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Good Jobs, Bad Jobs provides an insightful analysis of how and why precarious employment is gaining ground in the labor market and the role these developments have played in the decline of the middle class. Kalleberg shows that by the 1970s, government deregulation, global competition, and the rise of the service sector gained traction, while institutional protections for workers—such as unions and minimum-wage legislation—weakened. Together, these forces marked the end of postwar security for American workers. The composition of the labor force also changed significantly; the number of dual-earner families increased, as did the share of the workforce comprised of women, non-white, and immigrant workers. Of these groups, blacks, Latinos, and immigrants remain concentrated in the most precarious and low-quality jobs, with educational attainment being the leading indicator of who will earn the highest wages and experience the most job security and highest levels of autonomy and control over their jobs and schedules. Kalleberg demonstrates, however, that building a better safety net—increasing government responsibility for worker health care and retirement, as well as strengthening unions—can go a long way toward redressing the effects of today’s volatile labor market. There is every reason to expect that the growth of precarious jobs—which already make up a significant share of the American job market—will continue. Good Jobs, Bad Jobs deftly shows that the decline in U.S. job quality is not the result of fluctuations in the business cycle, but rather the result of economic restructuring and the disappearance of institutional protections for workers. Only government, employers and labor working together on long-term strategies—including an expanded safety net, strengthened legal protections, and better training opportunities—can help reverse this trend.

This article examines nonstandard employment and precariousness in four Nordic countries (Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Norway). Drawing on data from the Labour Force Survey from 1995 to 2015, the article investigates and compares recent developments of nonstandard employment in the countries and analyzes whether fixed-term contracts, temporary agency work, marginal part-time work and solo self-employment have precarious elements (measured as income or job insecurity). We conclude that nonstandard employment has remained rather stable in all four countries over time. However, although nonstandard employment seems to be largely integrated in the Nordic labor markets, it still entails precarious elements in certain countries in particular. Norway and Denmark stand out as having less insecure labor markets, while Finland and Sweden have more precariousness associated with nonstandard employment. We argue that these differences are explained by differences in the institutional contexts in the countries.

This article studies the gender gap in job satisfaction and argues that the observed gender difference is a consequence of the heterogeneity in work orientations between men and women. Using data from the 2006 Skills Survey, the analysis yields three major findings. The first shows that women, either in full-time or part-time employment, report significantly higher levels of job satisfaction than men. Secondly, work orientations are closely associated with one’s job satisfaction and their relationships vary significantly across men, women full-time and part-time workers. Finally and most importantly, the observed gender satisfaction differential is eliminated once work orientations are taken into consideration.

Using rich administrative data on unemployed welfare recipients in Germany and propensity score matching, the author analyses the effects of participating in four major active labour market programmes (ALMPs) on various dimensions of job quality. In Germany, welfare recipients may suffer from poor job quality because they are forced to accept any reasonable job offer. However, few studies consider the effects of participation in ALMPs on job quality. The results imply that participation in a programme not only increases the probability of taking jobs but also increases the probability of holding a high-quality job for some dimension of job quality. In particular, further vocational training is very effective in terms of job quality for West German women. Thus, job centres should focus on the activation of unemployed welfare recipients.

Nonstandard employment relations-such as part-time work, temporary help agency and contract company employment, short-term and contingent work, and independent contracting-have become increasingly prominent ways of organizing work in recent years. Our understanding of these nonstandard work arrangements has been hampered by inconsistent definitions, often inadequate measures, and the paucity of comparative research. This chapter reviews the emerging research on these nonstandard work arrangements. The review emphasizes the multidisciplinary nature of contributions to this field, including research by a variety of sociologists, economists, and psychologists. It also focuses on cross-national research, which is needed to investigate how macroeconomic, political, and institutional factors affect the nature of employment relations. Areas for future research are suggested.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to elicit young economists’ job preferences through the use of a choice experiment (CE). Design/methodology/approach A CE conducted at a total of five universities in Spain, the Czech Republic and Germany. After estimating a random parameter logit model, the monetary value of the willingness to accept a specific job attribute is simulated. Findings The most important job characteristic, consistent across countries and universities, is a long-term career prospect at the company. Originality/value This is the first CE conducted on business and economics students’ job preferences in three European countries. Using the same survey instrument allows for the comparison of students’ job preferences across countries and also between private and public universities.

Work values characterise employees’ goals in organisations across situations and influence employees’ work behaviour. Due to demographic change and the shortage of skilled workers in many industrialised countries, the importance of organisational commitment increases. Building on previous research on the value-commitment relation, we develop hypotheses on relationships of intrinsic, extrinsic and especially altruistic work values (which to date have seen little research) with affective, normative and continuance commitment. Based on an analysis of employee data from Germany (N=1,978), we find positive effects of the presence of altruistic work values on all types of commitment. Employees with strong altruistic work values are particularly loyal and organisation-oriented. We argue that the pure consideration of intrinsic and extrinsic work values largely and unjustifiably excludes the social orientation of employees at work, thereby squandering organisational development potential. Taking into account employees’ work values and particularly offering opportunities to live altruistic work values can be seen as a potential for increasing employees’ organisational commitment.

Traditional human resource management (HRM) research can hardly relate to today's developments in the world of work. Organizational boundaries are blurred because of the complexity due to globalization, digitalization, and demographic changes. In practice, new ways of organizing work can be found that depend on the specifics of the work situation. In this paper, we build on the economics of convention (EC) to elaborate on the current challenges HRM scholarship is confronted with and provide a theoretical lens that goes beyond the tension between market and bureaucracy principles in actual employment settings. We apply EC’s situationalist methodology to examples of the challenging coordination of flexibility in the workplace. We explain two hybrid forms of coordination – compromises and local arrangements – and highlight the dynamics of employment practices in organizations related to these forms. Thereby, we show that different modes of coordination in employment are applied in a fluctuating manner that depends on the specific situations. In doing so, we further seek to remind HRM scholars of the fruitfulness of the pragmatist perspective in analyzing work practices, as well as extending its conceptual toolkit for future analysis.

This article brings together two research fields: work-related training and highperformance work practices (HPWP). We estimate models of both the determinants and the impact of training. Our models of the determinants of training confirm previous research: age, education, contract, tenure, and firm size all influence training. Several components of HPWP are associated with a higher probability of training, specifically general (non-firm-specific) training. Participation in general training is associated with higher earnings, as is involvement in highly participative and consultative working arrangements, and performance reward systems. These patterns of training and returns to training are broadly consistent with HPWP approaches and represent a challenge to human capital theory. We used propensity score matching techniques and Rosenbaum bounds to test for selection in our models of both training and wages.

This paper gives an overview of the transformation of the German labour market since the mid-1990s with a special focus on the changing patterns of labour market segmentation or 'dualisation' of employment in Germany. While labour market duality in Germany can partially be attributed to labour market reforms promoting, in particular, non-standard forms of employment and allowing for an expansion of low pay, structural changes in the economy as well as strategic choices by employers and social partners also play a prominent role. Our main argument is that the liberalization of non-standard contracts has contributed to the expansion of overall labour market inclusion and job growth in Germany and that at least some forms of non-standard work provide stepping stones into permanent regular jobs. Atypical contracts do not necessarily undermine the dominance of standard employment relationships and job quality in this primary segment but rather form a supplementary part of employment in sectors and occupations that depend on more flexible and maybe cheaper forms of labour.