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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the link between human capital depreciation and education level, with an emphasis on potential differences between general and specific education.

A nonlinear wage equation, based on Arrazola and de Hevia's (2004) model, is estimated using data from the Swiss Labor Force Survey (SLFS) over the period 1998-2008, in order to estimate a human capital depreciation rate for several education groups.

Human capital depreciation is significantly related to education type. Academic (“concept-based”) education protects workers more effectively against depreciation than vocational (“skill-specific”) education.

The SLFS survey is a rotating panel of five years and no retrospective data on earnings and employment are provided. A study of lifecycle earnings like the one proposed here would clearly benefit from a longer individual observation period.

In all educational tracks, even vocational ones, a substantial time share should be devoted to the acquisition of general skills. Moreover, it is necessary to manage lifelong learning carefully in order not to waste initial investments in education.

Instead of using a purely quantitative approach to separate workers by years of education, qualitative aspects of educational system are taken into account. Taking advantage of the Swiss educational system characteristics, workers are separated on the basis of their education type. Workers with vocational education (apprenticeships, professional and technical schools and universities of applied sciences) are assumed to possess a relatively specific human capital, compared to those with academic education (high schools and universities).

Empirical findings on the link between work–life programmes and organisational performance have been inconsistent, demanding further investigation of contextual factors. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

This study uses social exchange theory, strategic human resource (HR) management theory and stakeholder theory to examine the relationship between work–life programmes and organisational outcomes, using three performance measures: perceived organisational performance, financial performance and corporate social responsibility (CSR). It also investigates the moderating effect of HR systems on the work–life programmes–performance relationship. The hypotheses were tested in 192 organisations in Australia, using data from an HR manager survey and archival databases.

The findings support the hypotheses that work–life programmes are positively associated with all three measures of performance. The results partially support the moderating effect of HR systems on the relationship between work–life programmes and perceived organisational performance.

This study provides pioneering evidence for the moderating effect of HR system on the work–life programme–performance relationship. It also includes the rarely studied CSR as an outcome of work–life programmes.

This issue is a selected bibliography covering the subject of leadership.

Work–life programs research has been conducted at the individual and organizational levels, yet one important question remains unanswered: Do work–life programs improve organizational outcomes?

This paper presents a systematic literature review of the impact of work–life programs (bundles versus separate programs) on outcomes at the organizational level. A systematic selection process was adopted, resulting in a final sample of 35 articles published in 26 peer-reviewed journals from 1990 to 2019.

The findings suggest that these programs can result in positive, negative or no impact on organizational outcomes, depending on the study design, industry, organization size and country/region.

This review draws on quantitative and qualitative empirical studies to summarize, explain and refine the business case for work–life programs. The resulting framework provides directions for future research.

The area of communication with its multistrand, interdisciplinary webbing presents a challenge to the bibliographer seeking to develop a collection. Describes a project at the University of Alabama in which a subject‐special policy was written to address the complex issues involved in collection, the format selected for use and the collegial working relationship between representatives from the College of Communication and the university subject bibliographer. Details the outcome of this investigation along with a description of the policy which outlines parameters for six fields of study — advertising, public relations, telecommunication, film, speech communication, and journalism.

An organization’s competitive advantage can be strengthened if they are able to identify highly creative individuals. In fact, organizational success in the 21st century may depend upon a firm’s ability to identify highly creative individuals who are able to develop novel and useful ideas, which are the outcome of creativity. The authors posit that Information Technology (IT) plays a significant role in creativity.

Applying the componential view of creativity, the authors propose the theoretically-derived concept of Individual IT Creativity (IITC). Utilizing a 5-phase methodology, the authors provide a theoretically-derived and rigorously-validated measure of IITC.

This study demonstrates that IITC is manifested in individuals who (1) possess IT expertise; (2) are motivated by IT tasks and (3) exhibit IT creativity-relevant processes. The authors then develop a scale to measure IITC and examine IITC within a broader nomological network.

This study facilitates the investigation of new streams of research into IITC, including new possible outcomes in addition to IT acceptance.

The purpose is to show how actors' relative power or parity is dynamically instanced in discrete speech behaviors that are exchanged throughout everyday organizational interaction.

Politeness theory, rooted in the dramaturgical theories of Erving Goffman, details a set of linguistic indices used to show regard for others' face. This conceptual paper draws on politeness theory to model the unfolding of power relations within face-to-face verbal interchange in organizations. The paper presents a number of propositions suggesting how power differentials (or parity) are reflected in a set of common speech behaviors used to defray threats to face throughout organizational interaction.

This article extends and applies politeness theory to organizations by exploring specific motives and linguistic outcomes of high and low power actors, describing the behavioral egalitarianism associated with organic organizations, and suggesting how the demand characteristics of face-to-face interaction create oligarchic tendencies that militate against the success of workplace participation. Politeness' role in the social construction of power, and in distortive processes within hierarchical communication, is also discussed.

This paper enables researchers to understand the specific linguistic features associated with power-related roles, and it shows how the social distribution of certain speech behaviors is a function of power and dependency relations.

The findings provide managers a fine-grained understanding of how power affects speech, and an understanding of how such speech patterns may stymie attempts to stimulate organizational empowerment and employee voice.

Prior scholarship has neglected this most important topic.

Information technology has been recognized as one of the keys to improved productivity in organizations. Yet, existing research has not paid sufficient attention to how information systems (ISs) influence the creative performance of individual users. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

This study draws on the theories of flow and cognitive load to establish a model of the predicted influences. The authors hypothesize that the information technology supports creativity by engaging individuals in a creative process and by lowering their cognitive load related to the process. To test these hypotheses, the authors employ a meta-analytical structural equation modeling approach using 24 previous studies on creativity and ISs use.

The results suggest that factors that help the user to maintain an interest in the performed task, immerse the user in a state of flow, and lower a person’s cognitive load during IS use can affect the user’s creative performance.

The findings imply that a combination of the theories of flow and cognitive load complements the understanding of how ISs influence creativity.

This paper proposes an explanation on why ISs affect creativity, which can be used by scholars to position further research, and by practitioners to implement creativity support systems.

If females are more ethical than males, as the literature on the subject generally suggests, engaging and encouraging females in their careers would certainly promote an ethical environment. The present paper is motivated by such a viewpoint and aims to investigate gender‐based differences in the ethical disposition and the underlying dimensions in ethical decision‐making processes, by specific examination of business students.

The main research instrument is a quantitative questionnaire through which the responses of 162 business students (45 females and 117 males) are examined. For data analysis univariate analysis by invoking one‐way analysis of variance and multivariate approach using cluster analysis are conducted to investigate gender‐based differences in the ethical disposition. To determine the underlying dimensions in ethical decision‐making processes, for female and male business students, the principal axis approach to factor analysis has been used.

The findings provide evidence that female business students are more ethically predisposed than their male counterparts. It is further observed that males exhibit less diversity in ethical decision making while females more readily invoked different ethical dimensions for different business scenarios.

The paper offers valuable insight into the role of gender in ethics in the context of Indian business. The fact that females appear to demonstrate greater sensitivity on ethical issues suggests that practitioners may want to use this knowledge for developing their organizational strategies, ethical codes, and evaluation systems. Further, the study also highlights the importance of realigning the curriculum in a manner that the teaching of ethics becomes an integral part of business school education.

I HAVE sometimes been asked whether I am conscious, as the present editor of THE LIBRARY WORLD, of the spirit and influence of its founder, James Duff Brown, and of his editorial successors, who included J. D. Stewart and W. C. Berwick Sayers. The answer is that of course I am—how could it be otherwise?