Book Reviews January 2009

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000

Human Relations, 2013

Job quality is a timely issue because of its potential impact on individual, firm and national well-being. This renewed interest underscores the need for robust conceptualization of job quality. This article provides background to the renewed interest in job quality and, drawing on the contributions to the Special Issue, starts to map the dimensions of job quality, the factors that influence job quality, and the outcomes or impacts of job quality. We identify a number of emergent themes. First, job quality is a multidimensional phenomenon. Second, multiple factors and forces operating at multiple levels influence job quality. Third, the study of job quality is an inherently multi-disciplinary endeavour. Fourth, job quality is a contextual phenomenon, differing among persons, occupations and labour market segments, societies and historical periods. Our mapping of job quality, and the articles in the Special Issue, provide a foundation and springboard for understanding better the theoretically challenging and policy-relevant issue of job quality.

2012

Part I International Overviews and Comparative Approaches 2. Identifying Bad Jobs across Europe 25 José-Ignacio Antón, Enrique Fernández-Macías and Rafael Muñoz de Bustillo 3. Job Quality in the US: The Myths That Block Action 45 Paul Osterman 4. Good Jobs, Bad Jobs and the Australian Experience 61 Barbara Pocock and Natalie Skinner 5. A Framework for International Comparative Analysis of the Determinants of Low-Wage Job Quality 78 Françoise Carré and Chris Tilly

Industrial and Labor Relations Review, 1993

The research on the demand for skills in the U.S. economy is split over the issue of whether technological change has tended to increase or decrease job skill requirements. The question of whether job skill requirements have been rising is important to public policy debates concerning the skill gap, wage inequality, and the changing quality of jobs. Some researchers have attempted to use indirect measures of skill requirements, whereas others have used direct measures and have concentrated primarily on case studies. Neither approach is free of problems, however. A far better data source is job analysis. The job analysis measure developed by Hay Associates is similar to the Dictionary of Occupational Titles (DOT) measure and includes a series of variables that capture the autonomy and complexity of jobs with respect to areas such as know-how, problem solving, and accountability. The Hay technique of job analyses was used to study the changing skill requirements for production and clerical jobs. The results suggested support for Contents Are Skill Requiremelts Rising?

RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences

We thank the participants of the conference on Changing Job Quality held at the Russell Sage Foundation in June 2018 for their helpful input on this paper as well as the valuable feedback we received from three external reviewers. We especially appreciate the comments on earlier drafts

ILR Review, 2013

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.

This study explores the job quality as a pivotal issue in the 21 st century, and, at the same time, assigns it a key role in fostering social development and sustainability. The main approach of this paper is a qualitative one, although the author mainly refers to data from international organizations. The author is currently working on these issues, both in terms of the development theory and in terms of empirical studies. This study focuses on two issues, namely working conditions and the greening of work, both of which are going to impact the evolution of the job quality in the 21st century. The first issue relates to working conditions, as there is a compelling need to improve the quality of employment both in advanced and developing countries. The second issue focuses on the transition towards the green economy, the only possibility to relaunch development and to guarantee the environmental survival. This transition requires, at the same time, the production and the employment sectors to undergo a reconversion process. This study is structured as follows. The first paragraph investigates the current working conditions and outlines some measures needed to improve the job quality; the second paragraph analyzes the job quality from the perspective of the greening economy. In the first paragraph our analysis highlights that the measures needed to improve the working conditions lie in tackling unemployment in advanced and emerging countries and in promoting decent work for all. Although progress has been made in some cases, in many countries working conditions are still characterized by high levels of informality, working poverty and vulnerable employment. Making progress in this fields means upgrading the economic and social capabilities of workers and improving social protection institutions. While investigating the difficulty of assigning a clear definition to the term " Green Job " (GB), this paragraph also shifts the research focus to those economic fields that fall into the area of interest of the Green Economy. The Green Economy can offer new development opportunities to advanced as well as emerging countries. Planning employment policies is a key strategy that facilitates development and investments within the Green Economy; indeed, the workforce employed in this sector needs to acquire specific job competencies that will further boost its growth. The results of this paper shed light on the fact that while being a shared issue by both developed and developing countries, the job quality proves to be a driver for development. In addition, the policies in the field of job quality encompass measures such as social inclusion, support to women, education and equal opportunities, and therefore it is imperative that both the governments of developing and developed countries work consistently towards the implementation of such measures. The conclusions of this paper show that the job quality in the 21st century sees a convergence between the Northern and Southern countries of the world. Both areas share the need to improve the qualitative and quantitative levels of employment, to eradicate poverty (which is endemic in the Southern part of the world and is still growing in emerging and advanced countries like China), to promote social inclusion among the weakest subjects of the job market and to make their industrial productions more environmentally sustainable (greening economy) by means of a suitable professional and technological conversion. Job quality is our common future.

Work, Employment and Society, 2019

As stated in our previous editorial (Beauregard et al, 2018) we aim to capitalise on the interdisciplinary expertise of our team and draw attention of the WES readership to some of the thematic issues through our short editorials. In our first editorial we debated the issues of gender at work. This thematic issue is comprised of a variety of fascinating articles that are concerned with issues around good and bad jobs, job quality and dirty work, hence this editorial aims to offer some contextual background to the topic and tease out the main themes and contributions that the articles in the issue make to the current scholarship. The issue of job quality has always been one of the main concerns for sociologists of work. The reasons for this are multiple: bad jobs come at a cost for both individuals and societies as they can 'can undermine health and well-being, generate in-work poverty and exacerbate child poverty, create and perpetuate gender inequalities in the labour market and beyond and constrain job and social mobility' (Carre et al, 2012: 1). As the last decade has been marked by economic downturn, austerity policies (Paraschi and Georgopoulos, 2018), and the growth of precarious work (Standing, 2011) and the 'gig economy' (Kallberg and Dunn, 2016; Wood et al, 2019), the focus on good or 'decent' jobs appears an even more pertinent endeavour. In fact, this is also recognised through policy: 'the quest for decent work for all men and women, for productive, high-quality employment and for inclusive labour markets is encompassed' in the International Labour Organisation's 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (ILO, 2018). European Commission and World Bank Group have also issued a joint statement about the 'Futures of Work' suggesting that they would be working towards achieving this Sustainable Development Goals through collaborating on three focus areas: boosting skills, enhancing the systems of social protection of work and working to create more and better jobs (European Commission, 2019). What constitutes 'good' or 'decent' jobs is debated both amongst both policy-maker and academics. Findlay et al (2013: 441) have argued that job quality is a multidimensional phenomenon and that 'multiple factors and forces operating at multiple levels influence job quality'. The latter, predictably, makes it more difficult to agree on how to measure and assess job quality: ILO for instance has eleven indicators of what makes work 'decent' including 'employment opportunities, adequate earnings, decent hours, stability and security of work, arrangements to combine work and family life, fair treatment in employment, a safe working environment, social protections, social dialogue and workplace relations, and characteristics of the economic and social context of work (Kallerberg, 2016: 112; see also Osterman and Shulman, 2011), but there are a variety of other 'decent work' indexes each measuring a differing number of variables (see European Parliament 2009). Commented [MA1]: Thinking add smth around uk context? Future research directions Commented [MA5]: We need to be mindful of the author's order-Walsh is a submitting author but the first author on the paper is Deery. we may need to check other papers Commented [MA6]: Commented [MA7]: Don't know whether to add this-I think both books are great tho so maybe worth mentioning Commented [MA8]: Ok-this section could have some more specifics about future research-it is very generic at this point. More ideas can be harnessed from the Conclusions of the papers that feature… if you have time…

Social Science Research, 2019

With increasing demand of high-skilled labor and the educational expansion in many OECD countries, low-skilled workers are increasingly forced into low-skilled, low-paid and insecure jobs. Scholars have pointed to a strong skill divide in job quality. We examined whether unemployment promoted the skill divide in job quality with a variety of post-unemployment job-quality indicators. Using a large German panel survey, we found that high-skilled respondents were more prone to decreased post-unemployment job quality with regard to financial and job security aspects, yet more likely to experience better skill-matches. Further analyses revealed that this finding can be attributed to a considerable post-unemployment downward mobility of the high-skilled respondents. We discuss a possible 'floor-effect' for low-skilled workers.

Soc Sci Res, 1986