Multiple foci of commitment in a professional service firm: balancing complex employment relations

Employees of professional service firms (PSFs) have attachments to multiple groups, which may be either compatible or conflicting: their employer, their clients and their profession. We analyse the antecedents of commitment to these three foci based on a survey of 510 employees in a large PSF in Norway. The main findings are as follows: (1) low quality of internal work relations is negatively associated with employer commitment and draws employees towards external foci of commitment – the clients and the profession; (2) role conflict is associated with stronger commitment to the client organisation and the profession; and (3) autonomy and transferability of skills are associated with stronger commitment to the profession, but does not undermine commitment to the employer. The article contributes to our understanding of the conditions under which employees identify with external groups and when commitment to the employer may be compromised. The findings have implications for how managers can help to increase the commitment of employees involved in complex employment relations.     

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.     

Employers' Flexibility and Employment Volatility

A bstract .   Previous analyses of the strong secular growth in personnel supply employment have focused primarily on the relative impacts of demand and supply factors. This industry's dramatic growth has tended to mask its high degree of volatility, which may be more useful in understanding employers' motivations for hiring temporary employees. This article examines alternative explanations for the volatility of employment in the temporary supply industry from 1972 to 2000. Using a seemingly unrelated time-series estimator, we compare the volatility of temporary employment to that of regular full-time employment. We find that quarterly changes in temporary employment are more sensitive to the business cycle than regular full-time employment are and argue that temporary employment is likely to have a number of disadvantages as a reemployment strategy during a recession, since temporary employment typically declines during that time. Additionally, employment growth during this period is better explained by employers' efforts to achieve numerical rather than wage flexibility.     

The structure of occupational inequality

Quality & Quantity - By examining the interrelationships among the requirements, resources, and rewards associated with occupational positions, we have attempted to construct a preliminary...     

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.     

Externalizing the core: Firms' use of employment intermediaries in the information and communication technology industries

Recent research suggests that nonstandard employment relations may be a source of innovation for the firm. In this article, we analyze firms' strategic correlates and perceived benefits from using two types of employment in‐termediaries—consulting firms and temporary help agencies—in their core activities. Organizations with an innovation strategy are more likely to use consulting firms in their core activities, while organizations that compete on the basis of low cost are more apt to use temporary help agencies. Moreover, managers say that consulting firms are more likely than temporary help agencies to provide them with special competencies in their core activities. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Pathways to a Good Job: Perceived Work Quality among the Machinists in North America

This paper examines the perceived quality of jobs held by a sample of members of the International Association of Machinists, a large union in North America. It is argued that useful insights can be obtained by examining the relationships between global and specific measures of job quality. We then compare two ways of linking them: the regression or correlational‐causation approach and the configurational approach that regards jobs as ‘bundles’ of various characteristics. Our results suggest that there are various pathways by which workers may consider jobs to be ‘good’ but that job quality among the machinists is related especially to satisfaction with benefits, interesting work and autonomy.