Social Capital and Retraining Policies

摘要

Why some employers churn their workforce, laying off current workers and hiring new ones with different skills when jobs or skill requirements change; while other employers retrain and then retain theirs is, in the current context, an important question affecting job security. The arguments below examine that question and find that retraining is driven by the goal of preserving the social capital among current employees, capital that is generated by specific systems of work organization. Alternative explanations . that retraining is just an employee benefit driven by employer paternalism or is simply part of overall strategy of investment in training . are tested and rejected. The results extend our understanding of the role of social capital in organizational decision-making.