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The purpose of this paper is to determine employment satisfaction of middle-aged and older workers who obtain a job after their initial retirement, and describe factors affecting employment satisfaction among workers focusing on family and employment types, and their mediating effects.

This study performed a secondary data analysis on data from the Korean Longitudinal Study of Aging (fifth wave of KLoSA) of the Korea Employment Information Service. The author used data from 1,307 middle-aged and older workers who obtained a new job after leaving the previous workplace from the 2014 KLoSA, and determined their employment satisfaction, family type and employment type.

In this study, high scores were indicated in turnover intentions of the participants, and job stability presented was lowest in the subcategories of employment satisfaction. Employment type showed a significant mediation effect between dwelling type and re-employment satisfaction (p<0.05).

Middle-aged workers are a key human resource for economic growth in South Korea, which is faced with a “super aging” population. Recently, international society has encountered the same problems of low-birth rate and aging in their economically viable/or engaged. Our society and its members should realize the changes in population structure facing the world today and find effective strategies to stabilize employment among middle-aged workers. This study provides evidence for one of the differing perspectives on understanding employment turnover in middle-aged workers.

The South Korean Government could use this study’s findings in formulating a strategy concerning family types that improves re-employment satisfaction among middle-aged and older workers. Also, the path of mediation effects, such as choice of employment type, will need to apply to a strategy of work stability for middle-aged and older workers.

This paper aims to investigate the Chinese employment relationship under the framework of psychological contracts. The authors explored the effects of firm ownership (in terms of state-owned and private enterprises) and employment type (in terms of permanent and temporary employees) on employee perceptions of psychological contract. In addition, the associations between fulfilled psychological contract and various dimensions of employee attitudes were examined.

The authors adopted a questionnaire as the primary instrument to investigate the impact of firm ownership and employment type on psychological contract perceptions and outcomes. The analysis was based on a Chinese sample of a size of 363 employees.

The results indicate that state-owned employees overall reported fewer promises (employer under-obligation promised psychological contract), while private employees tended to have more promises (mutual high obligation, employer over-obligation and quasi-spot obligation promise-based psychological contract). Permanent employees reported high fulfillment (employer over-obligation, mutual high obligation and employer under-obligation fulfilled psychological contract). In contrast, temporary employees presented many promises (mutual high obligation promised psychological contract) and low fulfillment (quasi-spot fulfilled psychological contract). In general, firm ownership had weak effects on permanent and temporary employees’ perceptions of promise-based psychological contract, but no significant influence on fulfillment-based psychological contract. Moreover, psychological contract fulfillment was positively related to employees’ fairness perception and job satisfaction, while negatively related to the intention to quit. The authors failed to find comprehensive statistical support for the moderating effects of firm ownership or employment type.

The study contributes to the literature through a number of ways. First, instead of psychological contract breach, the authors use psychological contract fulfillment as a direct measure to examine the relationship between psychological contract and employees’ attitudes. Second, they investigate the effects of firm ownership on employment relationship under the psychological contract framework, enriching the institutional lens of the issue. Third, while majority of psychological contract studies concerning employment type concentrate on either permanent or temporary employees, the authors take both types into account. Fourth, they integrate perspectives of firm ownership and employment type. Finally, the authors perform the study in the Chinese context, which offers extra evidence to the body of psychological contract literature.

This paper analyses how the employment histories of cohorts born after World War II in Germany have changed. A specific focus is on the role of atypical employment in this context.

This paper uses data from the adult cohort of the National Educational Panel Study and presents descriptive evidence on employment patterns for different cohorts. In addition, a sequence analysis of employment trajectories illustrates key aspects related to the opportunities and risks of atypical employment.

Younger cohorts are characterised by acquiring more education, by entering into employment at a higher age and by experiencing atypical employment more often. The latter is associated with much higher employment of women for younger cohorts. The sequence analysis reveals that the proportion of individuals whose entry into the labour market is almost exclusively characterised by atypical employment rises significantly across the cohorts. Moreover, a substantial part of the increase in atypical employment is due to the increased participation of women, with part-time jobs or mini-jobs playing an important role in re-entering the labour market after career breaks.

The most important contribution of this article to the existing literature lies in the life course perspective taken for different birth cohorts. The findings are of great interest to the general debate about the success of the German labour market in recent decades and its implications for individual labour-market histories, but also about rising income inequality at about the same time.

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 explore the extent to which perceived financial preparedness, social retirement anxieties, and level of income influence mature aged workers' preferences to enter different retirement employment options within the contingent and the flexible work arrangements (FWA) types of bridge employment.

Data for this study was collected in 2008 using a questionnaire with 31 items. A total of 144 mature aged workers from multiple firms, aged 50 years and over, working full‐time, in the construction industry participated in the study. The collected data was analysed using correlation and regression analyses.

The results indicate that the study variables have positive and negative influences on pre‐retirees' preference for the retirement employment options within the contingent and the FWA bridge employment. It was also found that while income failed to moderate, social retirement anxieties did significantly moderate the relationship between perceived financial preparedness and the different employment options within the contingent bridge employment.

This study clearly provides practitioners and career counsellors a new insight that the work and non‐work predictors for the retirement employment options within each of the contingent and the FWA bridge employments vary between factors of perceived financial preparedness, social retirement anxieties and level of income.

In contradiction to the existing literature that “comfortable” social retirement adjustment as a determinant for bridge employment, this study's findings revealed that if pre‐retirees perceive that they are not adequately financially prepared for retirement, they would opt for bridge employment irrespective of levels of social retirement anxieties.

The employee-organization relationship (EOR) has increasingly become a focal point for researchers in organizational behavior, human resource management, and industrial relations. Literature on the EOR has developed at both the individual – (e.g. psychological contracts) and the group and organizational-levels of analysis (e.g. employment relationships). Both sets of literatures are reviewed, and we argue for the need to integrate these literatures as a means for improving understanding of the EOR. Mechanisms for integrating these literatures are suggested. A subsequent discussion of contextual effects on the EOR follows in which we suggest that researchers develop models that explicitly incorporate context. We then examine a number of theoretical lenses to explain various attributes of the EOR such as the dynamism and fairness of the exchange, and new ways of understanding the exchange including positive functional relationships and integrative negotiations. The article concludes with a discussion of future research needed on the EOR.

There is an increasing concern on the quality of jobs and productivity witnessed in the flexible employment arrangements. The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between various flexible employment arrangements and the workplace performance.

Home-based working, teleworking, flexible timing and compressed hours are the main employment types examined using the Workplace Employee Relations Survey (WERS) over the years 2004 and 2011 in Great Britain. The workplace performance is measured by two outcomes – the financial performance and labour productivity. First, the determinants of these flexible employment types are explored. Second, the ordinary least squares (OLS) method is followed. Third, an instrumental variable (IV) approach is applied to account for plausible endogeneity and to estimate the causal effects of flexible employment types on firm performance.

The findings show a significant and positive relationship between the flexible employment arrangements and the workplace performance. Education, age, wage, quality of relations between managers-employees, years of experience, the area of the market the workplace is operated and the competition are significant factors and are positively associated with the propensity of the implementation of flexible employment arrangements.

The insights derived from the study can have various profound policy implications for employees, employers and the society overall, including family-work balance, coping with family demands, improving the firm performance, reducing traffic congestion and stress among others.

It is the first study that explores the relationship between flexible employment types and workplace performance using an IV approach. This allows us to estimate the causal effects of flexible employment types and the possible associated social implications.

People with intellectual disability have a low rate of employment in Australia and internationally. Their low employment rate is set within a context of limited employment choices. Further, the most common types of work currently undertaken by people with intellectual disability – open and sheltered employment – have limitations and may not be suitable for everyone. Expanding the employment choices available represents an important way forward, but evidence is needed to guide the expansion. This paper aims to contribute to the evidence required by comparing people with intellectual disability’s experience and outcomes in open and sheltered employment to their experience and outcomes working in social enterprises, which is becoming an important alternative employment option for this group.

The paper uses the qualitative accounts of 51 people with intellectual disability to compare experiences and outcomes in open, sheltered and social enterprise employment in Australia.

The paper finds that social enterprises combine some of the benefits of open and sheltered employment and thus expand employment choice. However, the level of business/market development and opportunities for employment in social enterprises are currently limited and require further development and scale to enable social enterprises to be an option for more people with intellectual disability. Policy implications are drawn out for expanding employment choice, in particular through social enterprise employment, for people with intellectual disability.

The paper offers the first three-way comparison of open, sheltered and social enterprise employment for people with intellectual disability, contributing to both the disability employment and social enterprise literature.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the extent and determinants of the so-called precarious employment across Europe and using different measures and based on individual’s self-assessment.

Data on over two million workers across Europe (EU-15) from the European Union Labour Force Survey are utilised and a Heckman selection approach is adopted.

About one tenth of the total European workforce is in employment relationships that could be related to precariousness. The sources of precariousness are mainly involuntary part-time and temporary work. Less prominent as a source of precariousness is job insecurity related to fear of job loss. Vulnerable groups are found to have a higher risk of precariousness while significant country variations indicate that precariousness cannot be examined in isolation of the national context. Finally, signals of previous employment inability, such as lack of past working experience, as well as the state of labour market significantly increase the risk of precarious work.

The present study utilises a large-scale survey in order to investigate the incidence of precarious employment in a harmonised way and produce results that are comparable across EU-15 countries.