The Labour Demand of Firms: An Alternative Conception Based on the Capabilities Approach
基于能力或胜任力理论的企业观，提出一个替代新古典的劳动力需求分析框架，涵盖劳动力需求决策与战略规划的关系、劳动力作为生产性能力的需求、能力嵌入于人类以及劳动力需求决策与工资设定的相对独立性。
The aim of this paper is to offer a theoretical framework for the analysis of labour demand alternative to the neoclassical one, taking as its starting point the conception of the firm that derives from the capabilities or competence-based theories of the organization. After briefly reviewing the essential elements of this approach to the firm, we tackle a range of diverse aspects, such as the link between labour demand decisions and the firm’s strategic planning and its determinants, the characterisation of labour demand as a demand for productive competencies, the consequences that these competencies are embedded in human beings or the relative independence between labour demand decision-making and the process of wage-setting. In general terms, this conception of labour demand allows us to incorporate many of the main peculiarities of labour and the demand for it from a number of different areas of heterodox economics (particularly, from institutional and post-Keynesian economics) and it fits in with the conventional literature on internal labour markets and labour market segmentation.