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This study examines when and why internal job transitions enhance employees' motivation and retention. Building on the Challenge-Hindrance Framework and the Self-Determination Theory, we hypothesize that transition challenges (i.e., horizontal and vertical transition magnitude) satisfy people's basic psychological needs and may therefore enhance motivation and retention, whereas transition hindrances (i.e., increased work-life conflict) thwart basic needs satisfaction and are accordingly likely to decrease motivation and retention. In addition, we argue that transition resources (i.e., social support and personal control) may boost the impact of transition challenges and buffer the impact of transition hindrances. Hypotheses were tested with 173 employees who recently made an internal transition. We found support for the positive impact of vertical transition magnitude and the negative impact of increased work-life conflict on motivation and retention

The interest in flexible job search behaviour (FJSB) among unemployed jobseekers, i.e., the extent to which jobseekers also look for jobs that deviate from their studies and earlier work experience, has grown considerably in recent years. Yet, there is large disagreement on both its consequences and drivers. Career scholars as well as policymakers believe that FJSB is important for unemployed and can improve their employment prospects. However, evidence from HR literature raises doubts whether FJSB can enhance reemployment success. Similarly, while the career literature links FJSB to positive attitudes, like career adaptability, the HR literature suggests that people searching flexibly may feel pushed into this behaviour due to more negative reasons, like few labour market perspectives. The aim of this study is examining these opposing expectations. We focus on three FJSB types: flexibility with respect to pay/hierarchical level, skill use and commuting time. Hypotheses are tested using two-wave data with 672 unemployed. Results indicate, among others, that career adaptable people are not inclined to search more flexibly.Additionally, FJSB may in certain cases hamper people's reemployment likelihood. People searching more flexibly also more often became underemployed and as such experienced a more negative job quality.

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As lifestyle diseases put a heavy burden on health care expenditures, voices are raised and win in sound to hold people responsible for their unhealthy lifestyle. Most of the arguments in favour of responsibility are backward-looking. In this paper, we describe the distributional consequences of these backward-looking measures and show that they are very harsh on those who regret a past unhealthy lifestyle. We demonstrate that it is possible to take policy measures which respect individual responsibility but which are at the same time able to grant fresh starts to individuals who regret their past unhealthy lifestyle (which is an application of Fleurbaey ( 2005)). This "forgiving" policy is confronted with a moral hazard problem, however. In general the regulator does not observe whether individuals really regret their past choices or if they just pretend to have changed preferences in order to enjoy the compensatory measures for regretful people. In this paper, we argue that the health setting offers interesting opportunities to move beyond this moral hazard problem and offer a solution through the use of redistributive instruments that are conditional on lifestyle changes.

This article compares the labour market outcomes of high school dropouts to high school graduates who did not enroll into higher education, but immediately entered the labour market. Using parental educational background as an instrument on a rich administrative dataset in the Flemish Region of Belgium, we find no returns to a high school diploma on average. However, these results hide considerable heterogeneity by gender and educational track. While females and individuals in vocational education may benefit from a diploma, male graduates and students holding a general education diploma may even be worse off on the labour market than dropouts. We show that sectoral heterogeneity acts as an underlying mechanism in the returns to a high school diploma (JEL I21, I28, J24).

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