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This paper investigates the potential wage impacts of a shift to more environmentally sustainable production patterns.

The empirical analysis is carried out using labour force survey data and interval regressions.

Estimates at the individual level suggest that small wage differentials exist: individuals employed in green industries earn about seven per cent more than those working in non-green industries.

To date, very little is known about the characteristics of jobs in the green industry and by extension, the labour force effects that can emerge or change as a result of transitioning towards a greener economy. While exploratory in nature, this analysis seeks to shed light on an underdeveloped area of research, namely, wage inequalities associated with transitioning towards green growth.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the determinants of the saving behaviour of Vietnamese households and to explore the possible heterogeneity of household saving propensities.

The authors estimate the effects of household characteristics on Vietnamese household saving rates by means of a quantile regression approach using the Vietnam Household Living Standard Survey 2010 data set.

The results suggest that the way household characteristics influence saving rates is different for each quantile of the household saving rate distribution. Household characteristics tend to have stronger effects at lower quantiles. Particularly, the marginal propensity to save of households at low quantiles is higher than those at high quantiles. Analysing rural and urban households separately, the authors find evidence that household and household head characteristics have stronger significant effects for rural than for urban households. Children and elderly members should be treated as part of the household labour force, instead of household dependency, since both of them increase household saving rates.

This research contributes to the literature on Vietnamese household saving behaviours, especially for households living in urban areas.

This paper aims to investigate how oil price uncertainty affects real gross domestic product (GDP) and industrial production in eight Central and Eastern European countries (CEEC).

In the research process, the authors use the Bayesian method of inference for the two applied methodologies – Markov switching generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity (GARCH) model and quantile regression.

The results clearly indicate that oil price uncertainty has a low effect on output in moderate market conditions in the selected countries. On the other hand, in the phases of contraction and expansion, which are portrayed by the tail quantiles, the authors find negative and positive Bayesian quantile parameters, which are relatively high in magnitude. This implies that in periods of deep economic crises, an increase in the oil price uncertainty reduces output, amplifying in this way recession pressures in the economy. Contrary, when the economy is in expansion, oil price uncertainty has no influence on the output. The probable reason lies in the fact that the negative effect of oil volatility is not strong enough in the expansion phase to overpower all other positive developments which characterize a growing economy. Also, evidence suggests that increased oil uncertainty has a more negative effect on industrial production than on real GDP, whereas industrial share in GDP plays an important role in how strong some CEECs are impacted by oil uncertainty.

This paper is the first one that investigates the spillover effect from oil uncertainty to output in CEEC.

With a focus on the position of EU mobile workers in the Dutch meat industry, this article discusses the multi-level State efforts to enhance protection of workers who experienced limited protection of existing State and private enforcement institutions. The COVID-19 pandemic, with virus outbreaks at Dutch meat plants, fuelled public and political will to structurally improve these workers' precarious work and living conditions. Yet, the process of policy change is slow. The authors show it is the gradual transformation in the institutional environment that the State needs to counter to become more protective for EU mobile workers.

Using the gradual institutional change approach and the concept of State ignorance, the authors examine State responses drawing on interviews with expert stakeholders in the public and private domain, public administration records and newspaper articles.

Through knowledge creation, boosted social dialogue mechanisms, enhanced enforcement capacity and new housing legislation, the Dutch State focuses on countering gradual institutional change through which existing institutions lost their effectiveness as protectors of EU mobile workers. The organization of work is, nevertheless, not (yet) fundamentally addressed with tighter public legislation.

The findings contribute to a more nuanced understanding of the role of the State as multifaceted actor in institutional change processes towards increased protection for EU mobile workers.

The paper aims to analyze collective bargaining in the facility management business of these six countries to explore similarities and differences between them. The analysis serves to test the differential impact of the national institutional setting on the protection provided by collective agreements to facility management workers.

The paper adopts a case study methodology to approach a facility management multinational company providing services in six European countries (France, Italy, The Netherlands, Poland, Spain and the UK) that represent different industrial relations systems with variance in key dimensions of collective bargaining, including its structure, coverage and extension of agreements.

The extension of the facility management business model has not always adopted a high-road strategy aimed at enhancing the quality and efficiency through the integrated management and delivery of services, which is expected to positively impact employment conditions. Rather, it has, in many cases, been a deliberate, low-road attempt to undercut working standards, taking advantage of the multiple services provided by the company in a context of growing de-centralization in collective bargaining. The results point to an important role of industrial relations institutions in shaping facility management strategies and outcomes.

Similar to other forms of outsourcing, facility management leads to fragmented employment relations. However, the concentration of outsourced workers under the same supplier organization introduces opportunities to ensure the protection of workers, depending on the adoption of a high- or low-road competitive strategy. This paper provides for the first time comparative evidence about industrial relations in facility management businesses, a largely under-researched area.

This paper aims to examine the cycle of labour protests in Sweden, comparing the contentious actions of trade unions in public and private sectors over 40 years. Prior studies have focused on industrial conflicts or labour protests, but a long-term perspective on the broad protest repertoire across sectors is lacking. The goal is to test the argument of diversification of action repertoire and differences between the public and private sectors.

The authors apply the grievance and political opportunity theories of social movement research for explaining the cycles of labour protests and differences between sectors in Sweden over 40 years (1980–2020). The unique protest event data are combined with the official strike statistics. The research period includes the globalisation of the economy and two economic crises.

Although unions in both sectors have decreased protest mobilisation over time, private sector unions have resigned the most, whereas public sector unions continue to mobilise a diverse set of protest actions. Swedish unions have not replaced strikes with other protest repertoires. The open opportunities have allowed them to use various protests as part of “routine” operations.

Protest event data are derived from newspapers, leading to an over-representation of large events in the urban areas. Future studies should combine data from newspapers with data about online protests.

By thoroughly examining all protest events mobilised by all trade unions in different sectors over 40 years (1980–2020), the paper presents a comprehensive analysis of the cycles of labour protest. The findings should interest industrial relations and social movement scholars.

The purpose of this paper is to assess how far Jamaica has come regarding women economic empowerment, female entrepreneurship and its development policies in favour of women entrepreneurship development.

This exploratory study employs a mixed method approach to achieve its research objectives, consisting of literature review and corroboration with existing database and indices. Key insights of research on female entrepreneurship are used to reflect on published data to assess progress of female entrepreneurship development in Jamaica. The 2017 editions of the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor and Gender Entrepreneurship and Development Index were examined to gain a better understanding of how the Jamaican business environment has progressed or regressed over time and how the economic development and business environment impact female participation in Jamaica’s labour force and entrepreneurial initiatives.

The economic conditions in Jamaica and the role of females as domestic caregiver have made it difficult for women to enter the labour force even though Jamaican women are relatively better educated than men. Women remain at a disadvantage in the labour force. Jamaica’s legislation and budget allocations in favour of female entrepreneurship are analysed to identify where and how Jamaica is investing its efforts to improve women’s participation in the labour force. The authors conclude with suggestions on how the Jamaican government could facilitate further women entrepreneurship development to reach a more gender balanced inclusive socio-economic development.

While global policy has been promoting women empowerment through entrepreneurial development, little is known on the actual outcome of such human capital investment strategy and the critical vectors that contribute to such outcome. This scarcity of knowledge is also applicable to Jamaica. This paper attempts to contribute to women entrepreneurship research by reaching beyond the output-oriented perspective of various skill development programmes and attempts to link policy choice with overall macro results of entrepreneurship development in general and women entrepreneurship development in specific. The study thus provides a rare glimpse of the entrepreneurship ecosystem in Jamaica.

The purpose of this paper is to support the competitiveness and knowledge-based economic growth of the Slovak region of Košice and its stakeholders; suitable intellectual capital (IC) methodologies were selected and applied. This approach responds to a weak innovation performance of Slovakia in general and a weak connection of the Slovak labour market and vocational training system.

The methodological “backbone” is given by IC reporting (ICR). The two ICR models – the Austrian University model and the German “Alwert” model – were selected and transferred to higher educational institutions (HEI) and companies in Košice. The knowledge transfer was accomplished by implementation of on-site trainings with different groups of stakeholders, supported by e-learning. Several accompanying in-depth interviews with Austrian stakeholders were conducted to derive recommendations for ICR implementation in the Slovak public sector.

Beyond knowledge transfer, a shared understanding of the importance of IC management and common “IC language” between different stakeholders of the regional innovation system could be developed. Further, several recommendations for a sound development of an IC governance tool for HEI were elaborated.

The knowledge transfer and practical implementation of this Slovak case were successful. Requests for follow-up initiatives, invitations for conferences, development of projects including ICR elements prove this valuation.

A methodological innovation was accomplished by adapting a set of innovation key drivers as structural base for the development of the regional innovation function and interaction of stakeholders.

The purpose of this paper is to compare home care workers' views of their employment conditions by provider type – private for-profit vs public and non-profit – using the case study of Ireland.

An online survey was distributed to care workers (n = 350) employed by private for-profit, public and non-profit home care providers in Ireland. Returned questionnaires were analysed statistically in R using chi-squared tests to systematically compare key aspects of employment conditions.

Analysis shows that conditions are perceived to be significantly worse for those employed by private for-profit providers (and to a lesser extent non-profit organisations) compared to the public provider. There are wide disparities between public and private sector conditions in terms of contracts, pensions, unsocial hours pay and travel time allowances. The main area of convergence is in relation to employer support, where although the public sector performed better, the difference between the three provider types is smaller.

Relatively little research compares working conditions in private for-profit providers vs public and non-profit providers in Ireland and other countries. The findings can be understood in the context of marketisation reforms and may partly be explained by a lack of regulation in Ireland's home care sector and low unionisation rates amongst care workers employed by private for-profit providers.

Global crises have become increasingly recurrent events that jeopardize public-private partnerships (PPPs). In this context, the purpose of this paper is to expose the PPP-crisis research agenda by combining bibliometric and network analyses.

The PPP literature associated with global crises between the 2008 global financial crisis and 2022 was analyzed in three stages: (1) paper selection and screening for the inclusion/exclusion of articles relevant to this research, (2) semantic network development for examining thematic relationships among selected papers by considering the co-occurrence of keywords within the chosen studies and (3) calculation of network metrics for analysis.

The paper identified six research avenues for the PPP-crisis agenda: public interest, relational governance, risk management, user-pay PPPs, crisis management and financial performance. The PPP-crisis literature has spread significantly in the last five years driven by the case study approaches on a national or regional basis. Conversely, non-crisis periods generate room to strengthen user-pay PPPs and relational governance. The pandemic and post-pandemic times shared the priorities of the 2008 financial crisis but also strengthened the management of the risks and the structural drivers of the global crisis.

This study demonstrates that during global crisis periods, the public interest and financial performance gain relevance in a detriment of structural solutions to social legitimacy erosion of PPPs because of the urgency of giving tools to the public and private sectors to tackle the financial issues, which steer future issues for PPPs.