Jeremy Reynolds

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.

You Can't Always Get the Hours You Want: Mismatches between Actual and Preferred Work Hours in the U.S.

Data from the 1997 International Social Survey Programme show that a majority of U.S. employees prefer to work a different number of hours than they actually work. Employees are divided in their preferences: many want to spend less time at work, but there are also many who want to increase their hours. These preferences vary with such characteristics as gender, age, family structure, income, opportunities for advancement, and part-time status. One surprising result is that family structures associated with work-family conflict are not associated with a desire for fewer hours. Members of dual-earner couples without children and male breadwinners without children are most likely to desire fewer hours. This analysis suggests that work-family conflict is more likely to produce a desire for fewer hours when employees are well off economically.

Beyond Profit? Sectoral Differences in High-Performance Work Practices

Drawing on a recent survey of establishments in the United States, the authors examine how nonprofit, public, and for-profit establishments vary in the use of high-performance work organization (HPWO) practices that offer opportunities for participation in decision making (via self-directed teams and offline committees), enhance the capacity for participation (via multiskilling practices such as job rotation), and provide incentives for participation (via compensation practices). Nonprofit and public organizations are less likely to use performance incentives (gain sharing and bonuses) and some multiskilling practices than are for-profit organizations but more likely to use both self-directed work teams and offline committees. Sectoral differences in the prevalence of incentive compensation and self-directed teams persist after correlates of sector that predict HPWO prevalence—including establishment size, industry, computational requirements, and unionization—are controlled.

Pursuing Preferences: The Creation and Resolution of Work Hour Mismatches

Mismatches between the number of hours people actually work and the hours they prefer to work are common, but few studies have examined such hour mismatches from a longitudinal perspective. Using two waves of panel data from Australia, the authors offer a new, dynamic picture of hour mismatches. Their analysis shows a fluid labor market in which many mismatches are created and resolved. Nevertheless, their findings also highlight market imperfections. Many mismatches (especially the desire for fewer hours) appear to persist for more than a year, and although a change of employers can resolve mismatches, it can also create them. Moreover, as seen in the findings, processes that create and resolve mismatches are more closely tied to changes in preferred hours than to changes in actual hours.

When too much is not enough: Actual and preferred work hours in the United States and abroad

This paper places the story of the overworked American in context by examining mismatches between preferred and actual work hours among Japanese, Swedish, West German, and U.S. workers. Although many full-timers in all four countries want to work fewer hours, mismatches come in many forms, and their distributions and determinants vary cross-nationally. The United States, for instance, has an unusually large number of full-time workers who want to work more hours, and a workforce that is especially motivated by opportunities for advancement and a desire for high incomes. Ultimately, the prevalence and determinants of hour mismatches are found to reflect cross-national differences in social, political, and economic environments.

Work–Family Conflict, Children, and Hour Mismatches in Australia

This article helps integrate research on work hours and work—family issues by examining how work—family conflict is related to the desire for more and fewer hours of work. Using the first wave of the Household Income and Labor Dynamics in Australia survey, we find that work-to-family conflict is associated with a desire for fewer hours of work. Family-to-work conflict, however, is only weakly associated with desired work hour changes, and we find some evidence that it makes women want to increase the number of hours they work. We also find evidence of moderating effects: Work-to-family conflict is more likely to make women want fewer hours when they have preschool children. We conclude that many working parents see work hour reductions as a way to cope with work—family conflict but that people prefer different coping strategies depending on their gender and family situation.

Mostly Mismatched With a Chance of Settling: Tracking Work Hour Mismatches in the United States

Mismatches between Americans’ actual and preferred hours of paid work are common, but the understanding of such mismatches is still limited. In this article, the authors provide the first large-scale, longitudinal study of hour mismatches in the United States. They found that the population of workers with hour mismatches is in constant flux. Nevertheless, hour mismatches seem to persist for long periods of time: The vast majority of respondents who wanted fewer hours when first interviewed still wanted fewer hours 5 years later. The authors also found inequalities in the methods through which people develop and resolve mismatches. Women who want fewer hours were less likely than men to resolve their mismatches by working less. Also, they found evidence suggesting that non-Whites who want fewer hours may be settling for the hours they can get rather than getting the hours they want.

Economic Freedom or Self-imposed Strife: Work–Life Conflict, Gender, and Self-Employment

This paper uses a representative sample of U.S. workers to examine how self-employment may reduce work-life conflict. We find that self-employment prevents work from interfering with life (WIL), especially among women, but it heightens the tendency for life to interfere with work (LIW). We show that self-employment is connected to WIL and LIW by different causal mechanisms. The self-employed experience less WIL because they have more autonomy and control over the duration and timing of work. Working at home is the most important reason the self-employed experience more LIW than wage and salary workers.

For Love or Money? Extrinsic Rewards, Intrinsic Rewards, Work–Life Issues, and Hour Mismatches

Using classic and contemporary perspectives on work, this paper examines how and why extrinsic and intrinsic job rewards, work–life conflict, and flexible hours are related to mismatches between actual and preferred hours of work. We find that making raises, bonuses, and promotions contingent on job performance has little effect on actual or preferred work hours. Discretionary effort, as signaled by higher actual and preferred hours, is more common when people find their work meaningful. Work-to-life conflict, in contrast, generates a desire for fewer hours because people who report it prefer average hours but work many. Offering men flexible hours can partially offset that problem by increasing their appetite for work.

Older Married Workers and Nonstandard Jobs: The Effects of Health and Health Insurance

We examine the effects of health and health insurance coverage on older married workers’ decisions to work in temporary, contract, part-time, self-employment, and regular full-time jobs. We model the behavior of older married workers as interdependent, showing that one spouse’s health and insurance status affects the employment of the other. In general, we find that men and women are less likely to be employed in regular full-time jobs when they are in fair or poor health and are more likely to be in regular full-time employment when their spouses are in poor health.