Arne L. Kalleberg

Precarious Work, Insecure Workers: Employment Relations in Transition

The growth of precarious work since the 1970s has emerged as a core contemporary concern within politics, in the media, and among researchers. Uncertain and unpredictable work contrasts with the relative security that characterized the three decades following World War II. Precarious work constitutes a global challenge that has a wide range of consequences cutting across many areas of concern to sociologists. Hence, it is increasingly important to understand the new workplace arrangements that generate precarious work and worker insecurity. A focus on employment relations forms the foundation of theories of the institutions and structures that generate precarious work and the cultural and individual factors that influence peoples responses to uncertainty. Sociologists are well-positioned to explain, offer insight, and provide input into public policy about such changes and the state of contemporary employment relations.

Work Values and Job Rewards: A Theory of Job Satisfaction.

This paper attempts to develop a theory of job satisfaction which incorporates differences in work values and perceived job characteristics as key explanatory variables. It empirically examines the relationship between job satisfaction and the work values and job rewards associated with six dimensions of work-intrinsic, convenience, financial, relations with co-workers, career opportunities and resource adequacy. It is found that work values have independent-effects on job satisfaction. The extent to which workers are able to obtain perceived job rewards is conceptualized to be a function of their degree of control over their employment situations. The paper also seeks to develop a framework which links the variation in the job satisfactions of workers to the factors that influence the degree of their control over the attainment of job rewards in American society. The analyses in this paper are based on data from the 1972-73 Quality of Employment Survey. The concept of job satisfaction traditionally has been of great interest to social scientists concerned with the problems of work in an industrial society. Many have been interested in job satisfaction, for example, as a result of a personal value system which assumes that work which enables satisfaction of ones needs furthers the dignity of the human individual, whereas work without these characteristics limits the development of personal potential and is, therefore, to be negatively valued. Thus, it is important to examine these issues in order, hopefully, to improve the work experiences of individuals as an end in itself. Other social scientists have been interested in this concept because of evidence that has linked the degree of satisfaction with work to the quality of ones life outside the work role-especially ones physical and mental health. Still others were motivated to study job satisfaction out of a desire to improve productivity and organizational functioning by improving the quality of work experiences of employees. While these concerns have their bases in different perspectives, they share the recognition of the importance of the job in the total life experience of the individual and the desirability of a

Gender and Organizational Performance: Determinants of Small Business Survival and Success

This research explores the effect of gender on organizational performance. Data used in the analysis was collected from small businesses in South Central Indiana from 1985-1987. The businesses were from the food and drink, computer sales and software, and health industries. Of the businesses surveyed, 312 were headed by men while 99 where headed by women. On average, these individuals were 44-45 years of age. Organizational performance is examined through two different concepts, survival and success. The results indicate that women were not more likely to go out of business than men, and only prior self-employment had different effects for men and women. Further, there was not a difference in this area among the differing industries. The results also indicate that both genders were equally confident and believed they had the ability to influence business outcomes. As for the success of these businesses, there again was no difference between the males and females with respect to earnings growth. These results are contrary to the traditional thinking that men have an advantage over women with respect to entrepreneurship and organizational performance. Since the dataset used in this analysis was limited in scope, further research is necessary to determine if these results will hold true across other industries. (SRD)

Organizing Flexibility: The Flexible Firm in a New Century

Research on organizational flexibility should examine the linkages between numerical and functional flexibility. Unfortunately, studies of each type of flexibility generally neglect the other. Moreover, the most popular conception of the interplay between these two forms of flexibility — the core–periphery model — is incomplete in important ways. I discuss evidence and limitations of the core–periphery model of the flexible firm, and outline some promising attempts to conceptualize how organizations may combine functional and numerical flexibility. I focus mainly on the USA and the UK, though I also review evidence and issues involved in cross‐national differences in organizational flexibility.

Aging, values, and rewards: explaining age differences in job satisfaction.

The study of age differences in job satisfaction is a usefulfocus for investigating the interplay among work, self, and family concepts as they produce changes in role outcomes during the life course. Using data from the 1972-73 Quality of Employment Survey as well as other data sets, we find that age is positively related to job satisfaction. A relatively substantial portion of these differences are explained by age variations in work values and job rewards. These findings are consistent with both cohort and job change explanations of age differences in job satisfaction. However, some of these age inequalities are not explicable on the basis of the variables in our model. Though some unknown portion of these age differences are undoubtedly due to compositional effects, we argue that they also partly reflect more general processes of aging and development.

Economic Segmentation, Worker Power, and Income Inequality

How economic segmentation generates income inequality constitutes a central question for theories of economic and social organization and of socioeconomic achievement. Previous research emphasizes two sources of the structural variation in income: (1) employers with large amounts of resources, for a variety of reasons, may find it in their interests to pay workers higher wages; and (2) some workers are able to acquire power against their employers as well as against other workers and can therefore extract higher earnings. In this paper, we investigate several issues involved in the links among economic segmentation, worker power, and income inequality. We argue that the structure of economic segmentation is multidimensional and reflects such distinct concepts as concentration, economic scale, state intervention in the market, capital intensity, and organization size. Worker power also is derived from diverse sources, such as union membership, occupational skill and licensing, class position, and tenure with an employer. We construct measures of these two sets of concepts and examine their relationships and effects on income with data from two national samples of individuals. We also relate economic segmentation to issues raised by the socioeconomic achievement literature; in particular, we find that the effect of education on income differs among firm and industrial contexts. Our analyses illustrate the utility of an economic segmentation approach for explaining structural sources of income inequality.

Balancing Work and Family: The Role of High‐Commitment Environments

Recently, researchers have begun to recognize that the nature of jobs, the workplace environment, and more generally, the culture of the workplace can have a significant impact on the ability of workers to balance their work and family lives. This article examines the effect of high-performance work practices, job characteristics, and the work environment on workers’ views about whether the company helps them balance work and family. Using data from a survey of workers across three manufacturing industries, we show that a high-commitment environment—characterized by high-performance work practices, intrinsically rewarding jobs, and understanding supervisors—positively influences employees’ perceptions that the company is helping them achieve this balance. This article reinforces the view that helping workers balance work and family responsibilities is not just a matter of benefits and formal family-friendly policies. Rather, it also depends on the characteristics of jobs within the business enterprise. A merican families are being pulled in many directions. The number of dual-earner families has increased, as has the combined hours parents are working, while the time-consuming demands of maintaining a family and caring for dependents are unchanged. With more people working for pay and family work hours rising, balancing work and family life is an increasingly critical issue. Partly in response to these concerns, employers have begun to adopt a range of family-oriented policies, and some have expanded the scope of their work and family programs to include assistance with elder care and a range of flexible work arrangements. More recently, researchers have begun to recognize that the nature

Gender Differences in Organizational Commitment Influences of Work Positions and Family Roles

Data obtained from the 1991 “Work Organizations” module of the General Social Survey (GSS) reveal a small but significant tendency for employed men to display higher organizational commitment (OC) than employed women do. This article examines the gender differences and factors that arguably heighten or dampen it. The authors consider both job models highlighting gender differences on job attributes such as autonomy or rewards, and gender models that stress socialization, family ties, and differential labor market opportunities. They find that the primary explanation for the gender difference is that men are more likely than women to hold jobs with commitment-enhancing features. Gender differences in family ties do little to affect male-female OC difference. When job attributes, career variables, and family ties are simultaneously controlled, the authors find that, if anything, women tend to exhibit slightly greater OC. Contrary to implications of some gender models, the correlates of OC do not appear to be appreciably different for men and women.

Human Resource Management and Organizational Performance

The idea of a transformed or high-performance work system has attracted considerable attention in the United States as an alternative to traditional, mass-production forms of work organization. This article examines the relationships between indicators of high-performance work organizations that are available in the National Organizations Study, on one hand, and measures of organizational performance, on the other. The authors find that characteristics of high-performing work organizations tend to cluster together into a system of organizations. Moreover, the results indicate that human resource policies and practices often identified with high-performing organizations do, in fact, enhance organizational performance.

Externalizing employment: Flexible staffing arrangements in US organizations

Abstract Flexible staffing arrangements (such as temporary, contract, and part-time work) enable organizations to externalize administrative control or limit the duration of employment. We examine the prevalence and correlates of such arrangements using a recent large, representative survey of US establishments. We first develop a typology of flexible staffing arrangements and discuss reasons why organizations may adopt them. We then present measures of these flexible staffing arrangements and describe their distribution among US establishments. Finally, we examine hypotheses about the types of employers that are more or less likely to use the various types of flexible staffing arrangements, finding support for both cost-reduction and resource dependence perspectives. The use of flexible arrangements is more common in large establishments, in seasonal industries, and in establishments with highly female workforces.