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The purpose of this study was to explore the relation between diversity in work group members’ employment arrangements and the actual performance of the work groups.

A field study was conducted on 31 work groups in a public plant belonging to the industrial sector that constitute a unique data set. The 441 employees are contracted under four significantly different employment arrangements and are mixed together in heterogeneous work groups, but perform similar tasks.

The results indicated that the influence of employment arrangement diversity on work group performance is best represented as variation, and work arrangements diversity is positively correlated with improved work group performance.

The study design prevented assessment of employees’ opinions. Rather, the authors used objective type of employment arrangements as the basis for calculating diversity as separation. Using mean Euclidean distance as suggested by Harrison and Klein (2007), the authors arbitrarily set the distance between two different employment arrangements as one.

The research results help in the stages of recruiting, structuring and development and application of necessary work team. Formal emphasis of diversity in work arrangements improves performance.

To the authors’ knowledge, this is one of the first studies using unique data set analyzing real-life team diversity and performance in the public sector. The research highly contributes to organizational decision-making processes regarding the importance of incorporating non-standard work arrangements in organizations. Management’s implementation of formal diversity seems to alleviate the negative sides of diversity and increases its positive performance effects.

This paper analyses the relation between occupational characteristics and the probability that a worker in the Netherlands has a false self-employed arrangement instead of an employee arrangement. These are arrangements in which self-employed workers perform tasks in the hierarchy of the firm as if they were employees.

Data from the Dutch Labour Force Survey is used to analyse the relationship between occupational skill, routine and wage level and the probability to be a false self-employed or a standard or non-standard employee.

The results show that the probability to be false self-employed decreases slightly with the skill level of the occupation, but there is no evidence that false self-employment is more likely in low paid, routine occupations. Workers in the lowest paid occupations are more likely to have a non-standard contract as an employee. False self-employment arrangements are more likely in the (lower) middle paid occupations. Finally, the results show that working in the highest paid occupations increases the probability of being in a false self-employed arrangement, but only in arrangements that are characterised by economic and organizational dependency. These are arrangements with financial dependency on one client for income combined with dependency on this client on when and where to work.

This study makes an important contribution to the literature on identifying vulnerable self-employed workers as well as to the literature on mechanisms behind the growth of solo self-employment.

Traditionally, hiring indefinite duration contract employees has been the dominant method used by U.S. organizations to staff their labor needs. Indefinite duration contract employees, hereafter referred to as “regular” employees, have three defining characteristics: (1) they are hired directly as employees of the organization whose work they perform; (2) the duration of the employment relationship is unspecified, with a mutual expectation that it will continue as long as it is mutually satisfactory; and (3) the employment relationship provides ongoing – as opposed to intermittent – work. When their demand for labor increases, organizations staffed exclusively by regular employees can respond by having their employees work overtime or by hiring additional regular employees. Conversely, when their demand for labor decreases, such organizations can either maintain “inventories” of excess regular employees or reduce labor inputs by laying-off or reducing the work hours of regular employees.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of recent outsourcing and public‐private partnership (PPPs) arrangements on the consistency of professional employment in health care.

A case study methodology is applied.

The paper finds that multiple arrangements for employment within the ISTC creates numerous sources for inconsistency in employment: across the workplace, within professional groups and with national frameworks for health care employment. These are identified as having implications for organisational outcomes, threatening the stability of current partnerships, and partially stymieing intended behavioural change.

The study is a single case study of an independent sector treatment centre. Future research is required to investigate wider trends of employment in heterogeneous outsourcing and PPP arrangements.

The paper informs both managers and clinical professionals of the unanticipated complexities and practical challenges that can arise in partnerships and outsourcing arrangements.

The paper presents a unique in‐depth investigation of employment within recently established ISTCs, and highlights important employment changes for the core health care workforce and high‐status professionals in the evolving health care organisational landscape.

This paper addresses the impact of institutional industrial relations arrangements at organisation level on the extent and pattern of utilisation of different forms of employment flexibility. In particular, it evaluates the extent to which factors such as union recognition, union density and union influence impact on the diffusion of different forms of flexibility in five European countries (Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Spain and the UK). In assessing the impact of institutional industrial arrangements at organisation level, this paper focuses on three particular types of employment flexibility: temporary working, fixed term contracts and job sharing. A number of hypotheses are identified to help explore the impact, if any, of unionisation, sector and country of origin on the extent of utilisation of both management and employee‐driven flexibility forms.

There is growing political interest in new forms of precarious self‐employment located in a “grey area” between employment and self‐employment. A wide range of concepts has been used to debate this issue, and this paper aims to clarify these debates through the concept of involuntary self‐employment.

The paper reviews the empirical, conceptual and legal‐policy approaches to involuntary self‐employment via three country case studies in Finland, Germany and the UK. A range of relevant domestic academic literature, articles in the media, selected key expert interviews, and policy and legal documents are employed.

Conceptual clarity regarding involuntary self‐employment is achieved through a discussion of two aspects of the phenomenon: the characteristics of involuntariness from a motives‐based perspective, and the legal/economic perspectives and policy issues. The motives‐based analysis argues that involuntariness as such does not seem to have severe implications on the individuals' well being, given that the individual earns a satisfactory livelihood from her or his business activities. The discussion of the characteristics of and regulation related to working arrangements in the “grey area” between employment and self‐employment, where the self‐employed individual is strongly dependent on the principal, shows that it is very difficult to regulate quasi self‐employment without harming “voluntary” forms of enterprise and inter‐firm cooperation at the same time.

The key contribution of the paper is to facilitate a foundation for subsequent empirical research and policy development.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether permanent workers with standard employment that is protected, and casual workers with long‐term employment that is not protected but performing the same core jobs, along with permanent workers side‐by‐side in the same work setting, exhibit different work‐related outcomes.

Permanent workers and casual workers holding core jobs with long‐term employment responded to the survey questionnaire. Logistic regression was used for the data analysis.

Job satisfaction, procedural justice and work performance were found to be important work‐related outcomes that discriminate between permanent and casual workers.

Although consequences of different employment arrangements would be of interest to many organisations world wide, on the one hand, little empirical research has compared work‐related outcomes of permanent workers with casuals (holding the same core functions with long‐term employment) or permanent workers with workers in any form of nonstandard employment arrangement. On the other hand, the literature on the use of labour flexibility strategies is mainly concentrated on developed market economies. If organisations use casual workers alongside permanent workers in core jobs, there is a need for examining implications of such practices. The findings of this study establish baseline data that would be a source of general guidance in stimulating future research in this area.

In this paper, we argue that work should be recognized as “commons.” We call for a new approach to how managers define their role and responsibility regarding the problem of work flexibility and of its societal implications. We argue that, in the global and digitized economy, it is in the best interest of all the company’s stakeholders that managers choose combinations of work arrangements and human resource policies considering the externalities of these decisions. Managers’ responsibility spans to the costs and risks that the broader social system of organizational stakeholders will bear because of their decisions. When labor market institutions are “thin,” it is management’s responsibility to contribute structuring and shaping them, so that the interests of workers, independent of the work arrangements, are considered.

The aim of this paper is to analyse the experience of female part-time professionals with employee and managerial positions with the utilisation of flexible work arrangements in a corporate environment in the country with a full-time dominated work culture. The data represent a rare case study of the work environment in a Czech branch of one multinational company. This paper focusses on the position of female employees working part-time in professional and managerial positions. The reason for such an arrangement is their attempt to combine career and care for pre-school children. This paper evaluates the effects of flexible work policies in an environment where part-time work for female professionals is rarely available and, therefore, precious. In particular, this paper discusses conditions under which these arrangements are available and its impact on gender equality.

The paper represents a rare case-study of an organisational environment. The seven analysed interviews derive from a larger study on the corporate environment which included 35 interviews and a series of participatory observations. In the analysis, the following questions are discussed: What is the position of employees working within flexible working arrangements in a specific corporate culture? Which aspects of flexible working arrangements affect the professional recognition and evaluation of the employees? To what extent and how do flexible working arrangements affect employee satisfaction with their working and private lives?

The data reveal the diverse and often subtle forms of discrimination and exploitation of working mothers, who use the flexible working arrangement as a work-family reconciliation strategy. Female employees working with alternative working arrangements do not have equal bargaining power in comparison to other employees, regardless of whether they are professionals, and sometimes in managerial positions. At the formal level, the part-time professionals are restricted in pay and in access to the company benefits. In the informal relations within the workplace, their work lacks of sufficient recognition of colleagues and superiors. Overall, part-time work for female professionals and managers leads to an entrapment between the needs of their family and the expectations of their employer.

The research reveals the practical limitation in introducing policies the work-life reconciliation policies. The results show the need to focus on promoting better conditions for employees working part-time. Also, it shows that managerial and highly demanding professional positions can be executed on a part-time basis if the work environment is open towards accepting this arrangement. Moreover, the findings outline the possibilities of developing workplace practices in the Czech Republic in a woman-friendly direction.

Specific legislative arrangements should be enacted, providing better protection for employees in non-standard employment. At the same time, the incentives for employers to enable part-time working arrangements should be provided.

The amount of research on female professionals working part-time or from home is rather limited in context of the post-communist countries. The paper discusses the “double” tokenism of the women working in the leadership positions and at the same time in flexible working arrangements in the full-time working culture.

As demographic changes impact the workplace, governments, organizations, and workers are looking for ways to sustain optimal working lives at higher ages. Workplace flexibility has been introduced as a potential way workers can have more satisfying working lives until their retirement ages. This chapter presents a critical review of the literature on workplace flexibility across the lifespan. It discusses how flexibility has been conceptualized across different disciplines, and postulates a definition that captures the joint roles of employer and employee in negotiating workplace flexibility that contributes to both employee and organization benefits. Moreover, it reviews how flexibility has been theorized and investigated in relation to older workers. The chapter ends with a future research agenda for advancing understanding of how workplace flexibility may enhance working experiences of older workers, and in particular focuses on the critical investigation of uses of flexibility in relation to older workers.