Determinants of older people's employment trajectories related to firms
The aim of the project is an empirical investigation regarding the determinants of fluctuations in the personnel structure of firms. For example, determinants could be the age distribution of firms or the institutional arrangement on the industry level as well as the size of a corporation or management policies on the firm level. The conceptual starting point is the idea of a (macro-institutionally modified) historical path-dependency of the development of personnel structures. This historical path-dependency on the organizational level may prevent corporations from adapting their personnel structure flexibly to the needs and expectations of their current environment. For example, they are restricted in their ability to adapt to ongoing demographic developments in the labor force. The empirical part of the project is based on data of German corporations and their employees, the linked-employer-employee-dataset of the “Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung” (IAB). Empirical indicators for fluctuations in the personnel structure of firms are job entries and exits differentiated by age, gender and education. The paper is of twofold interest for this summer school: First, an unequal distribution of employment chances is the prime factor of (re-)producing problematic social inequalities in modern employment-based societies. Second, a sustainable demographic shift within populations which is redistributing employment chances between different cohorts of these populations is currently being observed in all OECD countries. Hence, the empirical analysis of determinants of changes in the personnel structure of firms advances our understanding of the dependency of unequal employment opportunities on macro-structural processes
Lang, V.