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Strategic business services, examined in twenty-one OECD country case studies in this book, comprise services in computer software and information processing, research and development and technical testing, marketing, business organisation (management consultancy and labour recruitment) and human resource development. This sector has been growing at around 10% per year, and overall turnover for 1999 is likely to be close to USD 1.5 trillion. These services create jobs in OECD countries, directly employing at least 11 million persons. Business organisation services were the major employer, with 3.6 million people in personnel recruitment services and 1.5 million in management consultancy in the mid-1990s.

This sector’s strong performance is driven by the general shift towards services, the rise of the knowledge-based economy, the need for greater flexibility within firms, specialisation and increased division of labour in many areas, outsourcing by established firms, and the trend towards smaller production units and firms.
Governments influence the demand for business services by promoting private sector investment in intangibles such as R&D, training and education and business organisation, and by supporting the supply of these services through a range of intermediary agencies. The provision of strategic business services is seen as key to improving the performance and competitiveness of small and medium-sized firms.
Countries covered Australia Austria Canada Denmark Finland France Germany Ireland Italy Japan Mexico Netherlands Norway New Zealand Portugal Spain Sweden Switzerland Turkey United Kingdom United States

This publication provides economists and researchers with a unique source of comparative data on trends in the services sector. It includes annual national accounts statistics on output (gross value added) and employment in service activities for all OECD countries. Data are shown from 1989 to 1999 at the finest level of activity detail available to OECD from national sources.

The publication is designed to provide analysts with series containing information on trends in the sector and to help statisticians improve the comparability of these statistics.

Global value chains are radically altering how goods and services are produced--parts made in one country, for instance, are increasingly assembled in another and sold in a third. The globalisation of production has changed the industrial structure within OECD countries, and in some sectors blunted their competitiveness. Another major consequence has been fears of job losses, due to outsourcing and offshoring—not only in manufacturing but also in services. The rapid integration of China and India, with their large pool of educated people, further reinforces these concerns.  How should OECD countries respond?

This report brings together OECD data on the globalisation of value chains, including the rise of outsourcing/offshoring.  It first examines how OECD countries are affected by the globalisation of production, on both the macroeconomic and sector-specific levels. The costs and benefits of globalisation are then discussed, with an emphasis on employment and productivity. Finally, this report analyses how globalisation impacts the competitiveness of OECD countries, highlighting the need for an effective innovation strategy.  The report discusses not only the moving up the value chain that takes place in OECD countries but also in China, as R&D is increasingly going  to emerging countries.

Too many workers leave the labour market permanently due to health problems, and yet too many people with a disabling condition are denied the opportunity to work. This second report in the OECD series Sickness, Disability and Work explores the possible factors behind this paradox. It looks specifically at the cases of Australia, Luxembourg, Spain and the United Kingdom, and highlights the roles of institutions and policies. A range of reform recommendations is put forward to deal with specific challenges facing the four countries.

Global value chains are radically altering how goods and services are produced. Parts made in one country, for instance, are increasingly assembled in another and sold in a third. The globalisation of production has changed the industrial structure within OECD countries, and in some sectors blunted their competitiveness. Another major consequence has been fears of job losses. This volume is a compilation of the studies that underlie the synthesis report on global value chains, entitled Staying Competitive in the Global Economy: Moving Up the Value Chain.  It includes papers on the measurement of globalisation, SMEs in global value chains, the changing nature of manufacturing, impact of international sourcing, foreign affiliates, offshoring and productivity, and the internationalisation of R&D.

Too many workers leave the labour market permanently due to health problems, and yet too many people with a disabling condition are denied the opportunity to work. This third report in the OECD series Sickness, Disability and Work explores the possible factors behind this paradox. It looks specifically at the cases of Denmark, Finland, Ireland and the Netherlands, and highlights the roles of institutions and policies. A range of reform recommendations is put forward to deal with specific challenges facing the four countries.

Too many workers leave the labour market permanently due to health problems or disability, and too few people with reduced work capacity manage to remain in employment. This is a social and economic tragedy common to virtually all OECD countries. It also raises an apparent paradox that needs explaining: Why is it that the average health status is improving, yet large numbers of people of working age are leaving the workforce to rely on long-term sickness and disability benefits?  

This report, the last in the OECD series Sickness, Disability and Work: Breaking the Barriers, synthesises the project’s findings and explores the possible factors behind the paradox described above. It highlights the roles of institutions and policies and concludes that higher expectations and better incentives for the main actors – workers, employers, doctors, public agencies and service providers – are crucial. Based on a review of good and bad practices across OECD countries, this report suggests a series of major reforms are needed to promote employment of people with health problems. 

The report examines a number of critical policy choices between: tightening inflows and raising outflows from disability benefit, and promoting job retention and new hiring of people with health problems. It questions the need for distinguishing unemployment and disability as two distinct contingencies, emphasises the need for a better evidence base, and underlines the challenges for policy implementation.  

Innovation holds the key to ongoing improvements in living standards, as well as to solving pressing social challenges. Skilled people play a crucial role in innovation through the new knowledge they generate, how they adopt and develop existing ideas, and through their ability to learn new competencies and adapt to a changing environment.

This book seeks to increase understanding of the links between skills and innovation. It explores the wide range of skills required, ranging from technical to "soft", and the ability to learn; it presents data and evidence on countries' stocks and flows of skills and the links between skill inputs and innovation outputs. Given the importance of meeting the demands of knowledge-based economic activity, the book investigates the issues of skill supply, education, workplace training and work organisation. It highlights the importance of enabling individuals to acquire appropriate skills and of optimising these at work.

The report discusses the results of the OECD “Leveraging Training and Skills Development in SMEs” (TSME) project which examines access to training by SMEs across seven regions in six OECD countries: New Zealand, Poland, Belgium, UK, Turkey and Canada. The book analyses the policy issues related to both low access by SMEs, and how to recognise the increasing importance of informal training and skills development methods. The book looks at how both formal and alternative ways of training and skills development interact and identifies impacts at three levels; for the firm and employees; for the industry; and for the local area where the firm is located.

The report pays special attention to the development of entrepreneurial skills and the emerging area of “green skills”. This focus is not just because ‘green skills’ represent the next new training opportunity – the de-carbonisation of economies that will occur over the coming decades represents an industrial transformation on the scale of the microelectronics revolution - but in many ways the response to the green economy is at an emerging stage- this means we have the opportunity to implement lessons from previous successful practices into a skill development area that will have enormous reach.

Obecnie ludzie żyją dłużej niż kiedykolwiek wcześniej, a współczynnik urodzeń w większości krajów OECD systematycznie spada. W związku z tym konieczne jest takie dostosowanie wydatków na pomoc społeczną, które zapewni długoterminową stabilność systemu. Starsi pracownicy odgrywają znaczącą rolę na rynku pracy. Stopniowe podwyższanie wieku emerytalnego wiąże się z wydłużeniem aktywności zawodowej pracowników oraz potrzebą tworzenia nowych miejsc pracy. Jednocześnie z uwagi na niewielkie szanse na znalezienie nowego zatrudnienia starsi pracownicy, którzy utracili pracę, mogą być narażeni na długotrwałe bezrobocie. W jaki sposób rządy mogą przyczynić się do poprawy sytuacji? Co zrobić, aby wzmocnić zachęty do pracy oraz możliwości zatrudnienia? Jak powinna wyglądać promocja zróżnicowania wiekowego w przedsiębiorstwach? Niniejszy raport analizuje i dokonuje oceny najlepszych polityk służących zwiększaniu zatrudnialności, mobilności zawodowej oraz zapotrzebowania na pracę w starszym wieku.

Treść

Rozdział 1. Wyzwanie dla Polski „Żyć dłużej, pracować dłużej”

Rozdział 2. Sytuacja starszych pracowników na rynku pracy w Polsce

Rozdział 3. Zwiększanie korzyści uzyskiwanych przez osoby starsze podejmujące zatrudnienie w Polsce

Rozdział 4. Zachęcanie polskich pracodawców do zatrudniania i zatrzymywania starszych pracowników

Rozdział 5. Poprawa zatrudnialności starszych pracowników w Polsce

Dostępne są również wersje

Francuska (w języku angielskim i francuskim)

Holenderska (w języku angielskim)

Norweska (w języku angielskim)

Szwajcarska (w języku francuskim i niemieckim)

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In the wake of the technological revolution that began in the last decades of the 20th century, labour market demand for information-processing and other high-level cognitive and interpersonal skills is growing substantially. The Survey of Adult Skills, a product of the OECD Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC), was designed to provide insights into the availability of some of these key skills in society and how they are used at work and at home. The first survey of its kind, it directly measures proficiency in several information-processing skills – namely literacy, numeracy and problem solving in technology-rich environments.

This volume reports results from the 24 countries and regions that participated in the first round of the survey in 2011-12 (first published in OECD Skills Outlook 2013: First Results from the Survey of Adult Skills) and from the nine additional countries that participated in the second round in 2014-15 (Chile, Greece, Indonesia [Jakarta], Israel, Lithuania, New Zealand, Singapore, Slovenia and Turkey). It describes adults’ proficiency in the three information-processing skills assessed, and examines how skills proficiency is related to labour market and social outcomes. Another related report, The Survey of Adult Skills: Reader’s Companion, Second Edition, describes the design and methodology of the survey and its relationship to other international assessments of young students and adults.