market policy for the long‐term unemployed aged over 25: the so‐called New Deal 25 Plus. It discusses the appropriateness of the New Deal’s approach to the activation of these long‐term unemployed people, by drawing upon evidence from interviews with 115 job seekers in one urban labour market characterised by generally low unemployment rates. It is argued that these job seekers face a combination of personal and circumstantial barriers to work, best characterised as an “employability gap”. It is acknowledged that following recent reforms to the New Deal 25 Plus, the programme is better equipped to address some aspects of the employability gap faced by many long‐term unemployed people. However, it is argued that a stronger commitment to training within a “real work” environment and a more flexible approach to the administration of some social security benefits is required if the long‐term detachment from the labour market experienced by these job seekers is to be overcome.

In this chapter we present a continuous time model with reversible abatement capital in order to analyze the effects of environmental policies on the value of the firm and investment decisions. We show that the effects depend on what sort of future policy are implemented. We focus on investment effects of changes in corrective taxes to control the use of polluting inputs, and subsidies to promote abatement investment. We show that (1) while taxes have a depressive effect on capital accumulation, subsidies boost investment; (2) the impact of these policies on the value of the firm is ambiguous. This latter result has important empirical implications insofar as investment are based on the average value of the firm rather than the (unobservable) marginal value.