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The purpose of this study is to contribute to the discussion on how to increase lower educated workers' participation in training programs inside and outside the workplace through stimulating intentions with respect to training.

This article is based on data from the Study on Life Long Learning and Employment by TNO (Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research), a three‐wave longitudinal study among lower educated workers in three different companies in The Netherlands. Data from the baseline questionnaire on 213 workers who are not currently participating in training activities are used along with a multiple regression model to test whether subjective norms, perceived behavioral control, attitude/expected value, management support, coworker support, career orientation, job insecurity and prior participation in informal learning correlate with lower educated workers' intentions with respect to training.

This study shows that when stimulating lower educated workers' intentions with respect to training, one should focus on their attitude towards training participation, their subjective norms on training participation and their perceived behavioral control over participating in training. These aspects can be influenced through management support, coworker support and promoting career orientation. These factors contribute to the personal factors and thus, although indirectly, stimulate intentions with respect to training.

This article is the first to present clear ideas on ways to stimulate lower educated workers' intentions to participate in workplace learning activities and to develop interventions to strengthen their current and future labor market position. It also shows that in stimulating lower educated workers' intentions with respect to training the focus should be on individual, as well as organizational, or group factors.

Based on the theory of planned behaviour and social learning theory, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of training participation and learning experience on the beliefs of low-educated employees about their self-efficacy for learning.

Low-educated workers of three different organizations (n=359) filled out a questionnaire at three different points in time, with a half-yearly interval. Regression analyses were used to establish the effects of training participation and learning experience on learning self-efficacy.

Training participation alone did not affect low-educated workers’ learning self-efficacy, but a positive learning experience did contribute to workers’ post-training learning self-efficacy. These results support the relevance of positive learning experiences.

Follow-up studies could focus on the effects of learning self-efficacy for subsequent learning activities, establish which aspects of training contribute to a positive learning experience, and include contextual characteristics that may predict learning self-efficacy.

To stimulate learning among lower educated workers, it is necessary that they have confidence in their ability to successfully complete their training. Trainers and training developers working for this specific target group of lower educated workers should aim to provide training that is a positive experience, besides being a learning exercise.

The study is the first to analyse the longitudinal effects of training participation and learning experience on post-training learning self-efficacy among low-educated workers.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of immigration on the labour market outcomes of low-educated natives (i.e. residents without a university diploma). Using the labour market competition theory, which argues that the labour market effects of natives depend on the skill set of immigrants, the paper addresses whether immigrants are complementary to or substitutes for native workers.

Longitudinal matched employer–employee data on Sweden are used to estimate how low-educated natives, in regions experiencing the greatest influx of refugees from the Balkan wars, responded to this supply shock with regard to real wages, employment and job mobility between 1990 and 2003.

First, the analysis shows that low-educated native workers respond to the arrival of immigrants with an increase in real wages. Second, although employment prospects in general worsened for low-skilled workers in most regions, this is not attributable to the regions experiencing the largest supply shock. Third, there are indications that low-skilled natives in immigration-rich regions are more likely to change workplace, particularly in combination with moving upwards in the wage distribution.

Rather than seeing an emergence of the commonly perceived displacement mechanism when an economy is subject to a supply shock, the regional findings suggest that high inflows of immigrants tend to induce a mechanism that pulls native workers upwards in the wage distribution. This is important, as the proportion of immigrants is seldom evenly distributed within a nation.

The purpose of this paper is to examine spillover effects across differently educated workers. For the first time, the authors consider “reverse” spillover effects, i.e. spillover effects from secondary-educated workers with dual vocational education and training (VET) to tertiary-educated workers with academic education. The authors argue that, due to structural differences in training methodology and content, secondary-educated workers with VET degrees have knowledge that tertiary academically educated workers do not have.

The authors use data from a large employer-employee data set: the Swiss Earnings Structure Survey. The authors estimate ordinary least squares and fixed effects panel-data models to identify such “reverse” spillover effects. Moreover, the authors consider the endogenous workforce composition.

The authors find that tertiary-educated workers have higher productivity when working together with secondary-educated workers with VET degrees. The instrumental variable estimations support this finding. The functional form of the reverse spillover effect is inverted-U-shaped. This means that at first the reverse spillover effect from an additional secondary-educated worker is positive but diminishing.

The results imply that firms need to combine different types of workers because their different kinds of knowledge produce spillover effects and thereby lead to overall higher productivity.

The traditional view of spillover effects assumes that tertiary-educated workers create spillover effects toward secondary-educated workers. However, the authors show that workers who differ in their type of education (academic vs vocational) may also create reverse spillover effects.

Theoretical explanations for the diverse reactive feedback from secretarial employees in different career phases are relatively unexplored. However, research examining age differences in the impact of feedback suggests that the effects of performance feedback may differ for employees in the early career phase and employees in the late career phase. This paper aims to address this issue.

This contribution reports an experimental study on feedback perceptions and attribution by 173 secretarial employees of 12 Dutch organizations. Each participant responded to one of eight scenarios, which varied in terms of feedback content, sender status, and sender performance appraisal. Feedback perceptions were measured in terms of perceived fairness, acceptance, usefulness, willingness to improve and affect. An additional scale measured attribution.

The results reveal that elaborated specific feedback is perceived as more adequate, irrespective of feedback sender status and appraisal. Complex three-way interaction effects were found for educational level on affect and attribution, and for career phase on willingness to improve and affect. Low-educated employees reacted more strongly to supervisor feedback. Employees in the late career phase were more oriented towards the content of the feedback than feedback sender status, whereas the latter was of more concern for employees in the early and middle career phase.

In order for feedback to be considered as adequate, it is necessary to formulate the feedback as specific and as elaborated as possible. Employees in their late career phase especially react differently in comparison to employees in early and middle career phases. They are more inclined “to opt for quality” and appreciate elaborated feedback from a high experienced sender. Human resource managers should be aware of this in their policy towards employees in their late career phase

The present study shows that feedback content and sender characteristics (status and performance appraisal) differentially affect feedback perceptions and attribution. In addition, the study reveals that perceptions and attributions of performance feedback might be mediated by educational level and career phase.

The aim of this paper is to examine rent sharing under a heterogeneous workforce using Finnish linked employer‐employee data in 1987‐1998. Rent sharing is one component of the empirically estimated firm‐effect and depends on the sensitivity of firm‐level payments to quasi‐rents. It is shown that rent sharing moderates other forms of firm‐level wages. Thus, the lower the starting wages, the higher rent sharing will be. Alternatively, in many firms new workers are attracted to the job by paying high entry wages, while these new workers do not obtain the full level of rent sharing in the first years of service. Highly educated workers are the main targets of rent sharing and rent sharing is more common in R&D‐intensive firms. All this shows the importance of human capital accumulation and flexible technology in explaining rent sharing. This can also explain why rent sharing is targeted at experienced workers in R&D‐intensive firms. In non‐R&D‐intensive firms, job search is also of importance. Rent sharing is more common when highly educated workers have flexible labour supply.

The purpose of the paper is to clarify the mixed empirical results concerning the association between educational level and job satisfaction. It seeks to test whether the positive relationship between educational level and job satisfaction is caused by indicators of job quality.

Three models are estimated. In the first model, the impact of the educational level on job satisfaction is examined using an ordinal regression analysis. The second model estimates the impact of the educational level on indicators of job quality, using the appropriate technique (OLS or binary logit). The third model reveals the “true” impact of the educational level on job satisfaction, when the job quality indicators are added as independent variables. Survey data on Flemish youth in their first job are used.

The results show that higher educated workers are more satisfied than their lower educated counterparts, because they have a job of better quality. When one controls for all job characteristics, a negative relationship appears, with higher educated workers reporting less job satisfaction.

The hypothesis is only tested for a sample of Flemish youth in their first job (cross‐sectional data).

Future empirical studies on job satisfaction should include indicators for job quality, in order to reveal the true effect of educational level on job satisfaction. Investing in the job quality of lower educated young workers might boost their job satisfaction and as a consequence also their productivity.

Suggests that the diverging results concerning the relationship between educational level and job satisfaction could be due to insufficient control for indicators of job quality.

The purpose of this paper is to explore antecedents of perceived intra‐ and extra‐organisational alternatives among employees in the Czech Republic, Poland and the Slovak Republic.

Data were collected from 9,068 low‐educated supermarket employees at 360 supermarkets. LISREL analysis was employed.

Age, job autonomy and organisation size predict both forms of perceived alternatives. Tenure appears to influence both forms of perceived alternatives positively. Job challenge and sex only predict perceived extra‐organisational alternatives. Unexpectedly, despite relatively high unemployment rates, the respondents perceive extra‐organisational alternatives.

Some of the antecedents of perceived alternatives identified in research among workers in Western societies seem to have a different or no impact on the perceived alternatives of employees in these countries. The study comprises only cross‐sectional data. In order to test causality a longitudinal design is needed.

Managers should offer development and promotion opportunities in order to prevent turnover and to enhance internal flexibility as well as reflect on inducements for female and older workers.

This is one of the few studies exploring employee perceptions in Central European transition countries. Moreover, in general, research on the perceived alternatives of low‐educated employees is very scarce. Therefore, this research also contributes to knowledge about their labour market perceptions.