Digitalisation and the use of algorithms have raised concerns over the future of work, the gig economy being identified by some as particularly concerning. In this article, we draw on 70 interviews ...in addition to participant observations to highlight the role of gig economy platforms in producing a novel form of reputational insecurity. This insecurity is generated by platforms disrupting the traditional operation of industry reputation in freelance markets. We highlight three areas of transformation (recognition, power relations and transparency) in which platforms disrupt the social regulation of reputation and thus algorithmically amplify uncertainty. We also detail how workers individually and collectively attempt to re-embed reputation within interpersonal relations to reduce this novel insecurity.
Recent efforts to understand the significance of precarious work have been limited in at least two important respects. One is the neglect of the ideological constructs that workers are led to embrace ...concerning the employment relation, and the other is the undertheorized nature of much research in this field. To address these limits, the authors adopt a two-pronged strategy in this article. In empirical terms, the authors focus on an important source of popular thinking about work: the career advice genre, which has recently evolved into a growing literature on “personal branding.” In theoretical terms, the authors appeal to Foucault’s theory of governmentality in order to understand how and why workers respond to personal branding discourses. Data are drawn from two linked qualitative studies bearing on workers employed in distinct settings: freelance journalists in Paris and New York (N = 101) and a broader set of white-collar employees who have faced market adversity in Boston (N = 62). Findings reveal that personal branding discourse has become both prevalent and potent, encouraging many workers to conform to what Foucault referred to as the “enterprising self.” Yet the authors also find that workers respond to personal branding in a multiplicity of ways, some of which Foucault left unaddressed. The article thus finds qualified support for Foucault’s arguments but identifies issues—especially that of agency and resistance—which stand in need of additional elaboration.
Precarious work in the United States is defined by economic and temporal dimensions. A large literature documents the extent of low wages and limited fringe benefits, but research has only recently ...examined the prevalence and consequences of unstable and unpredictable work schedules. Yet practices such as on-call shifts, last minute cancellations, and insufficient work hours are common in the retail and food-service sectors. Little research has examined racial/ethnic inequality in this temporal dimension of job quality, yet precarious scheduling practices may be a significant, if mostly hidden, site for racial/ethnic inequality, because scheduling practices differ significantly between firms and because front-line managers have substantial discretion in scheduling. We draw on innovative matched employer-employee data from The Shift Project to estimate racial/ethnic gaps in these temporal dimensions of job quality and to examine the contribution of firm-level sorting and intra-organizational dynamics to these gaps. We find significant racial/ethnic gaps in exposure to precarious scheduling that disadvantage non-white workers. We provide novel evidence that both firm segregation and racial discordance between workers and managers play significant roles in explaining racial/ethnic gaps in job quality. Notably, we find that racial/ethnic gaps are larger for women than for men.
Objective
This study examined associations between parental precarious work schedules and child behavior problems among a sample of families with low incomes receiving child‐care subsidies and tested ...three hypothesized mediators of these associations: work–family conflict, economic insecurity, and child‐care instability.
Background
As “just‐in‐time,” or on‐call, scheduling practices become more prevalent among low‐paid workers, working parents must balance family demands with precarious work schedules characterized by instability, unpredictability, and lack of control. Precarious work schedules may threaten child well‐being by increasing parents' work–family conflict and stress, economic insecurity, and child‐care instability. Yet, few studies have been able to empirically test these relationships.
Method
This study uses data from a survey of child‐care subsidy recipients to test the associations between five dimensions of parental precarious work schedules—variable work hours and shifts, limited advance notice, unexpected schedule changes, and lack of schedule control—and child externalizing behavior problems via work–care conflict, economic insecurity, and child‐care instability. Analyses use Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression and decomposition methods and control for a host of child, parental, and household characteristics.
Results
Variable shifts were indirectly associated with more parent‐reported child behavior problems via work–care conflict, whereas unexpected schedule changes were indirectly associated with more behavior problems via both work–care conflict and material hardship.
Conclusion
These findings add to a growing evidence‐base on the incongruence between precarious employer‐driven scheduling practices and the needs of families with young children.
Given the prevalence of precarious work in the social fabric of organizations, its negative repercussions for employees and organizations, and the scarcity of research on how organizational ...leadership can improve working conditions, we suggest inclusive leaders as a remedy to precarious work. Drawing on stakeholder theory, we propose that inclusive leadership is negatively associated with precarious work, both directly and indirectly, via structural empowerment. We also hypothesize that leader political skill moderates the positive relationship between inclusive leadership and structural empowerment and the negative indirect (via structural empowerment) association between inclusive leadership and precarious work. Two-source and time-lagged survey data collected from 311 employees and their supervisors supported our hypotheses. Other than contributions to the literature on inclusive leadership, structural empowerment, and precarious work, this study offers several imperative practical implications that can help organizations counter precarious work and its negative repercussions.
Mapping themes in the study of new work practices Aroles, Jeremy; Mitev, Nathalie; Vaujany, François‐Xavier
New technology, work, and employment,
November 2019, Volume:
34, Issue:
3
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Both shaping and shaped by technological, economic and social facets, the world of work has witnessed a wide array of changes. This review article sets out to provide a synthesis of some of the main ...directions and insights of existing research connected to the new world of work. In particular, we approached the topic of new work practices through four key dimensions: (1) Conceptual and methodological dimensions in the study of new work practices; (2) Spatial and temporal manifestations of new work practices in the collaborative economy; (3) Individuals, organizations and new work configurations; (4) Power and control. The review article critically discusses the future of work and argues that the ‘new’ world of work simply repeats asymmetrical power relations and inequalities that characterise work activities, with the potential of exacerbating even further disparities, inequalities and precarity.
This article investigates precarious workers’ organising by considering the case of freelancers, a category between the self-employed – usually represented by employer organisations – and employees – ...whose interests are traditionally defended by trade unions. Drawing on a 6-month ethnography conducted in the Netherlands within two freelancer associations, our study shows their capacity to exercise collective forms of ‘critical agency’ – on the one hand, by questioning their established practices and seeking to innovate their repertoire, and on the other, by staging protest actions, despite the long Dutch tradition of consensus-based social dialogue. The aim of the article is twofold. First, it contributes to the debate on precarious workers’ organising by considering freelancers as agentic subjects, whose collective identity and organising practices shape and are shaped not only by the socio-institutional context, but also by the type of relationships they create and in which they are embedded. Second, by focusing on collective everyday practices as fields of production of the new, it illustrates diverse forms of critical agency exercised by freelancers, thus offering an empirical contribution to the understanding of critical agency in its making.
Studies of job loss and deindustrialisation have tended to reproduce findings of long-term disadvantage for people and places. Far from purely reflecting matters of historical interest, recent ...studies have found that deindustrialisation exhibits a ‘half-life’ in which effects linger for generations after major closures. But these literatures are yet to fully consider job loss in contemporary societies where workers’ lives have been transformed by assetisation. Historical studies of deindustrialisation have tended to focus on times and places where assets were marginal to working-class peoples’ lives. Combining insights from parallel literatures on deindustrialisation, job loss and assetisation, this article addresses the questions: How important is asset ownership for workers during mass closure events? And to what extent does asset ownership generate new fault-lines of inequality between workers when confronted with job loss and its aftermath? These questions are addressed by quantifying financial outcomes, home ownership, and retirement arrangements for a group of nearly 900 older workers whose long careers were extinguished by major plant closures in 2017. While findings demonstrate that workers with greater asset ownership were relatively protected from the negative impacts of unemployment and precarious work, they also contribute to recent debate about the role of labour in the asset economy by pointing to the dynamic interaction of assets and employment over the working life course; that outcomes from job loss are shaped by the interaction of assets and employment, not assets or employment.
Precarious work, or employment that is associated with temporary contracts, low earnings and limited or no employee representation, is on the rise. From an operations perspective, these practices ...should enable flexibility and reduce costs. However, from the perspective of most other social sciences, precarious work harms workers and should harm firm performance. The objective of this research is to provide a comprehensive analysis of the performance implications of precarious work. We collected survey data in the UK from multiple respondents (operations and human resource managers) along with secondary data to explore how the use of precarious work affects a company's financial, operational and occupational health & safety performance. The results were mixed. Precarious work did not have a significant influence on occupational health & safety performance and had a negative relationship with cost performance. We also established an inverted u‐shaped relationship between precarious work and flexibility and financial performance; low levels of precarious work improve flexibility and financial performance and high levels of precarious work harm both. Finally, we explored if high‐performance work practices could moderate these relationships, but the results were mostly insignificant. The results suggest that firms only benefit from relatively low levels of adoption of precarious work.
An increasing number of studies and practical experience confirm that employment quality and security affect the mental and physical wellbeing of workers. This applies even more to those who are ...included in precarious types of work, as these are marked by work process inclusion uncertainty and lower quality in several dimensions of work performance. The purpose of this article is, therefore, to analyse mental health self-perception in individuals who have described their work as precarious. The study involved 201 participantsaged 18 to 40 years old working in Slovenia. This is one of the first studies focusing on this topic on a Slovenian sample. Results evidence that those performing precarious work report low life satisfaction, including higher depression, anxiety and emotional exhaustion symptom incidence, confirming that performing precarious work is connected with poorer emotional health indicators in young adults.
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