International mobility of researchers is increasingly constructed both as a science policy problem to be solved and as a goal to be pursued. Yet evidence on the experience of mobility and the factors associated with propensity to mobility remains patchy. We analyse comprehensive survey data on the mobility experience of university and non-university research institute researchers in the EU. Our results both confirm and challenge assertions about mobility made in the literature and in policy debates. We find that 57% of university respondents and 65% of institute respondents have experienced international mobility at least once in their research careers. We find that research visits are the most commonly experienced form of international mobility but that job migration (cross-country changes of employer) is also surprisingly common. International student mobility, and also industrial placement experience, seems to be a good predictor of subsequent mobility during the research career.
We examine how a firm's productivity level is related to its potential corporate social responsibility (CSR) objectives for innovations, and whether this relationship is affected by firm size. Two CSR objectives for innovations are examined: a firm's objective of reducing environmental impacts, and an objective of improving health or safety of the employees. Firm size is measured by the number of employees. A data set comprising Norwegian manufacturing firms with or without innovation activity is used. The estimation results show that the predicted probability of adopting the objective of reducing environmental impacts has a significant negative effect on the productivity level among large firms while this effect is not significant among small firms. The predicted probability of adopting the objective of improving health or safety of the employees has no significant effect on the productivity level of small or large firms. These results indicate that whether 'it pays to be green' or not, depends on firm size. The article offers a resource argument in order to explain the different results between small and large firms.
We examine the relationship between enterprises’ use of employee training (or education) as a method to stimulate new ideas or creativity among their staff and enterprises’ innovation activities. A data set of 5204 Norwegian enterprises is used. Based on correlation coefficients, we find a positive relationship between enterprises’ use of employee training and their innovation activities. This relationship is not found significant for innovative enterprises that developed the innovations mainly by themselves or together with external partners if we control for enterprises’ use of brainstorming sessions and/or work teams to stimulate new ideas or creativity among their staff. Training can, however, be argued to be indirectly related to innovation strategies, as it is combined with other human resource practices.
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