Documents Guest, David E. 13 results

"Temporary employment has become a feature of the contemporary labour market, although its extent varies considerably across European countries. It is widely assumed that the experience of temporary work is likely to lower worker well-being. However, a major European study in 2005 found that temporary workers reported higher well-being than permanent workers. Since then, the financial crisis of 2008 and the resulting shedding of labour seems likely to have had a damaging effect on the well-being of temporary workers. The introductory article outlines these issues and introduces the subsequent articles in this special issue which explore the well-being and employment security of temporary workers in the aftermath of the financial crisis. In drawing them together, it is noted that temporary workers appear to have fared no worse than permanent workers. Indeed, job insecurity seems to have spread to permanent workers, particularly in the Mediterranean countries, creating a renewed emphasis on the role of employability."

"The article argues that the long-running debate between organizationally bounded and boundaryless careers has been too narrow and neglects the variety and distinctive characteristics of career boundaries. Drawing on boundary theory, it investigates the main career-relevant domains and boundaries, and the motivations and structural conditions that influence boundary crossing or having a career within a specific domain among a sample of professional pharmacists. The qualitative study shows that careers are enacted within a number of relevant domains and are shaped by a range of boundaries such that boundarylessness and embeddedness are co-existing career dimensions. It also reveals how even within a professional population careers are embedded within diverse social and cultural contexts that impose differing constraints on career mobility. The article therefore provides a fuller, more nuanced understanding of career boundaries and contemporary careers."

"This paper explores the apparent paradox that while unions exist to promote the interests and well-being of their members, UK survey evidence consistently shows that union members report lower levels of job satisfaction than non-union workers. A review and further analysis of the evidence confirms that this difference persists after controlling for other factors such as type of work. If union member dissatisfaction reflects a form of voice, then we might expect to see resulting gains. An analysis of data from the 1998 Workplace Employee Relations Survey indicates that any gains are modest. Evidence is presented to suggest that although management has become less hostile to trade unions, a degree of anti-union sentiment remains, sometimes leading to a muffling of the union voice, and this helps to account for some of the union member dissatisfaction."

"New and residual challenges related to digital technology, COVID-19, precarious employment and scientific management are a reminder of research published in the early years of Human Relations that laid the foundation for socio-technical systems theory and its later conceptual offspring, the quality of working life. Analysing the evolution, challenges, legacy and lessons of socio-technical systems and quality of working life, we develop guiding principles for the theoretical development and practical implementation of socio-technical systems and quality of working life for the 21st century. These principles are needed to optimize the benefits of new technology and improve job quality. They would enable an effective and sustained humanization of work through stakeholder involvement, inter-disciplinary partnerships and institutional support, producing positive outcomes for employees and employers as well as wider society."

"This article analyses the impact of harassment on job burnout and turnover intentions among a large sample of hospital nurses in Britain. It compares the effects of insider-initiated harassment from managers and colleagues with outsider-initiated harassment from patients and their relatives. The article also examines the effect of ethnicity and the impact of effective anti-harassment policies on job burnout and quit intentions. Results suggest firstly, that the insider or outsider characteristics of the perpetrator do help to shape the consequences of harassment for nurses and secondly, that effective anti-harassment policies do reduce turnover intentions, particularly for minority ethnic nurses."

"The relationship between HRM and performance was explored in 366 UK companies using objective and subjective performance measures and cross-sectional and longitudinal data. Using objective measures of performance, greater use of HRM is associated with lower labour turnover and higher profit per employee but not higher productivity. After controlling for previous years' performance, the association ceases to be significant. Using subjective performance estimates, there is a strong association between HRM and both productivity and financial performance. The study therefore confirms the association between HRM and performance but fails to show that HRM causes higher performance."