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The purpose of this paper is to investigate to what extent the evaluation design in this study manages to avoid common difficulties in experimental evaluation, and to assess the effect of an internet‐based job‐search assistance programme offered at the Swedish employment offices on employment outcome.

In 2002, the Swedish Labour Market Board initiated a nation‐wide demonstration programme investigating the possibility of pursuing voluntary job‐search club activities on the internet. Participants were randomly selected from a group of voluntary job seekers registered at the employment offices.

Many experiment‐related problems such as ethical concerns, bureaucratic resistance and randomisation bias were circumvented. With the services being voluntary, however, a considerable fraction of the applicants either failed to show up or dropped out early in the process. Neither the intent‐to‐treat impact estimate, estimating the effect of being offered the services, nor the treatment‐on‐the‐treated estimate, estimating the effect of actual treatment, shows any effect on subsequent job transitions.

With fewer than 1,000 showing interest in the services, and with the large portions of no‐shows and dropouts among the applicants, it is likely that the Swedish Labour Market Board misjudged the clients' interest in this type of internet service.

By using random assignment to these programme services, the study contributes to the sparse literature on experimental evaluation of labour market topics in Europe in general, and in Sweden in particular.

Institutional skill training—training in institutions organised for that purpose rather than on‐the‐job—was the first of the manpower programmes of the 1960s to be mandated by Congress and applied on a nationwide basis. Its overall goal has been to improve the skills, employability and income of the unemployed and under‐employed through the provision of vocational and related instruction in a formal classroom or laboratory setting. A corollary purpose of the programme has been to meet the needs of employers for workers in demand and/or “skills shortage” occupations. It differs from traditional vocational education in that its objective is to train workers for immediate employment in occupations which are currently in demand. Traditional vocational education, on the other hand, has a much broader objective: to prepare the student for a lifetime of work in a dynamic labour market. Institutional skill training, as it evolved in the sixties, is short‐term and intensive; traditional vocational education is longer in length and adapted to the less immediate needs of secondary and post‐secondary level students.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate a recent training programme for graduates, implemented in Italy and entitled Work Experience Laureati and Laureate, i.e. Work Experience for Graduates. The aim of the programme was to increase the career prospects of unemployed graduates in the region of Umbria.

The authors rely on administrative data and matching methods to evaluate the effectiveness of the intervention in terms of employability of participants.

The results show that participants are more likely to be employed and to sign an apprenticeship contract within the region boundaries. The authors also find substantial differences in employability and type of contract by gender, with men having a higher probability of finding a job (permanent contract and apprenticeship). The authors show that this may be explained by the different choices in terms of field of study, with males being more prone to enrol in scientific areas and females in the humanities.

It is an intervention implemented in one Italian region.

This is one of the few studies that analyses the effectiveness of active labour market policies targeting unemployed graduates, especially in the Italian context. The authors rely on different administrative data sources that allow them to evaluate the effectiveness of the programme.

Reports on a survey of 67 middle managers and 174 front‐line workers, conducted in Hong Kong, which aimed to investigate the perceived impact of total quality management (TQM) programmes on job satisfaction. Both middle managers and front‐line workers considered that the TQM programme had led to a variety of changes that made their jobs more demanding, gave them more responsibility but less job autonomy. TQM programmes did not make their jobs more interesting and they did not perceive any great change in salary, job security or promotion opportunities. However, middle managers perceived more changes than front‐line workers in terms of working relationships with employees, job responsibility and participation in decision making. Employees with different length of service in an organization were found to differ significantly in terms of perceptions of the impact of TQM on their jobs. New employees perceived less change when compared with employees with longer working experience in an organization.

This chapter maps out and provides a rapid assessment of, the successes and shortcomings of key national interventions on youth employment in South Africa. It focuses on programmes intended for young people aged 15–34 years of age, considering the specific needs of 15–24 year olds as compared 25–34 year olds and the particular needs of young women, youth with different educational qualifications, youth from the rural areas, youth with disabilities as well as youth from varied socio-economic backgrounds and social issues. The conceptual framework underpinning this chapter informs the way in which the data has been categorised and analysed. The framework is underpinned by a core assumption, that, while unemployment is a national challenge in South Africa, there are particular challenges that specifically affect youth. This requires a youth employment strategy that addresses the needs of different cohorts of young people and specifically addresses the myriad of ways in which young people transition into the labour market. The chapter further proposes that we need to understand that enabling successful Labour Market Transitions necessitate a strategy that can overcome ‘failures’ with respect to both supply and demand as well as ‘failures’ of alignment between supply and demand.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the negotiation of learner and worker identities in a group of high-skilled newcomers who participate in an introductory and mentoring programme.

The paper takes the interdependence of learning, work and identity and a constructivist approach to identity as a point of departure. The design is qualitative with semi-structured interviews as the main source of data.

For the learning potential in introductory programmes to be fulfilled, all parties involved must recognise a need for learning. This is especially important in organisations that are knowledge intensive and that demand highly skilled and competent workers, as negotiations of learner identity might be more demanding for this group of employees.

The current paper is situated in a specific organisational and national context, and only pays attention to some of the negotiations between expert and learner identities that are relevant if induction programmes and initiatives should be experienced as positive. Connections between identity work, learning and job performance for this group of workers should consequently be empirically investigated by a variety of methods and within several organisational and national contexts.

The paper shows that it is vital for organisers and leaders to be sensitive to the significance that the identity work has for learning, when they plan, execute and evaluate induction programmes and initiatives for high-skilled and competent workers.

The facilitation of job transitions and induction for high-skilled and experienced workers is underresearched, and the paper shows how identity and learning is closely connected for this group of employees.

Provides a review of the methodologies used to evaluate various US‐implemented employment and training programmes. Considers the role of experimental evaluations and finds them to be the most powerful method for assessing programme effectiveness. Finally, presents recommendations for planning an evaluation strategy.

The purpose of this paper is to review the results of studies that investigate the most important active labour market policy (ALMP) measures in Germany. A focus is also on programmes devoted to foster entrepreneurship which can make important contributions to a country’s growth and social welfare.

The study relies on quantitative and qualitative assessments and a comparison of results of previous studies on ALMPs.

The available evidence suggests that most ALMP measures increase labour market prospects of the participants. In particular, evaluations of the entrepreneurship promotion activities show high success rates as well as high cost efficiency. The bulk share of participants of entrepreneurship measures is still self-employed after several years and nearly one-third of these businesses had at least one employee. The authors mention problems regarding the evaluation of previous programmes and highlight future challenges of German ALMP.

This is the first study on ALMP that has an extensive and explicit focus on entrepreneurship-promoting programs.

Britain’s New Labour Government has radically shifted its policy aims away from securing traditional full employment towards the improvement of “employability”. This paper briefly assesses what is meant by employability and how the Government has integrated its “supply side” approach to the unemployed with the stricter benefit regime it inherited from its Conservative predecessor. It describes the various New Deal and area‐based employment programmes that have been introduced during an intense phase of policy development and experimentation and outlines the immediate impact they have had. The Government’s long‐term aim is to build on this experience and create a “work‐based welfare state” for all those of working age who receive state benefits. In conclusion, the paper highlights some of the weaknesses of the new strategy and draws out the implications that existing evaluations of active labour market programmes have for the likely impact of the New Deals.

The study aims to explore the mediating role of organizational culture in the relationship between on-the-job training (OJT), induction training and employee job performance. This study is conceptually grounded in Albert Bandura’s Social Cognitive Theory. The function that organizational culture plays as a mediator in the links between employee performance and on-the-job training and induction is a unique aspect of this study.

An industry-wide representation was ensured in the study by using a stratified random sampling technique to choose participants. The main characteristics pertaining to organizational culture, training initiatives and worker job performance were measured by using validated scales from earlier studies. For the purpose of validating the measurement model, factor loadings, internal consistency reliability and discriminant validity were evaluated through the use of partial least squares structural equation modelling in SmartPLS.

In support of Bandura’s Social Cognitive Theory, the study’s results show a strong association between work performance, organizational culture, on-the-job training and induction training. The study highlights the positive synergistic effect that supportive organizational culture and well-designed training programmes have on improving employee job performance. The unique contribution of this study is the provision of empirical support for these correlations across a wide range of industries, highlighting the crucial roles that organizational culture plays in promoting employee success.

Authors’ knowledge of how organizations may create environments that maximize worker productivity and potential is expanded by the study’s practical insights.