This paper analyses whether tertiary education of different types, i.e., academic or vocational tertiary education, leads to more or less favourable labour market outcomes. We study the problem for Switzerland, where more than two thirds of the workforce gain vocational secondary degrees and a substantial number go on to a vocational tertiary degree but only a small share gain an academic tertiary degree. As outcome variables, we examine the risk of being unemployed, monthly earnings, and variation in earnings (reflecting financial risk). We study these outcomes at career entry and later stages. Our empirical results reveal that the type of tertiary education has various effects on these outcomes. At career entry, we observe equal unemployment risk but higher average wages and lower financial risk for vocational graduates. At later career stages, we find that these higher average wages disappear and risk of unemployment becomes lower for vocational graduates. Thus, by differentiating the tertiary system into vocational and academic institutions graduates face a variety of valuable options allowing them to self-select into an educational type that best matches their individual preferences.
Building on the enactment perspective and past work on the self-fulfilling prophecy, this paper explores how organizational decline can be enacted through self-fulfilling prophecies of decline. We present two self-fulfilling prophecy-based models of organizational decline, one in which decline is enacted unintentionally through the predictions of an organization's managers, and a second in which decline is enacted unintentionally through the predictions of external constituencies. We articulate propositions that capture the dynamics of each model and that are intended as a platform for future empirical research. We also discuss the implications of our theoretical framework for future theory development on the causes of organizational decline, and offer suggestions for managers who wish to avoid organizational decline.
