• Journal of Labour Economics
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.117-138
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• 2004

The purpose of this article is to show a model on enhancing labor market flexibility and to compare labor market flexibility, considering that the model on labor market flexibility, universally acceptable, are not found. The writer classified the scope of labor market flexibility into three parts such as indirect adjustment, direct adjustment and policy adjustment. The writer further classified the contents of labor market flexibility into eleven sub-parts. This kind of classification regarding labor market flexibility is unique and comprehensive. Based on this classification, the writer measured the degree of labor market flexibility of four countries such as USA, Japan, Germany, and Korea. According to the results, the ranks of labor market flexibility are USA, Japan, Korea, Germany.

• Management & Information Systems Review
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• v.30 no.4
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• pp.475-509
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• 2011

Taking 195 Korean businesses and sorting them out according to the unit types, this study looks into how flexibility strategy in labor market, which consists of numerical flexibility and functional flexibility, takes effect on the organization's outcome variable, which in turn consists of productivity, labor-management cooperation, and job security. In addition, the present study analyzes the role of labor union's moderating effect on the relationship among labor market flexibility, labor-management cooperation, and job security. It is found out as a result that numerical flexibility has no meaningful relation with productivity, labor-management cooperation, and job security, while functional flexibility has a considerably positive relation with them. This result confirms the importance of functional flexibility of business strategy in labor market. The West has continuously insisted the importance of functional flexibility, pointing out problems of numerical flexibility. On the other hand, considering that this study has confirmed functional flexibility's meaningful relation, while it has not found out numerical flexibility's negative relation, it is necessary to study further on the relationship between these two kinds of flexibility. The result of analysis on the role of union power's moderating effect confirms only the union power's interaction effect in the relation between numerical flexibility and labor-management cooperation. The possibility of union's opportunistic behavior can be detected in this result.

• Journal of Labour Economics
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• v.41 no.3
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• pp.129-159
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• 2018

The foremost aim of the paper is to evaluate the flexibility and stability of the Korean labor market through a cross-country comparison with OECD countries. Evaluating by the OECD Employment Protection Legislation Index, the flexibility of permanent job layoff in Korea is close to the average of OECD countries. Employment of temporary workers appears to be relatively flexible allowing for effective indicators such as the proportion of temporary workers among paid employees. As regards security, the levels of job security, income security and combination security are all far below the OECD average. A panel data analysis of OECD countries reveals that labor productivity increases as regulations on permanent job layoff become looser and regulations on temporary employment become more rigorous.

• Journal of Industrial Convergence
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.187-216
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• 2004

After Asian financial crisis hit the Korea, Korean government and Korean firms need to restructure their system. Specially financial sector has to renew its system. One way renew its system was adjust company's labor system. The forms of labor adjustment are external numerical flexibility, externalization, internal numerical flexibility, functional flexibility and wage flexibility. These five forms based on two big categories which are wage flexibility and employment flexibility. This study only focus on th effect of employment flexibility in financial sector in Korea. Employment flexibilities can be practice as employment adjustment. Also we concentrate on separation and re-accessors to other financial institute after the separation. The result shows that Korean financial sector are in the range of 10.78% and the job destruction rates are about 11.26%. During the period from year 1998 to year 2002, the numbers of accession has down about 30%. The logit statistical analysis for separation shows that demographical variables and the reasons of separation affected separation and reemployment.

• East Asian Economic Review
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.275-301
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• 2020

We analyze state-level matching efficiencies in the Indian labor market using stochastic frontier analysis. The key contribution of this research is the estimation of matching efficiencies at the state level because these can be used for a state-level measure of labor market conditions. Next, we explore the relationship between the estimated matching efficiencies and population density, labor market flexibility, and the Ease of Doing Business index, respectively. The results show that matching efficiency is heterogeneous across states with considerable variation in accordance with the regional diversity in India. However, we find that there is little relationship between the estimated matching efficiencies and the labor market conditions of interest, suggesting that other regional diversity affects matching efficiencies across states in India.

• Informatization Policy
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.44-60
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• 2010

Under the continuing economic growth without increase in employment, issues regarding the impact of IT investment on demand for labor have been continuously raised. Under the circumstance, this study carried out an empirical analysis on the impact of IT investment on employment with a sample of 498 businesses whose domestic sales for the period of six years from 2003 to 2008 are KRW 100 billion or above. The result of the analysis found that IT investment increases employment in most of the industries except for some of the service sectors. In the manufacturing industry, more IT investment increased employment but decreased the flexibility in demand for labor; therefore, IT investment has a substitutional relationship with low-skilled labor and a complementary relationship with high-skilled labor. In the areas of electricity, gas and construction, employment increased as IT investment increased, with the greatest flexibility in demand for labor. In the service industry, increase in IT investment led to more employment and higher flexibility in producer services only. On the other hand, there was no meaningful relationship found between IT investment and employment in the areas of distribution services and social services.

• Management & Information Systems Review
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• v.14
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• pp.117-132
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• 2004

The purpose of this study is to propose empirically the improvement measures of labor conditions of the contingent worker. Since early 1980s, the labour market in Korea has given rise to a rapid growth in contingent worker. Last year, the number has shot over 7 million mark, with the ratio standing above the 50%. This study analyses the improvement measures of labor conditions of the contingent worker. This study present five major improvement measures of labor conditions of the contingent worker. First, It's establish of the relations between organizational flexibility of the labour market and the contingent worker. Second, It's needs to realize wages level of the contingent worker. Third, the contingent worker convert standard workforce step by step. Fourth, it's make no discrimination of the between contingent worker and standard workforce. Fifthly, the government place restrictions of the contingent worker rates.

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare
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• v.58 no.2
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• pp.143-166
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• 2006

The purpose of this study was to empirically test whether occupational welfare in Korea would have grown since the mid 1990s. The result of this study showed that after the IMF fiscal crisis, the policies of labor flexibility in labor market initiated flexible forms of employer-provided benefits, including cafeteria plan or profit-based funds, which finally led to a decline of occupational welfare rather than a growth. Existing studies haven't agreed on trade-off of statutory and voluntary social provisions since the crisis of welfare state. However, based on the case of Korea, this study suggested archetypal development of welfare system experiencing a decline of occupational welfare paralleled with a growth of state welfare provision.

• Korean Journal of Labor Studies
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.47-83
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• 2017

The Swedish labor market secures flexibility in the use of labor force by means of non-regular workers such as temporary workers among others instead of regular workers' layoffs. Although the labor law reform in the late 2000s made it easier to use temporary workers and the outbreak of the economic crisis strengthened the power of user firms against labor unions, the size of temporary workers was scaled down. It is the aim of this study to analyze the change in the use of temporary workers, to examine the effect of the labor law reform and that of economic crisis in that regard, and to explain how, over the use of temporary workers, user firms' strategy to secure flexibility and labor unions' strategy to regulate flexibility interact with each other so as to establish a new equilibrium through conflicts and compromises. The labor law reform to enhance the flexibility in the use of temporary workers failed to entail amendments of collective contracts. Besides, out of the economic crisis, user firms adopted a new policy to use third party workers more, refraining from employing temporary workers. That's why the number of temporary workers has declined eventually. User firms prefer to use third party workers because they could avoid their own responsibility as an employer and they could rely on 'permanent temporary' workers without any time limit. Labor unions, however, responded with a strategy to lay more strict regulations on the use of third party workers, so that third party workers could be used only for limited cause for external numerical flexibility. As a result, the managed flexibility thesis comes to prevail to the usage of non-regular workers in general beyond the category of agency workers. Korea with severe abuse of third party workers should learn from Swedish labor unions' strategy to provide third party workers with stronger employment security and higher wages so as to prevent user firms from abusing third party workers.

• Journal of Labour Economics
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• v.33 no.3
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• pp.25-46
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• 2010

The outstanding performance of some nations in Central and Northern Europe such as Denmark and the Netherlands in the labor market is much indebted to their policy to help labor flexicurity. In this study, the possibility of replicating the Dutch or Danish performance in the labor market is explored in case of adopting such policy in the 22 OECD countries. If implementing the flexicurity policy in the 22 member countries of the OECD leads to strong performance in the labor market, this policy can be globally shared as universal labor policy to provide a win-win situation among the labor, management and the authorities on the matter, paving the way for replacing the Anglo-Saxon policy characterized by high flexibility and low security, or the European alternative with a lower level of flexibility and a higher level of security. According to findings from our research, flexicurity policy can not produce any tangible accomplishments in the labor market by only itself. Therefore, we may safely reach the conclusion that flexicurity policy has a limited positive influence on the labor market of some northern or central European countries. Given the striking difference in inherent conditions between such European countries and OECD countries, it is not sensible for OECD nations to adopt labor policy in the direction of flexicurity.