Search results

Scholars often suggest that institutionalized employee voice reduces turnover as an alternative to exit when employees are dissatisfied. Paradoxically, Denmark presents a case of high union density and thus high institutionalized employee voice, yet high turnover rates. To explore the Danish turnover paradox, this chapter looks at the macro-societal contextual factors impacting turnover rates in the Danish labor market. Institutional characteristics such as the flexicurity model (i.e., a welfare state model with proactive labor market policy; a portmanteau of flexibility and security), legal frameworks (i.e., relatively lax labor market regulations), and cultural factors (i.e., a culture of equality and collective collaborative structures) are all relevant to understand the high turnover rates in Denmark. The authors first overview the general trends and figures on turnover in Denmark and then examine the Danish institutional, legal, and cultural factors as they relate to the high turnover rates in the Danish labor market. Finally, the authors summarize and discuss the findings and consider their implications for research and practice related to employee turnover in the Nordics and beyond.

The growing incidence of precarious employment across many sectors is a serious challenge for a developing country like India. Neo-liberal arguments justify precarity as essential for the development of the free market economy and advocate realigning human resource practices with an ever-changing business environment and labor cost conditions. This chapter seeks to identify the determinants and dynamics surrounding precarity of workers engaged in temporary employment in India. It uses the unique Employment and Unemployment Survey data set published by the National Sample Survey Organisation of Government of India for two time periods 2009–2010 (66th Round) and 2011–2012 (68th Round) to bring out the dimensions of precarity and identify the determinants (both micro- and macro-levels) of participation in temporary employment. We find that precarious employment is most likely to affect the young, women, non-union members, those belonging to minority and socially deprived communities with low land holding and low educational status. Precarious employment is also most pronounced in states where labor-intensive industries are exposed to global import competition and where labor laws are rigid. The chapter concludes by discussing the implications of these findings for the economic and social policies that Indian governments have adopted in recent years.

This essay explores the relationship between neo-liberal transformation in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and globalization in the region. It starts with an overview of the increasing level of globalization activities in the CEE countries. The first section of this essay also shows remarkable cross-country diversity among the CEE countries regarding the extent to which their citizens participate in four aspects of globalization, outbound tourism, citizens working abroad, students studying abroad, and internet use. The second section of the essay identifies three ways in which neo-liberalism could affect citizens’ participation in globalization activities. A direct impact of neo-liberalism on globalization could be expected through the spread of similar neo-liberal economic policies and practices in CEE, which would then create the conditions for making citizens in the region more likely to get involved in globalization. Indirectly, neo-liberalism is expected to (1) increase self-reliance among citizens and (2) reduce the level of government spending on social programs, such as education and health care, thus creating less attractive social conditions in each country. The analysis in section three of this essay shows conflicting evidence about the linkages between neo-liberalism and globalization in Central and Eastern Europe. Increased labor-flexibility, one of the most pronounced aspects of neo-liberalism, is associated with reduced participation in globalization activities. The indirect impact of neo-liberalism, however, is quite pronounced. Neo-liberalism is positively associated with the extent of self-reliance among the CEE citizens, yet it also leads to reduced government spending on healthcare and education. Both reduced reliance on the state and reduced spending for these programs, on the other hand are associated with an increase in globalization activities of CEE citizens.

This paper aims to identify the relative contribution of the business cycle and structural factors to the development of part-time employment in the 15 Member States of the European Union before the 2004 enlargement (EU-15) over the 1980s and 1990s. To do so, it exploits both cross-sectional and time series variations in available data over the past two decades.

Key results include the business cycle that is found to exert a short-term negative effect on part-time employment developments, although this effect fades away over the two-decade period considered. This finding is consistent with firms utilising part-time employment as a means of adjusting their labour force to economic conditions. Correspondingly, involuntary part-time employment is found to be counter-cyclical, being higher in troughs of economic activity. Splitting our sample reveals a very significant effect of the business cycle on the rate of part-time work for young and male prime-age workers. Conversely, the effect is very weak for women and insignificant for older workers.

Institutions and other structural factors are also found to be significant, longer run determinants of the rate of part-time employment. Changes in legislation affecting part-time employment are found to have a strong and positive impact on part-time employment developments. Moreover, employment protection legislation is positively correlated with the part-time employment rate (PTR), which is consistent with the use of part-time work as a tool for enhancing flexibility in the presence of rigid labour markets. Less robust evidence suggests the presence of unemployment traps for some potential part-time workers. Cross-country evidence also indicates that the lower labour costs borne by firms when employing part-time workers have a large and positive influence on the PTR. Overall, a contribution analysis shows that the main structural and institutional variables generally explain the development in the part-time rate in the EU countries fairly well, while this is obviously not the case in the United States.

This article addresses the claim, particularly popular in the 2000s and implicitly resting on a segmentation view of the labour market, that a flexible labour market-driven immigration policy (within the EU as well as from outside), often associated to a ‘Canadian model’, would respond to the economic needs of continental European countries.

A comparative historical approach is applied, including analysis of historical series of unemployment and migration data and a qualitative analysis of secondary sources on Germany, Spain and Canada, selected as best representatives of different labour market and immigration regimes. The research asks to what extent, and how, immigration has been used as a ‘buffer’ for labour market uncertainty.

Against ideas of a ‘Canadian’ model advertised in Europe (e.g. Germany), the historical and quantitative analysis shows that Canada itself has moved from short-term labour market-driven immigration policies to more long-term approaches. In fact, there has been a stronger labour market-migration link in Spain, but not without problems,

The article is a small-N comparison of critical cases, that is most different labour market models. Major demographic and geographic differences exist between the three countries, which raises even more scepticism about the suitability of a Canadian model in Europe.

The policy implications are centred on the detected paradox of labour market-driven immigration policies: in order to be sustainable, they need to have a long-term orientation and involve some degree of social integration policies.

The article adds to comparative studies of migration policies through a stronger link to labour market analysis and in particular issues of uncertainty and segmentation.

An issue that is becoming yet more relevant to modern manufacturers is that of flexibility. As life cycles become shorter a manufacturing firm can easily be left with redundant stock and dated processes. In Taiwan this issue has been addressed at several levels, this case study describes one such project. A Taiwanese academic conducted a study, gaining business acceptance of a hierarchical set of theoretical flexibility factors, then rearranging these via pictorial representations of fuzzy logic-derived plane surfaces, and finally re-presenting them to business as a set of ordered propositions designed to identify the key factors contributing to flexibility. The learning points relate, first, to the empirical facts uncovered about the specific factors that have a major bearing on manufacturing flexibility. These factors are, of course, specific to Taiwan and the current environment there. Second, though, is the more enduring illustration of a mixed-method case approach; where interviews, fuzzy logic analytical methods, and pictorial representation of the fuzzy logic output all combine to give clear guidance to managers of an industrial sector under stress, and to the policy makers who exert significant control over their environment.

The article conceptualizes the dilemma between exploration and exploitation for flexible knowledge workers. At a time when work is fragmented and society is individualized, we consider, besides the strategies of organizations, also those of workers and the ways in which they move among organizations in an attempt to ‘get by’ between increased margins of autonomy and a lack of the resources necessary to pursue their passions and to fulfil their projects. Through analysis of the life stories of flexible knowledge workers and their relationships with the organizations for which they work, the article illustrates how flexible knowledge workers handle the tension between exploration and exploitation and how organizations resist their attempts. The purpose is to interpret the pervasiveness of individualization processes that prompt individuals to think of themselves as organizations, while human resource management claim that people are their most valuable resource but treat them as disposable workers.

The chapter elaborates a critical theoretical narrative about the political economy of European capitalism. It illustrates how precariousness has been exacerbated by the impact of the global financial crisis and the emergence of a new system of European governance. Theoretical accounts in the sociology of work and labor studies have demonstrated the complexity of the outcomes and widely discussed the role of national labor market institutions and employment policies and practices, political ideology, and cultural frameworks impinging upon precarious work as a multidimensional concept. The chapter’s core concern is to illustrate how shifts in power resources, and particularly the weakening and deinstitutionalization of organized labor relative to capital, has acted as a central social condition that has brought about precariousness during the years leading up to and following the 2007–2008 crisis. In so doing, the chapter aims to overcome the existing theoretical accounts of precariousness which have often been limited by one or another variant of “methodological nationalism,” thereby exploring the transnational apparatuses that are emerging across national economies to date, and which impinge upon the structures and experiences that workers exhibit in an age of growing marketization.

The influx of migrant workers from Central and Eastern Europe over the last decade represents the largest migratory flows to Norway in history and an unprecedented supply shock to parts of the Norwegian labour market. This article reviews existing research and summarises the findings in terms of (1) the volume, direction and temporal patterns of migration flows; (2) the economic integration of new labour migrants; (3) the impacts of labour migration on wages, employment, skills, and social organisation of work in affected industries and (4) the political and institutional responses to rising labour migration. The article concludes by discussing the overall long-term consequences of labour migration, particularly with regard to social inequality in Norway.

Decreased regulation of part-time work is one way a country responds to high rates of unemployment. Proponents of deregulation argue that a more flexible labor market is required to allow labor markets to clear. A more traditional response to high unemployment is change in monetary policy, where interest rates are lowered to stimulate the economy and increase rates of employment. Both policies have been tried in Europe, a good place to study the effects of the two policy responses, both because European unemployment has been high and because the trade off between monetary policy and the deregulation of part time work has varied from country to country. The establishment of the European monetary union (EMU) in 1999 created a natural experiment in which any one country’s ability to adjust its monetary policy was curtailed, creating pressure for deregulatory policies to come into play (Aaronovitch & Grahl, 1997; Pisani-Ferry, 1998).