Centre for Financial Innovation

Hafid Ballafkih appointed tenure-track professor

14 Feb 2022 18:26 | Centre for Economic Transformation

Hafid Ballafkih has been appointed tenure-track professor of ‘Labour and Human Capital in Transition’ in The Work Lab research group. A tenure-track professor is an AUAS position for talented postdoctoral lecturers/researchers to work towards a permanent appointment as a professor over a five-year period. Hafid has worked at The Work Lab for many years, first as a senior researcher and more recently as a senior lecturer-researcher. The theme of his tenure-track professorship is very topical: Labour and Human Capital in Transition.

Hafid researches transition-driven challenges in the field of labour and human capital in organisations and the labour market, in order to use these insights to formulate impactful interventions for professional practice. The underlying principle is to use the human capital available in organisations and society in a sustainable and future-proof manner. In his new role as tenure-track professor, Hafid will spend the next five years deepening and expanding his research to create the new research group Labour and Human Capital in Transition.

Work is as common as the air we breathe. Work provides us with a sense of purpose, self-fulfilment, income, social relationships, freedom, independence and more. Traditionally, work has been an important factor in material and immaterial well-being at both the individual and collective level. In a way, work, labour and human capital shape the modern human, the labour market and society. Because the labour market is complex and constantly changing, knowledge about these aspects is important.

The research will focus on various challenges, including:

  • better use and alignment of human capital in organisations, the labour market and society;
  • developing new employment relationships and forms of social security that do justice to the sustainability of work;
  • attention to the quality and value of work;
  • dealing with diversity in organisations and in the labour market.

These challenges translate into various human capital agendas and issues. For example: What impact do digitalisation, automation and artificial intelligence have on the organisation of work, competences and inequality? Which competences (21st century skills) do employers consider important in the future labour market and how can education and the government contribute to the formation of these competences? What organisational, labour market and educational innovations and solidarity mechanisms are needed to reduce social and economic inequality in the current and future employment system?
Hafid hopes to answer these and related questions in the years ahead via his research.

He will also examine related issues touching on new economic models such as the ‘doughnut economy’. These new models lead to new insights into the required transformations, which can lead to the development of new innovations, future-oriented recommendations and products, all of which have an impact on the labour market, for employers, employees, education and the government.

Hafid leads the Labour and Human Capital in Transition, which is part of The Work Lab, and has been a knowledge partner both within and outside the education sector for some time. The Work Lab has strong ties to the HRM and Business Administration programmes as well as to research institutes such as the Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Labour Studies (AIAS-HSI/UvA), the Amsterdam Centre for Inequality Studies (UvA) and the professors’ Labour Platform Network (Breed Platform Arbeid) . In addition, the research group works with various players from different public and private organisations, such as the City of Amsterdam, BAM-infra, the general employers’ association AWVN, House of Skills, Saxion University of Applied Sciences, HAN University of Applied Sciences and the Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research (TNO).