Damian Grimshaw

Women and European Employment

1. Introduction 2. The female contribution to the European employment rate 3. Womens employment rates and structural and regional change 4. Unemployment, gender and labour market organisation 5. State policies and womens employment and unemployment rates 6. Household organisation, state policy and womens employment rates 7. The new member state 8. Conclusions Notes References Appendices

Knowledge Intensive Business Services

This book focuses on the development of Knowledge Intensive Business Services (KIBS) and the associated market characteristics and organisational forms. It brings together reputed scholars from a mix of disciplines to explore the nature and evolution of a range of Knowledge Intensive Business Services. Through an examination of KIBS sectors such as computer services, management consultancy and R&D services, the contributions in this book argue that the evolution of KIBS is strongly associated with new inter-organizational forms and that different country institutions shape the characteristics of these organisational forms.

Working Time, Industrial Relations and the Employment Relationship

This article explores the erosion of the standard working-time model associated with the UKs voluntarist system of industrial relations, and argues that its renegotiation is likely to be a critical factor in shaping the employment relationship of the future. As numerous studies over the last two decades have revealed, organizations have increasingly seen ‘time’ as a variable that can be manipulated to increase productivity or expand service provision, through making workers work harder, longer or according to management demands. These studies have also drawn our attention to the wider consequences of the increasing demands that organizations place on their employees in the name of ‘flexibility’, impacting both on what workers do while at work and how they organize and plan the other aspects of their lives. This article brings together two literatures, one on time and the other on industrial relations, and suggests that new working-time arrangements are changing the wage-effort bargain and blurring the previously clearly demarcated boundary between work and non-work time. Drawing on qualitative fieldwork in six large UK-based organizations, we argue that there is evidence of a move towards a new ‘temporality’ based on an employer-led model of working time, which differs significantly from both the traditional UK system of working-time regulation and that found in Continental Europe.

The restructuring of career paths in large service sector organizations: 'delayering, upskilling and polarisation

Drawing on detailed case studies of four large service sector organizations this paper finds little evidence of training provision that links skills development with incremental career progression. Past policies of ‘delayering’ have opened up a ‘gap’ in the job ladder and this has both increased the organizational costs of formal training and reduced the likelihood of informal on-the-job training being seen as the basis for promotion to the next level. Managers are thus faced with the challenge of how to establish a new set of premises upon which to strengthen the workforces loyalty and commitment to the organization, in the context of problems of high staff turnover and low job satisfaction. What we find is a greater emphasis on certificated training provision. However, in the absence of a transparent career path employers rely on more intensive techniques of appraisal and selection of workers for a ‘winner-takes-all’ career path. Given the importance of skills acquisition as an important building block of the ‘learning society’, our findings suggest that policymakers in Britain cannot rely solely upon the employer to bridge the skill gap evident in large service sector organizations.

Institutional Effects on the IT Outsourcing Market: Analysing Clients, Suppliers and Staff Transfer in Germany and the UK

Drawing on empirical evidence in Germany and the UK, this article examines the institutional effects on a fast-growing area of knowledge-intensive business services — IT outsourcing. This is an important area for research since the IT outsourcing market provides many organizations with an important specialized production input and is characterized by complex inter-organizational relations. By exploring institutional influences in the context of IT outsourcing, the research extends earlier studies on how client–supplier relations shape markets for business services. It also contributes to varieties of capitalism debates by highlighting heterogeneous institutional effects within countries and common systemic trends (involving powerful multinational IT firms) in the development of the market for IT outsourcing. Comparative analysis of 13 IT outsourcing contracts in Germany and the UK, focusing on the organizational practices of client organizations and IT firms, illuminated institutional effects within the organizational setting. Analysis of industrylevel data shows that the diverse institutional contexts of Germany and the UK provided an equally favourable basis for growth in the IT outsourcing market, despite its apparent deregulatory bias. But significant institutional effects were observed, specifically related to: the role of deliberative institutions (especially works councils); and institutions governing technical standards and contracting rules. Strong deliberative institutions in Germany facilitated market growth since transactions involved distributive dilemmas, particularly related to staff transfer. Also, while institutions shaped technical and contractual expertise of client managers, they were not deterministic. Instead, they interacted with characteristics of the IT outsourcing market, namely: heterogeneous client practices to improve absorptive capacity; public vs. private contracting experience; and power relations between client and IT firm in their use of market discipline.

Adjusting to the National Minimum Wage: Constraints and Incentives to Change in Six Low-Paying Sectors

Interest in the national minimum wage (NMW) includes not only its direct impact on employment and wages, but also its indirect impact on organisational performance resulting from a reorientation of employer behaviour with regard to employment practices and product market competition. Drawing on data from small firms in six low-paying sectors, this article identifies three key constraints that have undermined the possible effect of the NMW in generating a virtuous cycle between employment practices and product market approach. These constraints relate to product market conditions, employer norms and labour market institutions (especially training).

New human resource management practices in knowledge-intensive business services firms: The case of outsourcing with staff transfer

This article investigates the human resource management practices that underpin a specific model of organizing knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS). Drawing on data from four countries, it examines HR practices in two global IT services firms — EDS and IBM. The market for IT services depends very much on outsourcing and the transfer of IT workers from the client to the IT firm. This has theoretical and empirical implications for how IT firms manage recruitment, skill development and job security. The evidence supports an alternative framework for understanding four key influences on HRM in large specialist KIBS firms: i) inter-organizational relations (tight inter-linkages with client organizations); ii) contract performance conditions (outsourcing contracts); iii) knowledge flows (inter-organizational transfers of highly skilled IT workers); and iv) the economic and institutional context (industrial relations institutions). The article demonstrates that these internal and external conditions generate new tensions and conflicts in the design and implementation of HR practices.

Minimum Wages and Collective Bargaining: What Types of Pay Bargaining Can Foster Positive Pay Equity Outcomes?

Using data from interviews and collective agreements in five European countries, this article analyses the relationship between collective bargaining and the minimum wage. In a context of changing minimum wage policy and competing government objectives, the findings illuminate how pay bargaining strategies of trade unions and employers shape the pay equity effects of minimum wage policy. Two general forms are identified: direct responses to a changing national minimum wage, and responses to the absence or weakness of a national minimum wage. The article explains how particular intersections of minimum wage policy and collective bargaining, together with country and sector contingencies, shape the form of pay bargaining and pay equity outcomes.

The Subordination of the Gender Equality Objective: The National Reform Programmes and 'Making Work Pay' Policies

The streamlining of the Lisbon strategy has introduced new integrated guidelines for economic policy and employment strategy and a new report format the National Reform Programme. In the first year of this new reporting mechanism, Member States have paid less attention to gender mainstreaming and gender equality objectives, not least because the gender equality guideline has been removed. Streamlining has further exposed the narrow and instrumental focus on gender equality measures in the Lisbon process as a means of raising the employment rate rather than a broader concern for equal opportunity. This narrow gender equality approach also dilutes the efficacy of the economic and employment policies that are advanced. Some positive steps to advance gender equality continue to be taken, but the reforms are partial, uneven and coexist with negative developments. We illustrate this with an evaluation of the policy trajectory in relation to the making work pay agenda for low-waged workers (tax/benefit reform, minimum wages, childcare and parental leave). We conclude that this latest reform to the Lisbon process has exposed the enormous amount of political work and capacity building that is needed to mainstream gender issues across the whole field of economic, employment and social policies.

New Technology and Changing Organisational Forms: Implications for Managerial Control and Skills

Changes in organisational forms are central to the way new technologies impact on the future of work and employment. Drawing on case–study evidence of a call centre and its client relations and a multinational IT firm and its partnership with a government department, this paper explores the implications for skill and managerial control.