ABSTRACT The glass cliff hypothesis posits that women and minorities are disproportionately appointed to leadership positions during organisational crisis. We test whether exogenous bankruptcy risk alone is sufficient to trigger it, using an incentivised online experiment in which participants select leaders under stable and crisis conditions in a stereotype‐neutral, performance‐based environment. We find no evidence of a gender‐based glass cliff. For ethnicity, the evidence runs in the opposite direction: Indian candidates are significantly less likely to be selected under crisis. The glass cliff therefore appears context‐dependent, requiring specific environmental features to emerge, rather than a general decision‐making bias activated by risk.
ABSTRACT Advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics since 2000 led to widespread concern that automation would eliminate a massive number of jobs. Frey and Osborne's influential study concluded AI and robots might eliminate nearly half of all US jobs between 2010 and 2030. However, these and related claims have received little critical evaluation. This paper contrasts predictions of mass job loss with employment projections made by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) suggesting modest changes over the same period and evaluates both with respect to empirical employment data for 2010–2023. The evidence strongly supports BLS projections of gradual change. There is little evidence of mass displacement or any kind of technology‐driven structural break with previous employment trends, arguing for caution in making predictions of the future impacts of robotics and AI on jobs.
ABSTRACT This study examines a neglected aspect of industrial relations: workplace disputes in which workers are incidentally made idle because of strike actions of others. These spillover effects have received little systematic attention despite potentially accounting for a substantial share of the employment consequences of industrial conflict. The analysis uses a comprehensive dataset of company strikes compiled by the UK Engineering Employers' Federation (EEF) between 1920 and 1970, recording both workers directly involved in disputes and non‐striking employees made idle. During the interwar and wartime periods, relatively few workers were made idle compared with those directly on strike. In contrast, the post‐war period saw a substantial rise in the likelihood and scale of incidental idleness. By the late 1960s, the number of EEF workers made idle by strikes nearly matched the hundreds of thousands on strike. Incidental idleness was especially likely when strikes were caused by non‐pay disputes, most notably those involving a demarcation disagreement about how workers from different unions or with different trades were assigned to tasks in the plant. These findings highlight wider employment consequences of industrial conflict, especially where there are production interdependencies.
ABSTRACT This study examines the relationship between employees' gender biases, defined as the belief that men are better suited for managerial positions than women are, and promotion aspirations using online survey data ( N = 939). Probit and instrumental variables approaches are used to address the potential endogeneity of gender bias. The results suggest that this relationship may differ between men and women: gender bias is negatively associated with women's promotion aspirations and could be positively associated with men's. These findings are consistent with the self‐stereotyping hypothesis and suggest that employees' gender bias may be associated with gender differences in promotion aspirations.
ABSTRACT Social insurance coverage is low and declining in Egypt. This paper uses panel data, spanning 1998–2023, to assess the dynamics behind these trends in social insurance coverage. The results highlight not only the decline of social insurance coverage but an informality trap: over time workers are less likely to gain social insurance at entry or while remaining employed, and they are increasingly likely to lose social insurance. One reason for the decline in social insurance may be the low value workers place on coverage; the unemployed average the same reservation wages for jobs with and without social insurance coverage.
