Search results

Globally, Denmark stands out in terms of achieving high employment rates, containing unemployment and providing a labour market model combining flexibility, security and activation with a strong role for the social partners. The Danish labour market institutions and policies are seen as the catalyst for the transformation from industrial economy to a globalised, post-industrial and knowledge-based economy in which socio-economic equality and workforce security go hand in hand with competitiveness and the adaptability of business. In the 2000s, this mutual relationship came to be known as the Danish flexicurity model. Meanwhile, as a policy blueprint, ‘flexicurity’ has never really influenced Danish politics, and the reforms implemented since the 2000s have deviated from the premises of the model. This paper critically assesses the Danish model and its institutional components. It tracks the emergence of the Danish collective bargaining model as well as the flexicurity model. It scrutinises the challenges and performance of the current Danish labour market institutions and policies in a comparative perspective and discusses the extent to which the Danish experiences can and should be imitated abroad.

This chapter seeks to explain how societal institutions, which may exist at the national or regional levels, shape the types of organizational learning predominating at the level of the firm. It focuses on education and training systems, and labour markets as key societal institutions shaping the micro-level processes of learning and knowledge creation within and between firms. The chapter argues that tacit knowledge, which is difficult to create and transfer in the absence of social interaction and labour mobility, constitutes a most important source of learning and sustainable competitive advantage in the knowledge economy. It looks at the cases of Japan, the high-technology clusters in the USA and U.K., and Denmark as illustrative examples.

There are two key approaches in doping prevention research: (1) to investigate why athletes dope (i.e. risk factors) and (2) to investigate why athletes do not dope (i.e. protective factors). Both approaches aim to reduce the occurrence of doping. Even though there is a lot of evidence showing which factors protect athletes from doping, there is still the problem of putting research into practice. Currently, evidence-based prevention is lacking. In this chapter, we propose a roadmap of possible solutions in three areas: improving the translation of research findings into practice, increasing financial resources and training of human resources, and acknowledging the recipients' voice.

In this chapter it is shown that, in spite of the fundamental importance for economic growth of product innovation, standard economic theory – neo-classical as well as transaction cost approaches to industrial organization – tends to neglect it. It is also shown that moving the focus to product innovation leads to very different conclusions on how alternative institutional set-ups affect economic performance. Institutional set ups assumed to optimise allocation and minimise transaction costs do not support innovation and growth. That is why producer goods where innovation is a regular phenomenon are transacted neither in pure markets nor in hierarchies. The omnipresence of “organized markets” reflects the need for users as well as producers to engage in on-going information exchange and interactive learning in connection with product innovation.