Social systems theory as developed by Niklas Luhmann is an option for the theoretical foundation of Human Resource Management (HRM). After clarifying the advantages of using a grand (social) theory as the basic theoretical perspective, the roots of this social systems theory - the deterministic...

This paper explores how firms' skills and organizational change affect the returns from investments in ICT. Our work contributes to the literature by testing the hypothesis of complementarity in a panel of 540 Italian manufacturing firms during 1995-2000. By drawing on different statistical...

Bis zum Jahr 2030 wird knapp die Hälfte der Beschäftigten des öffentlichen Dienstes im Freistaat Sachsen in den Ruhestand gehen. Die Studie ermittelt, welche Schwierigkeiten sich bei der Nachbesetzung dieser Stellen ergeben könnten und ob der öffentliche Dienst durch seine...

Whereas employee participation is generally conceived to facilitate implementation of organizational change, only limited research has investigated whether it may reduce the negative effects of downsizing. The present study compares two Swedish hospitals that implemented downsizing in different...

The relationship between the dynamics of employment on the one side and hirings and separations on the other side is crucial for the dynamics of unemployment and the labour market response to recessions. Although the average level of hiring and separation is much lower in Germany than in the US,...

Using a representative establishment data set for Germany, I show that, in line with the existing literature for several countries, firms' adjustment costs for employment are characterized by a fixed and convex functional form. Furthermore, they are asymmetric with dismissal costs exceeding...

In November 2003 the Dutch HRM network held its third annual international conference at the University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands. Its topic was 'Innovating HRM?', a multi facetted topic that can be elaborated in many ways, as the 10 different tracks of the conference testify. The...

The objective of this paper is to analyse the flexibility opportunities of firms to respond to increasing labour market requirements and heterogeneity. Thereby, we focus on two groups of workers and two kinds of management events. The two groups of workers are female and older workers, while...

On the one side the success of the IAB Establishment Panel Survey can be traced to the high response rate and the excellent data quality necessary for panel analyses as well as the unique possibility to use the establishment register of the Employment Statistics of the Federal Employment Agency...