Organization and Management Theory OMT

Introduction to the Special Issue on Job Quality: What Does It Mean and How Might We Think about It?

By Paul Osterman

Is Job Quality Becoming More Unequal?

By Francis Green, Tarek Mostafa, Agnès Parent-Thirion, Greet Vermeylen, Gijs Van Houten, Isabella Biletta, and Maija Lyly-Yrjanainen

The authors examine trends in nonwage aspects of job quality in Europe. They focus on both the level and the dispersion of job quality. Theories differ in their predictions for these trends and for whether national patterns will converge. Data from the Fifth European Working Conditions Survey are used, in conjunction with earlier waves, to construct four indices of nonwage job quality: Work Quality, Work Intensity, Good Physical Environment, and Working Time Quality. Jobs are tracked from 1995 to 2010, across and within 15 European Union countries. The social corporatist countries had the highest Work Quality and lowest dispersion for all four indices. Work Quality and Work Intensity each rose in several countries, and Working Time Quality rose in most. The dispersion of Working Time Quality, Work Intensity, and Good Physical Environment each fell in many countries, and there was little sign of national divergence.

Building Job Quality from the Inside-Out: Mexican Immigrants, Skills, and Jobs in the Construction Industry

By Natasha Iskander and Nichola Lowe

Using an ethnographic case study of Mexican immigrant construction workers in two U.S. cities and in Mexico, the authors illustrate the contribution of immigrant skill as a resource for changing workplace practices. As a complement to explanations that situate the protection of job quality and the defense of skill to external institutions, the authors show that immigrants use collective learning practices to improve job quality from inside the work environment-that is to say from the inside-out. The authors find that immigrants use collective skill-building practices to negotiate for improvements to their jobs; however, their ability to do so depends on the institutions that organize production locally. Particular attention is given to the quality of those industry institutions, noting that where they are more malleable, immigrant workers gain more latitude to alter their working conditions and their prospects for advancement.

Employers Gone Rogue: Explaining Industry Variation in Violations of Workplace Laws

By Annette Bernhardt, Michael W. Spiller, and Nik Theodore

Drawing on an innovative, representative survey of workers in Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York City, the authors analyze minimum wage, overtime, and other workplace violations in the low-wage labor market. They document significant interindustry variation in both the mix and the prevalence of violations, and they show that while differences in workforce composition are important in explaining that variation, differences in job and employer characteristics play the stronger role. The authors suggest that industry noncompliance rates are shaped by both product market and institutional characteristics, which together interact with labor supply and the current weak penalty and enforcement regime in the United States. They close with a research agenda for this still-young field, framing noncompliance as an emerging strategy in the reorganization of work and production at the bottom of the U.S. labor market.

Quality over Quantity: Reexamining the Link between Entrepreneurship and Job Creation

By Adam Seth Litwin and Phillip H. Phan

Although much has been written on the quantity of jobs created by entrepreneurs, scholars have yet to examine the quality of these jobs. In this article, the authors begin to address this important issue by examining nearly 5,000 businesses that began operations in 2004. They investigate the extent to which nascent employers provide what many think of as quality jobs-those offering health care coverage and a retirement plan. The authors find that because of small scale, constrained resources, and protection from institutional pressures, start-up companies do not provide their employees with either of these proxies for job quality, and their likelihood of offering health or retirement benefits increases only marginally over their first six years of operation. The finding that entrepreneurs' impressive record of job creation is not matched by a similarly impressive outcome with respect to job quality challenges policymakers to ensure that entrepreneurs are encouraged to create quality employment opportunities in the course of creating new businesses.

A Study of the Extent and Potential Causes of Alternative Employment Arrangements

By Peter H. Cappelli and JR Keller

The notion of regular, full-time employment as one of the defining features of the U.S. economy has been called into question in recent years by the apparent growth of alternative or "nonstandard" work arrangements-part-time, temporary help, independent contracting, and other configurations. Identifying the extent of these arrangements, whether they are increasing and where they occur, is the first step to understanding their implications for the economy and the society. But such steps have been difficult to take because of the lack of appropriate data. Based on a national probability sample of U.S. establishments, the authors present estimates of the extent of these practices, evidence on changes in their use over time, and analyses that contribute to understanding why alternatives have come into play.

Professionalization and Market Closure: The Case of Plumbing in India

By Aruna Ranganathan

Professionalization has long been understood as a process of establishing market closure and monopoly control over work; however, in this article the author presents a case in which professionalization erodes rather than establishes occupational closure. She demonstrates how the Indian Plumbing Association (IPA), a newly formed organization of internationally trained plumbing contractors and consultants, has used the rhetoric and structures of professionalization to threaten pre-existing ethnicity-based closure enjoyed by traditional plumbers from the eastern state of Orissa. By employing a discourse of professionalism and by instituting codes, training, and certification programs, professionalization in this case has undermined Orissan plumbers by changing the basis of plumbing knowledge and opening entry to outsiders. The author concludes by suggesting that professionalization is a modern trope that does not necessarily imply monopoly benefits and higher job quality for all the members of a given occupational group.

Labor Regulations and Job Quality: Evidence from India

By Yana van der Meulen Rodgers and Nidhiya Menon

The authors examine whether measures of job quality in India's manufacturing sector differ systematically across states with varying types of labor regulation. Their analysis uses repeated cross sections of India's NSSO household survey data from 1983 to 2004 merged with data on state-level regulations covering employment adjustment and dispute resolution. Results from a differences-in-differences procedure show that restrictions on employment adjustment and dispute settlement in a pro-worker direction contribute to improved job quality for women along most measures. Such regulations yield mixed results for men, however; results indicate that higher wages come at the expense of fewer hours, substitution toward in-kind compensation, and less job security. The authors conclude that India's labor legislation does have a silver lining with respect to job quality, but that silver lining applies selectively.

Mental Health and Working Conditions in Europe

By Elena Cottini and Claudio Lucifora

The authors investigate recent patterns in mental health at the workplace across 15 European countries using three waves of the European Working Conditions Survey. Their study shows that adverse working conditions, defined in terms of job demands and job hazards, are strongly associated with workers' mental health problems, and it also finds a causal effect of job quality on workers' mental health. Their analysis detects heterogeneous effects across countries and demographic groups and shows that labor market regulations and health care systems explain some of these cross-country differences.

The Effects of Organizational Change on Worker Well-Being and the Moderating Role of Trade Unions

By Alex Bryson, Erling Barth, and Harald Dale-Olsen

The authors explore the effects of organizational change on employee well-being using multivariate analyses of linked employer-employee data for Britain, with particular emphasis on whether unions moderate these effects. Nationally representative data consist of 13,500 employees in 1,238 workplaces. Organizational changes are associated with increased job-related anxiety and lower job satisfaction. The authors find that job-related anxiety is ameliorated when employees work in a unionized workplace and are involved in the introduction of the changes.

Book Reviews

The Global Auction: The Broken Promises of Education, Jobs, and Incomes. By Phillip Brown, Hugh Lauder, and David Ashton. Reviewed by Arne L. Kalleberg.

The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class. By Guy Standing. Reviewed by Aris Accornero.

Are Bad Jobs Inevitable? Trends, Determinants and Responses to Job Quality in the Twenty-First Century. Edited by Chris Warhurst, Françoise Carré, Patricia Findlay, and Chris Tilly. Reviewed by Virginia Doellgast.

Working Hard, Working Poor: A Global Journey. By Gary S. Fields. Reviewed by L. Alan Winters.