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The neoclassical theory of labour supply cannot unambiguously explain the decision of highly-skilled high-wage male workers to work longer and harder than their counterparts in the 1980s. We investigate the labour supply elasticities of these workers, over time, and across countries, within a ceteris paribus condition. The estimates reveal a shift rather than a movement along the supply curve. We find that ambiguities are due to the absence, in the theory, of a clear distinction between a change in consumption that is partly due to changes in the wage rate and partly due to changes in purchasing power. We apply a new pluralist approach to the standard income-leisure choice framework and provide for a more systematic and consistent method of measuring variations in labour supply, with policy implications.

Labour MP Sue Moroney’s Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Six Months' Paid Leave) Amendment Bill to extend paid parental leave (PPL) to 26 weeks by 2014 was drawn from the Member's ballot in April and made it past its first reading in July, with all parties except National and Act indicating their support. One of the objectives of this bill, according to its sponsor, is to bring New Zealand in line with the rest of the industrialised world. In many industrialised countries, however, in the absence of any statutory entitlement, collective bargaining has played a crucial role both in determining PPL policies and in shaping legislative initiatives (Gregory and Milner 2009; Baird and Murray 2012). This article considers the role of collective bargaining in PPL policy in New Zealand.

This article provides an insight into the reasons for and the outcomes of functional flexibility, and it argues that functional flexibility increases time commitment of labour in paid-work. However, this leads to work-addiction, a byproduct of the production process in complex activities, which calls for demand as well as supply side policies.

The aim of this paper is to explain the relationship between Human Resource Management (HRM) strategies and innovation. The paper systematically captures the impacts of HRM policies by Australian businesses in the form of organisational innovation, and consequently impacting on innovation and productivity. Two HRM strategies are identified as having operated in Australia over 40 years. One is a 'soft' HRM strategy based on greater worker autonomy; a strategy which dominated in the 1970s and 1980s. The other is a 'hard' HRM strategy based on routine worker performance measurement which has increasingly become more relevant since the 1990s and into the 21 st Century as the basis for stronger competitive advantage. While recent research has found a positive relationship between HRM policies, organisational innovation, innovations and business performance, this study finds that while this was true in the 1980s and 1990s, it is not so in the 2000s. The core of the argument in this paper is that there is a positive relationship between HRM policies and organisational innovation only with the 'soft' HRM strategy, while the 'hard' strategy raises many questions about the ability to build significant innovation capacity. Also, the type of innovation capacity that is built in Australian businesses, that is, generally incremental and with only minor modifications, is examined in the context of both HRM strategies.The paper provides a framework of analysis that reframes the economics of innovation management using a unique 'containment of structure and contingency of agency' spectrum to explain innovation-successful HRM practices. This approach accounts for both internal firm management policies and external-to-the-firm effects of government economic policies. For this reason, this approach provides a historical experience that links effective HRM strategy to building innovation capacity from both firm and government levels. The experience of Australia in being unable to manage the containment-contingency innovation spectrum should be a lesson for China as it manoeuvres towards becoming a strong innovation-driven economy.