No abstract

The ability to attract and retain the talents is an important factor in the competitiveness of countries, as it is confirmed in our study. At the level of small and medium-sized enterprises, hiring and retaining skilled workers is one of the most difficult tasks of HR management, especially in transition economies with a high intensity of “leaching out” the skilled workers due to labour migration. Our research in Ukraine, which is a prime example of such countries, conducted via the cluster analysis allows us to conclude that the problems of hiring and retaining skilled workers have some connection with profitability: there is almost always a problem with filling vacancies with people of all educational levels in unprofitable enterprises, which is not typical of profitable businesses. The main problems with filling vacancies according to employers’ estimations are: 1) market factors – shortage of employees with the required skills; 2) internal problems of ensuring the attractiveness of jobs (material – pay, and intangible – career prospects, flexible working hours, legal employment); 3) internal factors of inefficient HR management, including recruiting; 4) psycho-physiological factors of job satisfaction. However, there are no close links between the factors of hiring effectiveness and retention of skilled workers with the economic success of the organization in the form of the growth of assets, revenues and stuff. This leads to the conclusion that the practices of human resources management in small and medium-sized businesses in Ukraine are largely built chaotic, without analyzing the impact on the efficiency of the use of other resources and without providing links with the overall economic efficiency of enterprises.

Income distribution can cause large-scale transformations in human resources structure, essential changes of economic outputs via its impact on life satisfaction and motivation of work. Thus, the overall objective of this research is to improve methodological tools of income distribution analysis based on identifying the links between different structural indicators of income inequality and the most essential features of social and economic well-being. We conducted comparative analysis of EU Member States and Ukraine. We used structural analysis based on two forms of income distribution—functional (share of “labour” in Gross domestic product - GDP) and household one (ratio of incomes measured by special decile coefficients) to identify income inequality and inconsistencies in distributive strategies. By grouping European countries according to economic well-being (described as GDP per capita) and inequality in income distribution (based on Gini coefficient), we determined apparent tendencies in distributive policies and revealed links between income distribution and connected social-economic features of well-being. We conclude that countries with the most stable and clear patterns in income distribution have distinct connections between the share of labour costs in GDP and successes in social and economic spheres, including human development level, property rights protection, GDP growth, possibilities for taxation and budgeting of social programmes.

No abstract

The research presented in this article seeks to evaluate the impact of intellectual potential on a country's competitiveness as measured by the most important indicators of economic growth and standard of living. The population with tertiary education as well as with the relevant professional competences required for entrepreneurship and employment form the study group. Intellectual potential indicators along with general and partial productivity indicators, i.e. multifactor productivity (MFP) and labour productivity (LP) respectively, are calculated for different population groups using various methods, with the impact of MFP and LP in relation to each other subsequently analysed. The research revealed that the factors with the greatest impact on LP are: the share of people in the employed population involved in R&D, the share of researchers in the total employed population, as well as the level of tertiary education in terms of the total population as well as for the economically active population and self-employed persons. It was also found that the intensity of the influence of intellectual potential on LP has decreased, but only insignificantly. This decrease indicates the need to strengthen the role of other resources in relation to economic development and improvements in competitiveness. Today, MFP, as the gross indicator of economic progress and standard of living, has no apparent dependence on most of the studies intellectual potential indicators with the exception of the share of professionals with tertiary education (correlation coefficient = 0.440). This finding suggests an increased need to balance the use of all production resources, in particular through innovative work and the development of skills which are not necessarily formed in the field of tertiary education, at least in its formal sector.