The Youth Employment Observatory (OEJ) is part of the DINÂMIA'CET-Iscte (Centre for Studies on Socio-Economic Change and the Territory) and is funded by FCT - Foundation for Science and Technology. The OEJ aims to create a repository of content and research dedicated exclusively to the youth labour market, taking advantage of synergies and spaces for interaction between DINÂMIA'CET’s research projects dedicated to studying labour. (See “partnerships” for information on the research projects currently underway). The Observatory focuses on three areas of study - youth unemployment, quality of youth employment, and labour market policies directed at young labour market participants. The project's central objective is to produce publications that highly impact society, namely reports and policy briefs, and to provide regularly updated key data.

Are employers active players in the process of nurturing and driving skill supply by younger university graduates? And how do they interact with Universities in shaping graduates' skills? Firms rely upon timely availability of skills to compete and grow, while workers depend on their skills to access jobs and, more importantly, high quality jobs. The purpose of this research programme (RP) is to examine employers' strategies to access the skills they need by either recruiting skilled employees from the labour market (LM) or by training their internal labour force. This choice reflects the make-or-buy alternative typical of all production factors, yet the centrality of human resources and the uncertainty surrounding the outcomes of programmes targeted at their development turn this choice into a critical driver of firm survival. Due to the crucial roles played by graduates from higher education (HE) institutions in shaping growth and innovation processes, this RP focuses on HE under- and post-graduates. When do employers prefer ready-to-work over ready-to learn graduates? What individual characteristics encourage internal training? Which solutions may support university-to-work transitions and consequently reduce or avoid skill problems? The underlying assumption is that the match between skill demand and skill supply depends on the ability of HE institutions to provide students with appropriate skills but also on firms' human resource policies and practices. To account for the intertwined roles of HE institutions and employers this RP explores both anticipative and remedial strategies and pursues five specific goals: 1) identify the employability skills for younger HE graduates in national and international LMs; 2) examine firms' strategies to access and develop required skills; 3) explore employers' expectations from HE institutions; 4) explore how employers' skill policies affect job quality of younger graduates; and 5) explore the relationship between HE and firm...

Project goals: This project addresses the role of emerging energy technologies in the transition to an environmentally sustainable paradigm. It focuses on the functions played by new technology-intensive firms (NTIFs) - academic or corporate spin-offs - in the process of developing research-based renewable energy technologies, and introducing them into the market, as well as on their interactions with other key actors.Methodology:Using a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods, we will address the commercialization process of new technologies, with a view to understanding:1) the role of firms originating from academic institutions or from established companies in the market introduction of renewable energy technologies;2) the type of alliances and networks they establish and the nature and behaviour of other actors they engage with (research organizations; large energy established firms, etc.);3) the impact of policies, through incentives or through the creation of a legal framework and technical infrastructures and norms;4) the impact of institutional changes, both policy induced and deriving from social behaviour changes. Our final objective is thus to uncover the roles that emerge as a result of the strategies identified their relative prevalence and the specific configurations they assume in the energy area. The impact of particular institutional contexts will be assessed through international comparisons (with Netherlands and UK). This will enable us to typify the roles played by NTIFs in the transition to a sustainable energy regime. The results of this project will contribute to on-going research on how to achieve a regime shift, as well as to an understanding of how these processes are taking place in the Portuguese energy system, providing insights to policy formulation and supporting collective action by environmentally active social groups.

Researchers’ mobility is a key political issue at national and European levels. The project contributes to the advancement of knowledge on the nature and implications of scientific mobility in small developed countries, providing insights that can support policy formulation. Centered on a theoretical question about the role of scientific mobility on knowledge circulation and focusing the case of scientists in Portugal, the project develops a multi-dimension methodological approach to address outward and inward mobility: 1) to characterise mobility flows in terms of scale and contents and relationships with Portuguese S&T development; 2) to identify typologies of individual trajectories and experiences to understanding mobility processes; 3) to explore the implications of different modes of mobility for knowledge circulation; 4) to map the public debate on mobility.

Project goals were to achieve a better understanding of the nature of and reasons for the diversity among research-based spin-offs, through: the development of an conceptual model inspired by resource-based and neo-institutionalist theories that enables the identification of factors that explain such diversity; its application to develop a taxonomy of research-based spin-offs; a preliminary empirical validation of this taxonomy. Methodology was based on the development and empirical validation of companies’ taxonomy based on data from research spin-offs companies through a questionnaire and a few case studies. Integration and harmonization of data about existing spin-off companies in the participating countries, along with the gathering of new data, with a view of building an international database.

Our goal was to understand the role of social networks of scientific entrepreneurs in the creation and diffusion of knowledge in biotechnology, with a view of contributing to the design of S&T policies regarding the interface between science and industry appropriate to intermediate development economies. There were five different stages: literature revision, two empirical research stages, a computerized simulation tryouts stage and, finally, conclusions and consequences for the implementation of public policies.