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The purpose of this paper is to study gender differences in wage bargaining by comparing the unexplained wage gap in desired, realised and reservation wages.

The notion of desired wages is applied, which shows workers’ first bet to potential employers during the job-search process. A large job-search data set is drawn from the main Estonian electronic job-search site CV Keskus.

It is found that the unexplained gender wage gap is around 20 per cent in desired wages and in realised wages, which supports the view that the gender income gap in expectations compares well with the realised income gap. The unexplained gender wage gap is larger in desired wages than in reservation wages for unemployed individuals, and this suggests that women ask for wages that are closer to their reservation wages men do. Occupational and sectoral mobility is unable to explain a significant additional part of the gender wage gap.

The paper adds to the scarce empirical evidence on the role of the non-experimental wage negotiation process in the gender wage gap. In addition, the authors seek to explain one of the largest unexplained gender wage gaps in Europe, the one in Estonia, by introducing a novel set of variables for occupational and sectoral mobility from a lengthy retrospective panel.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of temporary migration on the upward occupational mobility by using a novel database from Estonia.

The authors use a unique data set of the online job search portal of Estonia that includes thousands of employees with foreign work experience. The authors study whether the presence of temporary migration in ones working career is associated with upward movement in the occupational ladder, defined either in terms of wages or required human capital.

The authors did not find any positive effect of temporary migration on upward occupational mobility and in case of females the effect was negative. The results could be related to the short-term nature of migration and the occupational downshifting abroad as well as the functioning of home country labour market.

While the uniqueness of the data set is of value, one needs to acknowledge its weaknesses: the job-seekers work histories are self-reported and the authors do not know what information was left out as undesired by applicant.

The findings imply that the benefits of temporary migration from Eastern to Western Europe on the sending country via the returnees’ labour market performance might be limited, yet it does not exclude the benefits of return migration through other mechanism.

The literature on return migration is not big and there are only a few papers dealing with occupational change or mobility of the return migrants. Compared to earlier studies we have looked at wider set of occupations ranked by different ladders. Using the unique data set the authors have included in the study ca 7,500 return migrants while earlier studies have been based on rather small samples.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how different types of organizational culture (OC) manifest in certain corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities and to uncover how the presence of certain OC types induces changes in CSR caused by drastic shifts in the economic environment.

The analysis relies on a case study and uses qualitative and quantitative data obtained via interviews, employee survey and analysis of documents. The paper focuses on Ecoprint Ltd, a small printing house in Estonia, and analyzes its reactions to the economic downturn in 2008 and 2009 in terms of CSR. The authors then analyze the concurrence of these changes with its OC, based on a survey that relies on the Competing Values Framework.

The dominant type of OC in the organization did not predict all its CSR practices, but described rather well how adaptation in the sphere of CSR took place as a result of economic downturn. The case demonstrated that CSR activities that relate to dominant OC types are less likely to be reduced in a recession; moreover, some were even intensified. On the other hand, there were certain CSR activities that reflected less prevalent types of OC, nevertheless these were not withdrawn either.

The method used, single case study, serves as an exploratory study. The relationship between unchanged CSR activities related to less dominant OC types is not easy to interpret and needs further investigation.

There is abundant literature referring to a connection between OC and CSR, but related empirical research is hard to find. The current paper empirically explores the relationship between these concepts under the extraordinary economic situation that existed in Estonia in 2008‐2009.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how occupational mobility varies over the business cycle and how selected factors contribute to occupational mobility in different stages of the business cycle.

Using annual micro data from the Estonian Labour Force Survey (2001-2010) and implementing probit models with interaction terms, the paper investigates occupational mobility as a change of occupation in two successive years during recovery, boom and recession periods.

The analysis indicates that occupational mobility is higher during the recovery and boom periods and lower during the recession stage. The demographic characteristics (gender, marital status, knowledge of local language) influence the probability for occupational change during the recovery stage of the business cycle. The position of employees in the occupational hierarchy is significant during the recovery and boom periods. Employees working in the public sector have a lower probability for occupational change compared with private sector employees during the recession. Training has a positive effect on occupational mobility during recession. Tenure reduces the probability of occupational mobility over the whole business cycle.

The paper contributes to the literature by providing new results about the role of different factors of occupational mobility over the business cycle. This is among the few studies addressing the variation in the occupational mobility of employees from the public and private sectors. Interactions between the position of the employees in the occupational hierarchy and the ownership form of their employers and the economic sectors add to the understanding about the mechanism of occupational mobility over the business cycle stages.

Recent economic recession has highlighted the role of labour market flexibility as a key factor of competitiveness of a country. Despite the fact that labour mobility can essentially be seen as part of labour market flexibility, there is notable research gap concerning spatial mobility and other facets of labour market flexibility. The purpose of this special issue is to fill these gaps.

The papers in the special issue represent various quantitative methods and databases, whereas mainly micro data (workplace, labour force or immigrant surveys, job search portal, etc.) is used. However, the type of labour market flexibility addressed is both micro- and macro-level.

It is demonstrated that labour occupational mobility is determined by the business cycle, numerical flexibility, occupational categories, and sector. Spatial mobility may have counterintuitive effects on individual occupational mobility depending on gender and it is related to various flexibilities in the workplace. It is also suggested that different types of flexibilities on a firm level are interdependent of each other.

The special issue adds to the labour market related knowledge by integrating labour market flexibility and mobility. Individually, both phenomena have been studied before, but not much research is devoted to their inter-linkages. The special issue also contributes by examining labour market flexibility and spatial mobility in the context of different countries, economic cycles, and institutional settings.