Job Security And Flexibility

This book examines the relationship between job security and job flexibility. Through an innovative conceptual approach, the concept of job flexicurity is presented to highlight the labour market dynamics between job flexibility and employee security. The dynamics of labour market mechanisms are placed within ideas of rigidity, security, flexibility, and plasticity to explore the interplay between different employee considerations. Particular attention is given to the Romanian labour market with an empirical case study that expands upon the ideas discussed. This book aims to analyse how job security and flexibility impact worker well-being and happiness. It will be relevant to students and researchers interested in labour economics and the job market.

Flexibility at Work shows you how to obtain the business benefits of flexibility whilst addressing the needs of both employer and employee. Peter Reilly breaks down flexibility into five different types, from functional through to financial. He introduces a model of how mutual flexibility might be developed and the preconditions necessary to make it successful. Along the way he cites much evidence of how employers are introducing alternative working arrangements that provide benefits to both parties.Flexibility can reduce costs, improve quality and service, increase productivity, hedge against change, and meet supply needs.

The economic crisis has revealed the dark side of deregulation in the labour market: rising unemployment, limited access to social security and, due to low wages, no savings to count upon in bad times. This book casts light on the empirical relationship between labour market deregulation through non-standard contracts and the three main dimensions of worker security: employment, income and social security. Focusing on individual work histories, it looks at how labour market dynamics interact with the social protection system in bringing about inequality and insecurity. In this context Italy is put forward as the epitome of flexibility through non-standard work and compared with three similar countries: Germany, Spain and Japan. Results show that when flexibility is carried out as a mere cost-reduction device and social security only relies on insurance principles, deregulation leads to insecurity. 'The political economy of work security and flexibility' is essential reading for academics, students, practitioners and policy makers interested in the outcomes of labour market developments in advanced economies over the past twenty years.

Since the oil crisis of the 1970s, increased labor market flexibility seems to have become an indispensable ingredient of economic success. This book examines the critical issues that affect labor market flexibility and job security in the main industrialized economies of the United States, Japan, West Germany, the United Kingdom, and Europe, in an attempt to more fully understand the complex forces at work within such labor markets. Employment Security and Labor Market Flexibility originated from The International Symposium on Labor Market Flexibility in Yokohama, Japan, in 1986, in which scholars in economics, industrial relations, and labor law scholars scrutinized the similarities and differences of the labor markets in these countries. They focused on three main topics: wage flexibility in response to changing economic conditions, the legal and institutional framework for employment security, and international comparison of employment adjustment. Comparison of wage flexibility as well as numerical and functional flexibility among these countries were examined by both qualitative and quantitative analyses. The labor market cannot be treated in the same way as other markets because it deals directly with human beings who are less likely to obey the immutable laws of the market mechanism. Nevertheless, Kazutoshi Koshiro asserts that it is still important to build a framework on which to understand and assess the role of labor flexibility in the competitive process, and it is with this framework in mind that these chapters have been assembled into one volume. Individual chapters compare the relative flexibility of compensation and employment over the business cycle in the United States with that of Japan; analyze the relative flexibility of Japanese wages; unravel some of the underlying forces that comprise the employment security situation in the United States; study the important relationship between economic conditions and the labor market and explain the difference between the employment protection legislation of the United States on the one hand, and Europe and Japan, on the other; and compare the nature of labor markets and employment adjustment techniques of the United States, Europe, and Japan.

Flexibility is an ambiguous concept. This book contributes to expounding the importance of clearer concepts in the debates on economic systems, labour markets and work organization. The authors place 'flexibility' in a new theoretical context as juxtaposed to 'stability'. Much terminological confusion and is resolved by this suggestion.

This title presents carefully selected articles that are at the ultimate forefront of professional studies on 'transitional labour markets' and 'flexicurity'.

This is the era of flexibility. Under constant pressure to be adaptable, organizations increasingly adopt employment practices such as zero-hours contracts, the casualization of the workforce and the use of temporary and agency labour. These flexible practices are central to debates about the changing nature of job quality and its causes, trends and consequences. Arguing that job quality is central to understanding contemporary work, this book explores the internal and external pressures for flexibility in workplaces, professions and sectors and how this pressure shapes workers’ experiences of job quality. By studying job quality dynamics via case studies from organizations and occupations in the UK, Poland, Belgium and Sweden, the volumes illustrates the diversity of practices and experiences, as well as market pressures and institutional arrangements which effect working lives. Finally, the editors propose a policy debate on the new concept "flexiquality" - a combination of flexibility and job quality that can be beneficial for both management and workers.