Conference Agenda

The flexicurity paradigm generally proposes that the negative impacts of job insecurity can be compensated by generous unemployment benefits and greater employability. In this study we evaluate this principle by analysing if employability can mitigate the negative impacts of job insecurity on well-being.

To measure job insecurity, we use two subjective indicators (fear of job loss and risk of job loss over the last year) and an objective one (having a temporary employment). We assess well-being by studying three different facets that are normally negatively related to job insecurity: job satisfaction, life satisfaction and mental health. Since previous studies suggest that the moderating effects of employability and the negative impacts of job insecurity on well-being frequently differ by gender, we perform separate analyses for men and women. We apply fixed-effects models to analyse panel data from Switzerland, a country that closely reflects the flexicurity model due to its structurally low unemployment rate, its generous unemployment benefits, and its high labour demand.

Results indicate that employability does not seem to mitigate the negative impacts of any of the measures of job insecurity on job satisfaction, neither for women nor men. For life satisfaction, employability seems to reduce the negative impacts of the different measures of job insecurity on life satisfaction, but only among men. These moderating effects are not observed for women, even if they are almost as impacted by job insecurity as men are. For mental health the results are mixed: employability appears to reduce two thirds of the negative impacts of fear of job loss only for women, and about two thirds of the negative impacts of the risk of job loss over the last year, but only for men. Employability appears to mitigate almost completely the negative impacts of having a temporary employment on mental health for men, but these effects are not observed for women, for whom temporary jobs are not negatively related to mental health. Overall, the results suggest that employability can reduce some the negative impacts of job insecurity on well-being, but mostly among men: out of the six associations where subjective job insecurity had similar negative impacts on well-being for women and men, employability reduced these negative effects in three out of six occasions for men, and only in one out of six occasions for women.

The UK food supply chain, like other lower paid and lower skilled sectors, is heavily reliant on temporary agency workers (TAWs) and the voice of these precarious workers has not been adequately heard. During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, food workers in the UK were identified by the UK Government as ‘key workers’ with TAWs a vital element of this workforce.

Whilst temporary agency work has been subject to extensive research, few accounts take into consideration the view from below to consider the overall lived experiences of these workers. This is surprising and, given the significance of this form of employment, warranted further examination.

In this study I give an ethnographic account of the lived experiences of TAWs in a UK food factory, focusing on three aspects:

(i) precarious work and employment insecurity, exploring the experiences of TAWs as they seek work and then aim to maintain work.

(ii) the type of work offered by organizations and experienced by TAWs.

(iii) the multi-faceted relationships experienced by TAWs whilst at work.

The ethnographic approach that I adopted for this study combined participant observations and semi structured interviews to provide valuable insights into the work experiences of TAWs and this approach was necessary as we cannot really learn a great deal about what actually happens, or about how things work, in organizations without undertaking the intensive and close-up participative research that is central to ethnography.

By examining the lived experiences of TAWs in this way, this study makes an important contribution to the literature as follows. First, I add to our knowledge of temporary agency work by highlighting and explaining how TAWs exhibit individual agency to lessen the effects of employment insecurity. Second, many TAWs carry out intense work and this study contributes to the literature on temporary agency work by examining how the combined effect of temporality and hard work intensifies their workplace experiences. Finally, the relationships experienced by TAWs from within a blended workforce have not been adequately examined from their perspective and I contribute to the literature in this area.

Whilst blending suggests a workplace which is smooth and homogenous, I introduce the concept of the mixed-up organisation to appropriately reflect that life on the diverse factory shop floor is far more complicated.

Formal sector entry-level jobs in Mexico offer low starting salaries but substantial wage growth. This paper experimentally tests whether a six-months wage incentive can increase formal employment among secondary school graduates. Combining survey and high-frequency social security data, the paper shows that the incentive increases formal employment among vocational school graduates by 4.2 percentage points (14.5 percent) over the first two years driven by a 5 percentage point (25 percent) increase in permanent formal jobs. These employment gains are due to both extensive and intensive margin effects. Treatment effects are concentrated among youths with binding reservation wages who also tend to underestimate formal wage growth.

The paper advances a new ‘Society-Actors-Processes-Policy (SAPP) framework to aid policy makers, scholars and other actors in developing innovative forms of regulatory policy to address big societal crises.

SAPP responds to calls for greater policy and conceptual focus in work and employment research on issues that are a source of public concern (Harley and Fleming, 2021; Phan, 2021).

The research questions posed are: 1) How are policy options pertaining to big societal crises embedded in existing work and employment scholarship? What are the implications for policy makers and future research?

The following broad search string was formulated: “Global challenges” OR “societal” OR “society” OR “grand challenges” OR “crises” OR “crisis” OR “the changing nature of business” OR “the changing nature of work” OR “the changing nature of organizations” OR “contemporary challenges” OR “practical challenges”. We then searched the abstracts, keywords and titles in 18 journals classed as 4 or above in the Chartered Association for Business Schools’ (CABS) journal ranking list (Wood & Bischoff, 2020). It was decided to focus on policy recommendations/implications published in articles from September 1st 2010 to September 1st 2022 (inclusive). During this period, 13851 articles were published and 984 included our search terms.

Articles were excluded if they did not provide a clear focus on work and employment issues, which left 515 relevant articles. At the final sifting stage, articles were excluded if they did not mention explicit and/or implicit policy debates in their discussion or conclusion sections that raise implications and/or recommendations (Aguinis et al. 2021). This left 441 relevant articles, which constituted 3% of the total number of articles published between September 1st 2010 and September 1st 2022.

From our final sample of articles, we identified three main societal crises to focus on that evidenced a common thread running through the crises: ‘climate change and sustainability’; ‘technological advancement’; and ‘diversity and inclusion’.

In the findings section we evaluate the level of suggested policy intervention in the articles (e.g., organisational, national, international) and the relevant actors (e.g., organisations, employees, NGOs, policy makers, trade unions etc). We link the forms of regulatory policy to three ‘processes of change’ (the re-orientation of objectives; the re-configuration of experiences; the re-positioning of decision-making governance); three ‘policy enactment issues’ (‘disconnected from the reality of policy and practice’; ‘disengaged from the front line’; ‘detached from complexity’); and three ‘policy context spaces’ (temporal- time; geographical- location; situational- occupation, industry etc).