Fall 2010 Colloquia
Monday, September 27, 2010 - 12-1pm
Job Losses and Economic Consequences of the Great Recession
Sylvia Allegretto, Research Economist, IRLE
Monday, OCTOBER 11, 2010 - 12-1pm
The Labor Market in the Great Recession: The View from Washington
Jesse Rothstein, Professor of Public Policy and Economics
Monday, OCTOBER 18, 2010 - 12-1pm
Determinants of Lifetime Unemployment
Achim Schmillen, Visiting Scholar, Institute for Employment Research, Germany
Monday, OCTOBER 25, 2010 - 12-1pm
Managing Knowledge Workers in Global Value Chains
Clair Brown, Professor, Economics, Center for Work, Technology, and Society (with Greg Linden)
Global value chains that span national and organizational boundaries characterize a growing number of industries. Innovating in these diffuse networks is more complex than in the centralized R&D process of the past because significant pieces of the development process have been moved offshore and/or outside the company. Unlike the one-way transfers of the past, knowledge must now flow bidirectionally along a firm's value chain.
Knowledge creation and exchange across boundaries is difficult, costly, and time-consuming. When handled badly, it can bust budgets and slow, or even kill, projects.
This research, based on extensive fieldwork with engineers and managers in multinational headquarters and subsidiaries in semiconductors, contract manufacturing, personal computers, and flat panel displays, analyzes alternative modes of managing knowledge workers in this global setting. Strategic human resource management (SHRM), of which formal HR policies are but a small part, is necessary to structure formal and informal network activities, both within and beyond the firm. Informal personal networks, including those provided by workers' experiences at universities and at jobs with more than one company, are an important part of the knowledge networks that workers use.
We compare two archetypal high-performance SHRM systems and describe how they have evolved in practice. We analyze SHRM for global knowledge flows with offshore subsidiaries, value chain partners, allies, acquisitions, and corporate ventures. We also look briefly at knowledge flows in informal personal networks and the global circulation of knowledge workers, which constitute a vital, though often invisible, part of any global knowledge network.
Firms continue to experiment with SHRM. The cases discussed here are not presented as best practices, but rather as examples that contribute to an understanding of how various global SHRM systems function in the real world. We draw upon these examples to discuss lessons learned about SHRM practices to create and manage knowledge workers in global value chains.
Monday, NOVEMBER 8, 2010 - 12-1PM
Changes in Job-based Coverage under the New Federal Health Law: A Preliminary Look Using a Micro-simulation Model of California Employers
Ken Jacobs, Chair, Center for Labor, Research and Education
Monday, NOVEMBER 15, 2010 - 12-1pm
Mobilizing Against Water Privatization: Labor-Environmental Coalitions in the United States and Canada
Joanna Robinson, Visiting Scholar, Sociology, University British Columbia, Canada
Monday, NOVEMBER 29, 2010 - 12-1pm
Stock Options and Incentives
Nicole Johnson, Professor, Haas School of Business
All events are located at the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, 2521 Channing Way, Berkeley, CA.
TO ATTEND AN EVENT, PLEASE R.S.V.P. Myra Armstrong, email@example.com