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This paper aims to study the impact of human resource heterogeneity on firms’ cash-holding policies.

The authors construct a proxy for human resource heterogeneity using the dissimilarity in employees’ skill structure between the firm and its peers in the same industry.

The authors report evidence that firms with heterogeneous human resources hold more cash than other firms. This effect is more pronounced in labor-intensive firms and firms more susceptible to hold-up by employees, i.e. firms located in regions with more labor disputes and firms surrounded by more external employment opportunities. In addition, the authors demonstrate that high cash holdings triggered by human resource heterogeneity reduce the scale and efficiency of firms’ capital investment.

This study highlights the role of human resource heterogeneity in determining firms’ cash policies. This paper adds to the understanding of labor adjustment costs within the firm and provides insights into firms’ cash-holding decisions.

The purpose of this study is twofold: first, to draw insights from the rich literature on humanitarian operations efforts to combat human trafficking; second, to inspire humanitarian operations researchers to work more on human anti-trafficking.

This is a conceptual paper inspired by recent relevant reports, the academic literature and the authors’ years of involvement in both humanitarian operations and anti-trafficking.

Humanitarian supply chains and human trafficking supply chains very often operate in the same environments and hence face similar challenges. The paper highlights the overlaps between the two domains and demonstrates how two decades of learnings from humanitarian supply chain literature can help improve the understanding of the more recent academic field of human trafficking supply chains significantly.

This study is conceptual and illuminates numerous opportunities for research in anti-trafficking.

By inspiring more research on anti-trafficking, this paper hopes to facilitate enhancements to human trafficking operation to prevent more cases and protect victims.

There is an opportunity to increase the effectiveness of anti-trafficking activities, disrupt human trafficking and enlarge the “humanitarian space.”

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper to discuss human trafficking operations in relation to humanitarian supply chains.

Doctors' labour and medicines are special necessities for human survival and evolution. Since China launched the healthcare reform, the theoretical circles' discussions have not yet clarified the respective special properties of doctors' labour and medicines as goods and the internal relations between doctors' labour and medicines at the level of the theoretical basis.

Health is a prerequisite for people's all-round development, a precondition for economic and social development and the people's common aspiration. The all-round moderately prosperous society could not be achieved without people's all-round health.

The authors believe the socialist relation between doctors' labour and medicines with Chinese characteristics should be one that is people-oriented, and the corporatization of hospitals or the capitalization of doctors' labour should be avoided.

In this paper, the authors explore the particularity of doctors' labour, particularity of medicine production, circulation, consumption and the internal relations between doctors' labour and medicines by using the analytical approach of Marxist political economy while considering the special roles of doctor's labour and medicines in the reproduction of labour power and put forward the theoretical basis for the segregation of doctor's labour and medicines.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute original evidence about the conditions for formal and informal contracts for commodities and labour in the waste economy of a South Indian town.

Field research was exploratory, based on snowball sampling and urban traversing. The analysis follows capital and labour in the sub-circuits of capital generating waste in production, distribution, consumption, the production of labour and the reproduction of society.

Regardless of legal regulation, which is selectively enforced, formal contracts are limited to active inspection regimes; direct transactions with or within the state; and long-distance transactions. Formal labour contracts are least incomplete for state employment, and for relatively scarce skilled labour in the private sector.

The research design does not permit quantified generalisations.

Waste management technology evaluations neglect the social costs of displacing a large informal labour force.

While slowly dissolving occupational barriers of untouchability, the waste economy is a low-status labour absorber of last resort, exit from which is extremely difficult.

The first systematic exploration of formal and informal contracts in an Indian small-town waste economy.

The study investigates the influence of ChatGPT on the labor market dynamics, aiming to provide a structured understanding of the changes induced by generative AI technologies.

An analysis of existing literature serves as the foundation for understanding the impact, while the supply and demand model helps assess the effects of ChatGPT. A text-mining approach is utilized to analyze the International Standard Occupation Classification, identifying occupations most susceptible to disruption by ChatGPT.

The study reveals that 32.8% of occupations could be fully impacted by ChatGPT, while 36.5% might experience a partial impact and 30.7% are likely to remain unaffected.

While this study offers insights into the potential influence of ChatGPT and other generative AI services on the labor market, it is essential to note that these findings represent potential implications rather than realized labor market effects. Further research is needed to track actual changes in employment patterns and job market dynamics where these AI services are widely adopted.

This paper contributes to the field by systematically categorizing the level of impact on different occupations, providing a nuanced perspective on the short- and long-term implications of ChatGPT and similar generative AI services on the labor market.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss how demographic changes in developed countries will continue to drive the tourism and hospitality industries to adopt automation in business operations.

The approach is an analysis of the trends in human reproduction in the developed countries and a discussion of their implications for the travel, tourism and hospitality industries.

There are three major solutions to the demographic problem faced in developed countries and the replacement of human labour with automation is the most practical, immediate and has the fewest risks and negative externalities.

Industry has to adapt to the new demographic reality and embrace automation of services, educate their customers and have policies to deal with the resistance expected by labour.

Society can expect that many of the tasks they commonly expect humans to be involved in will be done by machines and artificial intelligence in the near future, if demographic trends continue and massive immigration into developed countries is not a continuing phenomenon.

This links the relationship between demographic trends to the use of automation in the travel, tourism and hospitality industries.

In the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, supply chains have become important policy tools to ensure the security and resilience of regional trading blocs of major economies. The US government’s focus on supply chains for selected strategic industries and the EU Commission’s renewed efforts to strengthen its supply chains using ‘sustainability standards’ coincides with the global trend in the shift towards digital and low-carbon economies. Furthermore, the rising tensions between the US and China, with no signs of reconciliation over key issues of contention, have emphasized the need for more credibility and trust in global supply chains. However, such policies also have the potential to serve as new barriers to participation in supply chains by less-developed economies which are not yet prepared to meet the high-level sustainability criteria which aim for higher protection of the environment and labor rights. There also seems to be an apparent shift in paradigm supporting the interventionist role of government that emphasize the need for more discretion for policy objectives that pursue societal and democratic values, not to mention national security interests. The current rules of international trade, however, do not sufficiently address these new issues and need to be realigned in order to meet the new demands. The current ‘rules of the game’ need to be reinforced in order to accommodate the rising need of countries for increased consideration of issues of sustainability and competitiveness.

The entire world is now witnessing the Fourth Industrial Revolution and Artificial Intelligence (AI) is indeed altering the lives of the many in both developing and developed countries. Massive digital transformations are affecting the economies of those countries and are bringing with them many promised merits, as well as many challenges to face. This paper aims to examine the relationship between digital transformation (as a one facet of the fourth revolution and AI trends) on one side, and economic development, labor productivity and employment on the other side.

The paper analyzes different indices of digital transformation, and then uses the Digital Evolution Index (DEI) to study those relationships in a group of developing countries using feasible generalized least squares method (FGLS).

The results show a positive relationship between the digital transformation index and economic development, labor productivity and job employment. Females seem to gain more from digital transformation compared to males, as suggested by the positive relation with the first and the insignificant relation with the latter. The relationship with vulnerable employment is not significant; more evidence is still needed to judge whether digital transformation will have an impact upon the vulnerable employees in the economy.

The paper focused on the impact of digital transformation upon total aggregate employment. Future research is still needed to examine the impact upon the structure of the labor market and the shift of occupations.

The paper aims to add to in the literature regarding the relationship between digital transformation, economic development, employment and productivity in the developing world. The implications of those relationships are of significant importance to policymakers regarding how much support should be given to encourage the digital transformation. At the same time, it shall also indicate how much social support policies are required – if any – to lessen the negative impact of digital transformation on the vulnerable groups inside the country. Another contribution is using a single composite index for digital transformation that is comparable across the chosen set of developing countries, instead of using single indices each capturing a different dimension of digital transformation.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a socio-ecological counter account of the role that agroecology plays in supporting the sustainable livelihoods of a co-operative of smallholder coffee farmers, where very little value is created at their end of the coffee commodity chain. Agroecology may be defined as the science that provides the ecological principles and concepts for the design and management of productive agricultural ecosystems that conserve natural resources.

This study uses a case study design of a coffee-producing co-operative in India using data collected from participant observation, focus groups and unstructured interviews with indigenous smallholder farmers. It combines the science of agroecology with the labour theory of value as a theoretical framework.

An agroecological approach supports agricultural biodiversity, while promoting sustainable livelihoods since members of the co-operative are able to reduce their use of external inputs. However, an agroecological transformation is curtailed by the continued dependence on corporate value chains. A framework using the labour theory of value is used to explain the extraction of surplus value from the labour of both the smallholder farmers as well as nature. This study provides evidence of the role of government policy and practice in perpetuating the status quo by not promoting either research on agroecology or direct consumer to producer value chains while providing subsidies for the inputs of industrial agriculture.

There have been very few studies that have provided an account of the limited value generated in agricultural commodity chains for smallholder farmers due to the need to purchase the inputs of industrial agriculture supported by government subsidies. This study extends the field of accounting for biodiversity into agriculture using the science of agroecology to explain the role played by biodiversity in increasing the amount of value generated by smallholder farmers. By utilising the labour theory of value, the authors have introduced the notion of the labour power of nature as represented by the environmental services that nature provides.