Paid Work (Sociology)

Introduction

Ever since the emergence of sociology as a discipline, sociologists have shown an interest in paid work. Marx, Weber, and Durkheim’s interest in societal changes was inspired by the rise of market relations and paid work. The classical sociologists studied the growth and spread of paid work in relation to the development of inequality, rationalization, and social cohesion. Since then, the form and content of employment relationships has changed substantially and keeps on changing. The continued interest of sociologists in these developments has culminated in a well-established field of research. This article explores that field of research in three parts. The first part of the bibliography lists textbooks, reference manuals, journals, and national research traditions. The field shows substantial variety due to the constant development of the labor market and employment relations, and due to institutional differences in the architecture of employment relations. The second part of the article focuses on developments in paid work. The following themes are explored: the growth of paid work relationships, the increase in the number of paid work hours, the major changes in the architecture of employment relationships, the effects of paid work relationships on the well-being of workers, and the development of work values and work-hour preferences. The third part focuses on different labor market positions. This section starts with the standard employment relationship and then moves on to its counterpart: unemployment. It continues with workers in non-standard positions, such as temporary jobs, part-time jobs, jobs with irregular and long work hours, and self-employed workers.

Journals, Textbooks, and Reference Manuals

In the sociology of work and employment relations, a central place is assigned to the sociology of paid hours. Research in this field focuses on societal developments that give shape to employment relationships and to the impact of employment relationships on society in terms of well-being, social inequality, and solidarity. In the study of employment relations, the sociological perspective has a place next to labor economics, psychology of work, industrial relations, and HRM. Each discipline has its own perspective and research field. This article focuses on the field of sociology, but since contributions from adjacent fields have had their impact on the sociology of work, they will be referred to when appropriate. The research field of the sociology of work and employment relationships shows considerable variety for two reasons. Firstly, work and employment relationships have changed substantially since employment relations started to emerge. As a consequence, research interests are constantly shifting from one topic to another. Secondly, there always has been a considerable variety among countries in the institutional design of employment relations. Countries have developed their own institutions in and around paid work, and often also their own national research traditions, with own textbooks and journals. Since it is not possible to do justice to these national research traditions, the focus here will be on contributions in the English language. During the late 20th and early 21st centuries English-language journals, which often publish comparative research, have become the main publication outlets for researchers from other language domains as well. It is to be noted, however, that textbooks, which are directed toward other audiences such as students, still have a strong national flavor.

Journals

Sociological journals that exclusively focus on the sociology of paid work are Work, Employment and Society and Work and Occupations. Other journals listed contain high-quality contributions from a sociological perspective but also from other perspectives such as industrial relations and research on the working life, or articles on more general sociological research topics.

Economic and Industrial Democracy.
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Scandinavian journal that publishes research on the working life. Has a strong interest in the effects of work on well-being and in developments in employment relationships. Contains mainly contributions from Scandinavian researchers but also publishes other European (and occasionally non-European) research.
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European Sociological Review.
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Dedicated to developments in the life course and inequality, this journal offers many good articles about the participation in employment and its effects on the quality of life in different European countries. Contributors often choose a comparative perspective.
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Work, Employment and Society.
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Journal published by the British Sociological Association with a strong interest in social inequality issues. WES often publishes about developments in European countries outside the UK.
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Work, Family and Community.
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Focuses on articles on spillover effects between the domains of work, family, and community.
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Work and Occupations.
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High-quality research from mostly North American authors. The articles focus mainly on US work and employment relationships.
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Textbooks, Reference Manuals, National Research Traditions

The field has several English language textbooks, mostly directed at undergraduate students in the sociology of work. These books provide useful comprehensive descriptions of the state of knowledge in the field and suggest literature on the sociology of paid work and employment relationships. These textbooks usually focus on a specific country at a particular point in the development of employment relationships. The reference manual on the contrary shows and emphasizes the large variety and evolution of paid work and employment relationships. Descriptions of different national research traditions can be found in Cornfield and Hodson 2002.

Cornfield, D. B., and R. Hodson, eds. 2002. Worlds of work: Building an international sociology of work. New York: Kluwer.
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Contributions from all continents show how national research traditions in the sociology of work have developed against the background of different institutional contexts.
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Edgell, S. 2006. The sociology of work: Continuity and change in paid and unpaid work. Los Angeles: SAGE.
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The field described from the perspective of the transition from industrial to postindustrial society. Themes discussed refer to major theses in the sociology of work. Many empirical references are British. The discussion of overarching research hypotheses makes the book useful for just about anyone new to the topic.
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Grint, K., and D. Nixon. 2015. The sociology of work: An introduction. 4th ed. Cambridge, UK: Polity.
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Popular textbook in the UK. Classical themes, such as class, gender, race, and technology and new themes such as globalization and identity are discussed from a wide variety of theoretical perspectives.
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Hall, P. 1994. Sociology of work: Perspectives, analyses and issues. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge.
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Focuses on employment relationships in the United States. Classical themes in sociology, such as the meaning of work, status, gender, race, and life-course stages, are discussed on the basis of results from empirical research.
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Smith, V., ed. 2013. Sociology of work: An encyclopedia. 2 vols. Los Angeles: SAGE.
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Reference manual offering an overview of the field organized around lemmas. Lemmas include many of the new developments and new concepts in paid work and employment relations. Contains many contributions by mostly American authors.
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Volti, R. 2008. An introduction to the sociology of work and occupations. Los Angeles: Pine Forge.
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Present-day employment relationships in the United States serve as a reference point for this accessible introduction. Historical perspective, in which industrial production and industrial employment relationships are seen as one mode of work organization. Themes discussed include workplace diversity, workplace culture, and work and family life.
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Watson, T. J., and M. Korczynski. 2011. Sociology, work and industry. 6th ed. London: Routledge.
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British introduction centered on industrial employment relations and industrial conflict Approaches the issue from a wide range of theoretical perspectives, with a relatively strong emphasis on organization theories.
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Developments in Paid Work

This section focuses on developments in paid work and employment relationships and starts with an overview of the literature on the causes and determinants of the growth of paid work relations. The focus then shifts to literature on the development and the determinants of the number of work hours per worker. The third section focuses on the emergence of the standard employment relationship and its subsequent dissolution into more flexible relationships. The fourth section lists literature on the effects of employment relationships on the well-being of the workers. The last section discusses the literature on the effects of paid work on work values and work hour preferences.

Markets and Paid Work

The growth of paid work is part of the process of commodification (i.e., the growth of market exchange of goods and labor power). The sociological interest in the commodification process is about its effects on well-being, social relationships, and morality. It developed from a concern about the quality of work and its effect on the well-being of the workers to a concern about the effects on the quality of social life. Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, with its famous analysis of the pin factory, is the classical text on the advantages and, to a lesser degree, disadvantages of industrial production and market exchange (Smith 2003). The standard work on commodification, and especially on the constitution of employment relationships in industrial production, is Marx’s Capital (Marx 1992). The effects of the development of the employment relationship on the experience of time have been brilliantly described by the British historian E. P. Thompson (Thompson 1967). The growth but also the limits of the process of commodification were analyzed by the anthropologist Karl Polanyi (Polanyi 2001). An alternative perspective on the growth of market exchange and its moral consequences is given in Durkheim’s Division of Labor (Durkheim 1997). Anthony 1977 provides an overview of the immaterial value of paid work in different political and social ideologies that have contributed to the increase in the participation of paid work during the 20th century. Gershuny 1983 argues that further economic development will lead to an increase of production outside the market. Hochschild 2003 argues that the strong focus on paid work in the United States takes place at the expense of the quality of private life.

Anthony, P. D. 1977. The ideology of work. London: Tavistock.
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Anthony analyzes the value of paid work in dominant 20th-century social and political ideologies. All dominant political ideologies, with the possible exception of fascism, have fostered paid work. Anthony argues that this positive moral value attributed to work has contributed to the relatively low quality of work in industrial production.
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Durkheim, E. 1997. The division of labor in society. New York: Free Press.
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Originally published in 1893. Durkheim argues that the division of labor has led to a fundamental change in the moral constitution of society, because human relationships are no longer based on likeness but on difference. The new “organic solidarity” produces new social problems, such as a lack of norms to regulate life.
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Gershuny, J. 1983. Social innovation and the division of labor. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
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Gershuny argues that the relative decline of prices of goods in comparison to prices of services leads to a growth of informal production. The increasing prices of services urge people to buy technologically developed goods that are used in the home production of services.
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Hochschild, A. 2003. The commercialization of intimate life: Notes from home and work. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.
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Hochschild argues that in the United States time for paid work competes with family time. Therefore, workers purchase goods and services as substitutes for their own efforts. The consequence is a commercialized and poor family life with “cold” instead of “warm” care.
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Marx, K. 1992. Capital: A critique of political economy. Vol. 1. London: Penguin.
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Originally published in 1867. Analysis of capitalism and of the processes that gave rise to capitalism. Central theme is the unprecedented exploitation of labor as a consequence of the development of widening markets.
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Polanyi, K. 2001. The great transformation: The political and economic origins of our time. Boston: Beacon Hill.
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Originally published in 1944. Analyzes the process and the limits of commodification. Polanyi argues that markets at first expanded within primordial forms of social organization and then overtook the primordial social organization. The resulting market society, however, is inherently unstable because a primordial social organization is necessary to sustain markets.
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Smith, A. 2003. The wealth of nations. New York: Bantam.
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Originally published in 1776. Cogent argument about the benefits of markets. Core of the argument is that markets bring the advantages of specialization and division of labor. The book opens with the famous description of the pin factory. The remark about the intellectually detrimental effects of specialization is found in Book 5, chapter 1.
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Thompson, E. P. 1967. Time, work-discipline and industrial capitalism. Past and Present 38:56–97.
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Elaborating on Marx’s analysis of the emergence of the working class, Thompson shows how during the Industrial Revolution new employment relationships arose in which the effort of the workers was increasingly regulated by the clock. The spread of clock time contributed to the emergence of the industrial work discipline.
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Number of Work Hours

In the sociological literature work is both a boon and a bane. Paid work allows a person to participate in society, but adverse work conditions and especially long hours harm the worker’s well-being. In his Capital, Marx devoted an important chapter to the length of the work day. Drawing on historical sources, Marx showed how the economic interests and power of capitalists increased the number of work hours at the expense of the health and well-being of the workers (Marx 1992). In the 20th century, the decreasing number of work hours led to an optimism that culminated in expectations about the advent of the “leisure society.” Dumazedier 1967 has developed this perspective. Optimism changed when in the beginning of the 1990s Schor 1991 claimed that the number of work hours in the United States had increased during the 1970s and 1980s. Her argument encouraged a wave of research on the “time squeeze” and the disturbed work-life balance. Schor explained the time squeeze as a rat race in which people were working long hours to buy status-enhancing consumption goods. An alternative explanation, elaborated by Hochschild 1994, was that work hours increased because family life had eroded, and work life had been enriched. Empirical research showed that despite the experienced time squeeze, in most Western countries the average number of paid work hours had not increased. Gershuny 2000 and Jacobs and Gerson 2004 concluded that the number of work hours had increased for workers in high status jobs but decreased for low status jobs. Huberman and Minns 2008 shows a further decline in the number of work hours in most Western countries, with some notable exceptions such as in the United States where the number of work hours hardly changed. Recently, expectations have shifted once again toward a decrease in the number of work hours. This new expectation is based on the extrapolation of developments in information technology that are expected to lead to new labor-saving devices, such as robots. Brynjolfson and McAfee 2014 presents a coherent argument.

Brynjolfson, E., and A. McAfee. 2014. The second machine age: Work, progress and prosperity in a time of brilliant technologies. New York: W.W. Norton.
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Influential book that marked a new turn in the debate about the future number of work hours. Extrapolating recent developments in information technology, the authors foresee the advent of a whole new generation of labor-saving technologies that will increase inequality in the labor market.
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Dumazedier, J. 1967. Toward a society of leisure. New York: Free Press.
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Conveys the optimism about the future of the working day that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s. Due to technological development, according to this study, the leisure society was soon to arrive. Dumazedier argued that leisure time should be shielded from the influence of commercial leisure industries and should be used for relaxation, detraction, and self-development.
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Gershuny, J. 2000. Changing times: Work and leisure in postindustrial society. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
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Analyzing time diaries, Gershuny concludes that leisure increased during the last decades of the 20th century. Time-use patterns of men and women have converged. Work hours of high and low-status groups are also converging due to increasing work hours among high-status groups and decreasing hours among low-status groups.
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Hochschild, A. R. 1994. The time bind: When work becomes home and home becomes work. New York: Metropolitan.
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Report of field research on the problematical work-family balance in a large corporation with family-friendly policies. Hochschild concludes that the imbalance is the result of the growth of good work practices that have increased the value of work at the cost of an eroding family life.
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Huberman, M., and C. Minns. 2008. The times they are not changin’: Days and hours of work in Old and New worlds, 1870–2000. Explorations in Economic History 44:538–567.
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Overview of the development of the number of paid work hours in many Western countries since 1870. Focuses on the explanation of the different development patterns in Europe (“the old world”) and its former Western colonies (“the new world”).
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Jacobs, J. A., and K. Gerson. 2004. The time divide: Work, family and gender inequality. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press.
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Authoritative empirical research on the thesis of the growth of work hours and the resulting time squeeze in the United States. Concludes that the average number of work hours in the United States has hardly increased since 1970. Better-educated workers work more hours, and lower-educated workers work fewer hours.
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Marx, K. 1992. Capital: A critique of political economy. Vol. 1. London: Penguin.
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In Chapter 10, Marx analyzes the evolution of the number of work hours in Britain since the Middle Ages. He argues that these have continuously increased because of the capitalists’ need for surplus labor. The assumption that workers would be more productive during shorter working days fuels his criticism of capitalist work relationships.
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Schor, J. B. 1991. The over-worked American: The unexpected decline of leisure. New York: Basic Books.
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Influential analysis that argues that, contrary to expectations, work hours in the United States had not decreased since the late 1940s but had increased in the 1970s and 1980s. Schor explains the growing number of work hours from a work-and-spend cycle, in which the culture of consumerism favors an increase in work hours.
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Development of the Employment Relationship

Paid work usually presupposes an employment relationship in which worker and employer exchange labor power for wages. In the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, employment relationships evolved from short-term contracts to contracts of undetermined length. The latter were the standard for employment relationships in Western countries during most of the 20th century. Why and how the standard employment relationship developed and spread so successfully is a much-debated issue. Bendix 1956 offers the classical sociological theory that the form of the employment relationship is the expression of power relationships. Williamson 1985 elaborates on the alternative explanation that the employment relationship reduces uncertainty and thus economizes on transaction costs. Since the 1980s, employers tend to abandon the standard employment relationship in favor of more flexible relationships. The usual argument in the sociological literature is that this leads to new inequalities in the labor market between core and peripheral workers. Atkinson 1984 offers a straightforward explanation based on the argument of labor costs. Castells argues that the establishment of new work conditions is part of a fundamental transformation from an industrial to a network society, caused by the implementation of new information technologies. Beck 2000 argues that flexible employment relationships are an indication that the former work society, in which full employment was the norm, has evolved into a risk society in which uncertainty about work and income has become the new standard. The empirical research of Kalleberg 2011 shows that in the United States, the erosion of the standard employment relationship has led to increased job insecurity and a division of the labor market in good and bad jobs. Blossfeld, et al. 2011 shows that in European countries, the effects on inequality depend on the institutions of the welfare state.

Atkinson, J. 1984. Manpower strategies for flexible organisations. Personnel Management, 16, 28–31.
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Atkinson argues that flexible manpower strategies break up the traditional hierarchical structure of firms. They lead to a core of functionally flexible employees and a large periphery of numerically flexible workers, such as part-time workers, temporary workers, agency workers, and self-employed, among others.
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Beck, U. 2000. The brave new world of work. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
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Beck argues that since the 1980s the ideal of full employment has become utopian in Western countries. The “work society” becomes a “risk society,” with flexible work as one of its risks.
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Bendix, R. 1956. Work and authority in Industry: Ideologies of Management in the course of Industrialization. New York: John Wiley.
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Classical sociological analysis in which the development of the industrial employment relationship is explained from power relationships. Bendix shows how in both capitalist and non-capitalist countries the ideologies that formed the employment relationship have developed under the influence of actual power relationships.
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Blossfeld, H. -P., S. Buchholz, D. Hofäcker, and K. Kolb, eds. 2011. Globalized labor markets and social inequality in Europe. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
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Lays down the results of a large international project that studied the effects of flexibilization of employment relationships on the life course and inequality in different European countries. Concludes that the he national institutions of the welfare state often have a buffering effect on the growth of inequality.
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Castells, M. 1996–1998. The Information age: Economy, society and culture. 3 vols. Oxford: Blackwell.
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Castells develops the thesis that new information technologies are at the basis of a fundamental transformation from industrial society to network society. In the new society, labor has lost its collective identity. Work is individualized both in skills and in work conditions. A small share of well-educated workers occupies core positions, whereas most workers are in uncertain jobs, developing their identities outside the work process.
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Kalleberg, A. L. 2011. Good jobs, bad jobs: The rise of polarized and precarious employment systems in the United States, 1970s to 2000s. New York: Russell Sage.
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Thorough description of the development of employment relationships and quality of work in the United States during the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Kalleberg concludes that job insecurity has grown in all jobs and that the number of precarious jobs has grown. These are results of economic restructuring and the disappearance of institutions that protect workers.
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Williamson, O. E. 1985. The organization of work. In The economic institutions of capitalism: Firms, markets, relational contracting. Edited by O. E. Williamson, 206–239. New York: Free Press.
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In Williamson’s analysis, not power but efficiency is the main reason why standard employment relationships have developed. Skill specificity and productivity measurement problems necessitate the transformation of a market relationship into a hierarchical relationship.
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Paid Work and Well-Being

Sociology has a long tradition of research on the effects of paid work on well-being. The influential starting point was Marx’s analysis of alienation in industrial labor (Marx 1988). Blauner’s argument about the alienation of the factory worker (Blauner 1964) and Braverman’s argument about the declining quality of work in industry (Braverman 1967) are powerful 20th- century elaborations of one of Marx’s earliest arguments. Against the background of the high unemployment in the 1980s, Jahoda 1982 reframed the argument about the effects of paid work on well-being, arguing that employment has several positive functions. In the transition from industrial into postindustrial societies, Marx’s theory of alienation has mostly disappeared from the research on paid work and well-being. Instead, new direct measurements of well-being such as happiness, job satisfaction, work pressure, and affect are used, not only by sociologists but also by economists and psychologists. Clark and Oswald 1994 offered an influential demonstration of the strong negative effect of unemployment on well-being. During the last decades, the use of subjective measures has led to new results and new perspectives. Using the respondent’s satisfaction with quality of life as measure of well-being, Harter and Arora 2010 performs an analysis of the effects of the number of paid work hours on well-being. Green 2006 presents time series of subjective and objective measurements of the quality of jobs, such as job satisfaction and work pressure. Kahneman, et al. 2004 presents a research method that measures positive and negative affect in work and work relationships in comparison to other activities and other relationships.

Blauner, R. 1964. Alienation and freedom: The factory worker and his industry. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.
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Blauner argues that factory workers are alienated from their work because they lack control of work conditions and the work process. The worker brings home a paycheck, but the work does not contribute to the self-realization of the worker. Four case studies of workers in different industries illustrate the extent of the alienation.
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Braverman, H. 1967. Labor and monopoly capital: The degradation of work in the twentieth century. New York: Monthly Review.
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Braverman argues that during the 20th century work has been transformed from the utilization of skills and experience into a mindless and machine-based activity. The application of the principles of scientific management has dissociated the labor process from the skills of the workers and separated the conception from the execution of the work.
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Clark, A. E., and A. J. Oswald. 1994. Unhappiness and unemployment. Economic Journal 104:648–659.
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Economists Clark and Oswald test the validity of the statement that unemployment is voluntary. Unemployed workers in every population category show higher levels of mental distress than employees or self-employed workers. The negative effects of unemployment are stronger than those of divorce and marital separation.
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Green, F. 2006. Demanding work: The paradox of job quality in the affluent economy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press.
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Analyzes trends in objective and subjective measures of the quality of work. Job satisfaction in Western countries has not increased during the last decades of the 20th century and has even decreased in some countries. This is caused by the intensification of the work process and the decline of task discretion.
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Harter, J. K., and R. Arora. 2010. The impact of time spent working and job fit on well-being around the world. In International differences in well-being. Edited by E. Diener, D. Kahneman, and John Helliwell, 398–433. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199732739.003.0013Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Using worldwide Gallup Poll data, Harter and Arora test the relationships between hours worked, perceived job fit, and well-being. They report a weak negative relationship between hours worked and well-being across all continents.
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Jahoda, M. 1982. Employment and unemployment: A social-psychological analysis. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
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Against the background of high levels of unemployment in Western welfare states, Jahoda redefines the functions of paid work. She argues that unemployment deprives workers of five aspects of paid work, namely time structure, social contacts, collective purpose, social identity, and regular activity.
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Kahneman, D., A. B. Krueger, D. A. Schkade, N. Schwarz, and A. A. Stone. 2004. A survey method for characterizing daily life experience: The Day Reconstruction Method. Science 306:1776–1780.
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With the help of a new method, affect experienced in activities and relationships has been measured in a sample of working women. Results show relatively low positive affect and relatively high negative affect of work and work relationships in comparison to other activities and relationships outside work.
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Marx, K. 1988. The economic and philosophic manuscripts of 1844. Amherst, NY: Prometheus.
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Marx argues that in the capitalist mode of production, the worker loses the ability to determine his or her own life and destiny. He is subjected to his employer, who uses the worker’s labor power to extract the maximum amount of surplus value. The low quality of work alienates the worker from his fundamental human needs.
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Work Values and Work Hour Preferences

There is a long sociological tradition of interest in the immaterial value of paid work. This interest dates back to Weber’s argument about the Protestant work ethic as an origin of capitalism (Weber 2010). During the 20th century, sociologists have been attentive to the development and transformation of the work ethic. A highlight is Whyte’s analysis that shows that the growth of large corporations brought new work values that undermined the prevailing Protestant work ethic in the United States. (Whyte 2002). Another highlight is Bell’s analysis, showing that capitalism’s greatest successes, the growth of mass production and mass consumption, have undermined the Puritan work ethic, because they tend to replace delayed gratification by materialistic hedonism (Bell 1996). Bell’s argument remains contested. The counter-argument is that in the affluent society work retains its central position in the value system, not for its extrinsic, but for its intrinsic rewards. Among others, Inglehart 1990 has developed this argument. Since the 1970s, arguments about the work ethic are more often founded on empirical evidence, mainly because better data sets on work norms and work hour preferences have become available for research. This has led to new perspectives on differences in the work ethic between individuals and societies. Furnham 1990 presents an overview of measure instruments, their main results and the correlates of these results. In comparative studies, Furnham, et al. 1993 shows that in non-Western countries a stronger work ethic prevails than in Western countries. Comparative research of Stier and Lewin-Epstein 2003 shows that in more affluent societies, the desire to increase work hours is smaller than in less prosperous societies. Wielers, et al. 2014 argues that there is a linear relation between the number of hours worked in a country and the work norms and work-hour preferences of the workers.

Bell, D. 1996. The cultural contradictions of capitalism. In The cultural contradictions of capitalism. By D. Bell, 33–84. New York: Basic Books.
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Originally published in 1976. Bell analyzes how in the 20th century the then-dominant Protestant ethic, which had been the basis of growing US prosperity, increasingly came under the attack of artistic and intellectual elites. The growth of mass production and mass consumption further undermined the Protestant ethic, leading to its replacement by materialistic hedonism.
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Furnham, A. 1990. The protestant work ethic: The psychology of work-related beliefs and behaviours. London: Routledge.
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Offers an overview of the many individual-level instruments to measure work ethic and their correlates.
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Furnham, A., M. Bond, P. Heaven, and D. Hilton, et al. 1993. A comparison of protestant work ethic beliefs in thirteen countries. Journal of Social Psychology 133.2: 185–197.
DOI: 10.1080/00224545.1993.9712136Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
One of several studies in which the work ethic in Anglo-Saxon white Protestant countries is compared with the work ethic in other countries of the former British Commonwealth. The conclusion is that contrary to Weber’s thesis, the work ethic is higher in the non-Western countries.
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Inglehart, R. 1990. Culture shift in advanced industrial society. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press.
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Argues that in an advanced industrial society the value system changes from an emphasis on material well-being and security (materialism) to an emphasis on the quality of life (post-materialism). The expected implication for paid work is not that its value diminishes but that intrinsic motivation becomes more important than extrinsic motivation.
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Stier, H., and N. Lewin-Epstein. 2003. Time to work: A comparative analysis of preferences for working hours. Work and Occupations 30.3: 302–326.
DOI: 10.1177/0730888403253897Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Estimates the effects of individual and country-level determinants of the preference to increase or decrease work hours. Reports that on the country level, prosperity has a negative effect on the desire to increase work hours whereas inequality has a positive effect.
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Weber, M. 2010. The protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism. New York: Norton.
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Originally published around 1905. Weber argues that after the Middle Ages a work ethic directed toward the increase of material prosperity emerged in western Europe. Fearing the vengeance of a stern and ruthless God, members of Protestant sects were stimulated to work hard and be thrifty and thus set in motion the process of capital accumulation.
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Whyte, W. H. 2002. The organization man. Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press.
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Originally published in 1956. Whyte argues that the rise of large corporations has caused the Protestant work ethic to be replaced by a social ethic. This social ethic does not emphasize individualism, hard work, and thrift but rather the group, belongingness, and scientism.
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Wielers, R., M. Münderlein, and F. Koster. 2014. Part-time work and work hour preferences: An international comparison. European Sociological Review 30.1: 76–89.
DOI: 10.1093/esr/jct023Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Shows that in countries with greater participation in part-time work, full-time workers have a stronger preference to reduce work hours. Explains that greater participation in part-time work increases normative acceptance of part-time work and its opportunities to combine paid work with other life interests.
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Labor Market Positions

In addition to developments in paid work and employment relationships, research has focused on several specific labor market positions. Main topic of interest was the “standard employment relationship,” where the worker has a full-time contract of indefinite duration with the employer. The standard employment relationship was and is the usual employment relationship in the manufacturing industries that dominated Western economies during most of the 20th century. The alternative was to be unemployed. Since the economic crisis of the 1930s, the social and psychological consequences of unemployment have been intensively studied by sociologists. In the 1980s the dominance of the standard employment relationship started to erode. Workers in standard employment relationships became more uncertain about their jobs and new, often temporary, labor market positions appeared, such as temporary workers, self-employed workers, and part-time workers. Furthermore, as a 24/7 economy started to emerge, the interest in working irregular or long hours increased. Originally, the literature on these new categories of flexible workers was mainly inspired by the literature on traditional flexible employment relationships (see Development of the Employment Relationship) but then took its own course by focusing on specific job categories that appeared to attract specific types of workers.

The Standard Employment Relationship

The standard employment relationship was intensively studied by sociologists in its context of the relatively closed work organization. The classical works of sociology are often studies in which expectations, behavior, and relations of workers in standard employment relationships are described. At first, sociologists focused on the performance of the workers. Roethlisberger and Dickson 1939 and Roy 1952 show that work organization in manufacturing industries leads to substantial efficiency losses. Later, the interest shifted to power relations on the work floor. Burawoy 1979 and Edwards 1979 analyze relations on the factory floor from a class perspective, Kanter 1977 discusses relations in the office from a gender perspective. Work organizations have developed rules, regulations, and expectations around the standard employment relationships to motivate the workers. Sorensen 1994 provides a comprehensive overview of the incentives that firms use to motivate their workers. Doeringer and Piore 1971 argues that the rules and regulations surrounding the standard employment relationships can be analyzed as “internal markets,” because their goal is to determine wages and to allocate the workers. Moen and Roehling 2005 shows that these rules, regulations, and expectations demand the full commitment of the worker to his or her work and presuppose the presence of a nonworking partner.

Burawoy, M. 1979. Manufacturing consent: Changes in the labor process under monopoly capital. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.
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Burawoy investigates why factory workers work as hard as they do and willingly accept exploitation. Workers in the factory focus on “making out,” which means earning a better wage than the base rate. Burawoy analyzes “making out” as a game played by the workers and by management. It gives meaning to the work but also obscures the exploitation in the labor process.
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Doeringer, P. B., and M. J. Piore. 1971. Internal labor markets and manpower analysis. Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath.
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Claims that in large work organizations internal labor markets have been created by rules and regulations for allocation and wage setting. Internal markets offer efficient solutions for external labor market problems, and workers in the internal market have relatively good working conditions. Workers who do not get access have to settle for the secondary labor market.
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Edwards, R. C. 1979. Contested terrain: The transformation of the workplace in the twentieth century. New York: Basic Books.
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Edwards shows that during the 20th century control of workers has shifted from direct supervisory control to control by technological and bureaucratic means, such as promotion structures. The new means of control divide the working class and thus dampen the class conflict, securing the viability of capitalist production relations.
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Kanter, R. M. 1977. Men and women of the corporation. New York: Basic Books.
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Ethnographic description and analysis of the social relationships in a large corporation from the gender perspective. Focuses on the relationships of the managers with their secretaries and their wives. Kanter argues that differences between men and women in opportunities, power, and numerical representation in occupational categories tend to reproduce themselves.
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Moen, P., and P. Roehling. 2005. The career mystique: Cracks in the American dream. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.
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Offers a gender perspective on the standard employment relationship. Argues that women in the labor market adopt the template of the employment relationships of men. Since this template presupposes the presence of a non-working partner at home, this generates many new problems for both women and men in all stages of the life course.
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Roethlisberger, F. J., and W. J. Dickson. 1939. Management and the worker: An account of the research program conducted by the Western Electric Company, Hawthorne Works, Chicago. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press.
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Comprehensive report of research intended to increase work performance in a large American company. Concludes that it is not the wage but the quality of informal social relations that determine worker productivity. The book is a landmark in the human relations school of management, which argued that work should be adapted to the needs of the worker.
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Roy, D. 1952. Quota restriction and goldbricking in a machine shop. American Journal of Sociology 57.5: 427–442.
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As a participant observer, Roy investigates how workers distribute their efforts under a piece rate payment system. He shows how workers develop strategies and informal norms that restrict output.
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Sorensen, A. B. 1994. Firms, wages and incentives. In The handbook of economic sociology. Edited by N. J. Smelser and R. Swedberg, 504–529. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press.
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Comprehensive overview of the often abstract economic literature on incentive systems and wages by a sociologist interested in the mechanisms that produce social inequality. Sorensen discusses the properties of the incentive systems in their relation to economic, psychological, and sociological theories.
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Unemployment

The counterpart of the employed worker is the unemployed worker. Research on the social and psychological effects of unemployment started during the economic crisis of the 1930s. The first sociological studies, Marienthal (Jahoda, et al. 2002) and the unemployed worker (Bakke 1940), were descriptions that showed the devastating effects of unemployment on the workers, their families, and their community. A first comprehensive review of the psychological effects of unemployment was Eisenberg and Lazarsfeld 1938. The descriptions and conclusions of these first studies have molded the sociological perspective on unemployment. Inspired by the Marienthal study, Engbersen, et al. 1993 studies the effects of unemployment after the advent of the welfare state. The recent development of measurement of affect (see Kahneman, et al. 2004, cited under Paid Work and Well-being) adds to the understanding of the experience of unemployment (Knabe, et al. 2010). The contemporary sociological research on unemployment focuses mainly on institutional effects on the social and psychological consequences of unemployment. The issue is whether and to what extent institutions such as income replacement rates, work values of the unemployed, and activation policies affect the social exclusion and the well-being. These issues are investigated in cross-country comparisons. Russell, et al. 2013 investigates to what extent the differences in well-being between employed and unemployed workers in various countries can be explained by differences in institutions and labor market conditions. Gallie 2004 provides an overview of the state of the research on different institutional effects and offers several more specific case studies about the effects of social exclusion, income replacement, and skill deprivation. A special issue in research is the scar effect of unemployment. A scar is a disadvantageous effect that persists when the state that initially produced the effect has disappeared. Research shows a lower income and a lower well-being after reentry on the labor market as scar effects of unemployment. Gangl 2006 shows that the size of the scar depends on labor market institutions, such as dismissal protection and unemployment benefits.

Bakke, E. W. 1940. The unemployed worker: A study of the task of making a living without a job. New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press.
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On the basis of different research methods, Bakke describes how unemployed workers in the United States in the 1930s adjusted to their new conditions of living. Despite scarce resources, they delay claiming unemployment benefit in a desire to stay independent and self-supporting for as long as possible.
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Eisenberg, P., and P. F. Lazarsfeld. 1938. The psychological effects of unemployment. Psychological Bulletin 35:358–390.
DOI: 10.1037/h0063426Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A first but fairly complete review of the literature on the social and psychological effects of unemployment. The described effects of unemployment on well-being, social behavior, and attitudes are still standard in the literature on the effects of unemployment.
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Engbersen, G., K. Schuyt, J. Timmer, and F. van Waarden. 1993. Cultures of unemployment: A comparative look at long-term unemployment and urban poverty. Boulder, CO: Westview.
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Long-term unemployment in the 1980s is studied against the background of the Dutch welfare state. Describes how unemployed workers deal with money, time, and the search for work. Most long-term unemployed fit into the known categories of conformists or retreatists, but there are also calculating, enterprising, and autonomous unemployed.
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Gallie, D., ed. 2004. Resisting marginalization: Unemployment experience and social policy in the European Union. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
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Contains articles in which the difficulties experienced by unemployed workers who reenter the labor market are related to their social isolation, their work values, financial incentives, and the activation policies of the country they live in. The studies show considerable differences in the way unemployment is experienced in several European countries.
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Gangl, M. 2006. Scar effects of unemployment: An assessment of institutional complementarities. American Sociological Review 71:986–1013.
DOI: 10.1177/000312240607100606Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
International comparative research on the negative effect of unemployment on wages after a return to the labor market. Gangl shows that the size of the scar depends on institutions. A generous unemployment benefit system and a strict employment protection legislation tend to limit the size of the scar.
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Jahoda, M., P. F. Lazarsfeld, and H. Zeisel. 2002. Marienthal: The sociography of an unemployed community. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction.
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Originally published in German in 1933. Describes how poverty strikes and social life comes to a halt when an entire community in Austria in the 1930s becomes unemployed after the shutting down of a factory. Impressive description, with many interesting details, such as the mysterious disappearance of local cats and an analysis of the walking speed of the unemployed workers.
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Knabe, A., S. Rätzel, R. Schöb, and J. Weimann. 2010. Dissatisfied with life but having a good day: Time-use and well-being of the unemployed. Economic Journal 120:867–889.
DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-0297.2009.02347.xSave Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Reports the results of comparative measures of positive and negative affect among employed and unemployed workers during daily activities. The unemployed have more time to spend on enjoyable activities, but the activities provide less positive affect. When engaged in similar activities, employed persons report more positive affect than the unemployed.
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Russell, H., D. Watson, and F. McGinnety. 2013. Unemployment and social well-being. In Economic crisis, quality of work and social integration: The European experience. Edited by D. Gallie. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
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In a cross-country comparison, this chapter tests institutional explanations for the lower well-being of the unemployed. They report that financial strain, in particular, explains a substantial part of the lower well-being and that the impact of the welfare state regimes is relatively weak.
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Temporary Work and Job Uncertainty

Since the 1980s, when firms developed strategies to build a flexible workforce, job insecurity has increased. The main thesis in sociology is that the increased job insecurity not only leads to greater income insecurity but also entails negative effects on well-being and health (see Paid Work and Well-being). Sennett 1998 elaborates on the psychological consequences of job insecurity, arguing that the increased job insecurity has a strong negative impact on the development of the personality. Standing 2011 elaborates on the social consequences, arguing that the new work conditions of insecure jobs and incomes and lack of a work-based identity have given rise to the emergence of a new class: the precariat. Empirical research on the effects of the growth of temporary jobs initially focused on the young workers. Unprotected by seniority and without strong ties to work organizations, it is young workers who are often exposed to uncertainty. Blossfeld, et al. 2005 shows how the life course of young workers in different countries is affected by increased labor market uncertainty. Elchardus and Smits 2008 shows that some young workers are initially enthusiastic about the enhanced opportunities to work for more than one organization. However, this enthusiasm fades after more transitions have been made. In a qualitative study, Tomlinson 2007 studies how young aspirant-workers mentally prepare for employability. The more recent literature shows that the relationship between objective and subjective job insecurity is more complex than initially assumed. Benz and Frey 2008 (cited under Self-employment) shows that self-employed workers, whose position is often insecure, derive higher satisfaction from work than employees in similar jobs. Klandermans, et al. 2010 looks at how the effects of job insecurity on workers who have permanent jobs are often more negative than for those who have temporary jobs; this is because workers in permanent jobs have more to lose.

Blossfeld, H. -P., E. Klijzing, M. Mills, and K. Kurz, eds. 2005. Globalization, uncertainty and youth in society. London: Routledge.
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Country-specific studies on the way labor market uncertainty in the early years of a career affects the life course of the worker. Increased risks of unemployment and temporary employment lead to postponement of marriage and parenthood. The effects of increased uncertainty are dampened by national institutions, such as the welfare state regimes and the family.
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Elchardus, M., and W. Smits. 2008. The vanishing flexible: Ambition, self-realization and flexibility in the career perspectives of young Belgian adults. Work, Employment and Society 22.2: 243–262.
DOI: 10.1177/0950017008089103Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Tests the attractiveness of the flexible career model, which emphasizes the positive effects of lateral career moves on self-realization. Young workers’ initial enthusiasm vanishes with the growing number of job transitions. The ideal of the flexible model is replaced by the traditional linear model or by a flat and ambitionless career model.
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Klandermans, B., J. Klein Hesselink, and T. van Vuuren. 2010. Employment status and job insecurity: On the subjective appraisal of an objective status. Economic and Industrial Democracy 31:557–577.
DOI: 10.1177/0143831X09358362Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Subjective job insecurity does not only depend on the probability but also on the severity of job loss. The severity explains why workers on a permanent contract who feel that their job is no longer secure experience greater job insecurity than workers on a temporary contract: they have more to lose.
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Sennett, R. 1998. The corrosion of character: The personal consequences of work in the new capitalism. New York: Norton.
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Sennett argues that the increased job insecurity and declining work binds undermine the formation of character of the workers. Workers feel insecure and less able to determine their own life course, which has a negative effect on the development of their personality and their participation in social life.
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Standing, G. 2011. The precariat: The new dangerous class. London: Bloomsbury.
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Standing argues that as a consequence of flexible manpower policies a new class of people working on precarious work conditions is emerging. This far from homogeneous class of workers all hold jobs that do not provide job and income security. As a consequence, they lack a work-based identity.
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Tomlinson, M. 2007. Graduate employability and student attitudes to the labor market. Journal of Education and Work 20.4: 285–304.
DOI: 10.1080/13639080701650164Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Interview-based research on the employability strategies of students in the flexible labor market. Students feel highly responsible for their own career. They either give work and career a central place in their future aspirations (“careerism”), or they accept the necessity of showing commitment to career and employability (“ritualism”).
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Part-time Employment

In most Western countries the number of part-time jobs has increased during the last decades, and it is mainly women who work in part-time jobs. An important thesis in sociological literature is that part-time work maintains gender inequality in the household and in the labor market. This is due to often poor quality of part-time jobs and the reduced career opportunities of part-time workers. Tilly 1996 documents the low quality of part-time jobs in the United States. Epstein, et al. 1999 describes the destructive effects of the decision to work part-time in a law firm. Hakim 1997 argues that part-time work makes it easier for women to enter the labor market. OECD 2010 gives many indications that the quality of part-time jobs is improving when its numbers rise. A prominent issue in recent sociological research is the difference between countries in the participation in part-time work. Pfau-Effinger 2004 argues that differences in participation rates have their roots in the specific national gender culture at the time of the modernization process. In most sociological analyses the explanation is sought in more recently established welfare state institutions. Burgoon and Baxandall 2004 argues that part-time work has flourished especially in conservative welfare states that needed an increase of labor market participation to sustain their economy. Lind and Rasmussen 2008 shows how in Denmark, after an initial increase, the participation of married women in part-time work has decreased.

Burgoon, B., and Ph. Baxandall. 2004. Three worlds of working time: The partisan and welfare politics of work hours in industrialized countries. Politics and Society 32.4: 439–473.
DOI: 10.1177/0032329204269983Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Shows that participation in part-time work has especially increased in conservative welfare states. This growth is explained from the necessity of high labor market participation to sustain welfare state institutions, while at the same time preserving conservative family values and gender stratification.
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Epstein, C., C. Seron, B. Oglensky, and R. Sauté. 1999. The part-time paradox: Time norms, professional life, family and gender. New York: Routledge.
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Interview-based research on the effects of part-time work on the career patterns of lawyers. Full commitment and long hours are the norm, and part-time work is stigmatized in law firms.
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Hakim, C. 1997. A sociological perspective on part-time work. In Between equalization and marginalization. Women working part-time in Europe and the United States of America. Edited by H. -P. Blossfeld, and C. Hakim, 22–70. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
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Hakim argues that in European countries many women work in part-time jobs voluntarily as it allows them to combine paid work and family responsibilities. The women are the “secondary earners” in the household, and they subordinate their career ambitions to their family responsibilities.
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Lind, J., and E. Rasmussen. 2008. Paradoxical patterns of part-time employment in Denmark? Economic and Industrial Democracy 29:521–540.
DOI: 10.1177/0143831X08096226Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Authors show that in Denmark since the 1970s the participation of middle-aged women (twenty-five to fifty-four years old) has decreased considerably, whereas the participation of younger women and men (fifteen to twenty-four years old) has increased. Explanations are the dynamics characterizing the process of increasing labor market participation of women and institutional changes in the Danish welfare state.
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OECD. 2010. How good is part-time work? In OECD employment outlook: Moving beyond the jobs crisis. 211–264.
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Explores not only the “penalties,” but also the “premiums” of part-time work. Shows that part-time work is associated with lower work pressure and a better work-life balance. The analyses demonstrate that with higher shares of part-time jobs, the “penalties” of part-time work decrease while the “premiums” remain unchanged.
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Pfau-Effinger, B. 2004. Development of culture, welfare states and women’s employment in Europe. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate.
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Norms governing the gender division of labor during the process of modernization are used to explain differences in participation in part-time work between Germany, the Netherlands, and Finland. Part-time work flourishes in countries where the male breadwinner model of the urban bourgeoisie was dominant and not that of the agrarian family household.
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Tilly, C. 1996. Half a job: Bad and good part-time jobs in a changing labor market. Philadelphia: Temple Univ. Press.
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Shows that the increase in the number of part-time jobs in the United States is mainly the result of involuntary part-time work in low-quality jobs. Employers employ part-time workers to reduce labor costs. The part-time jobs are unskilled, low-wage jobs.
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Irregular and Long Work Hours

Another result of the interest in the consequences of the flexibilization of labor markets is a renewed interest in the work conditions of workers with irregular and/or long work hours. The usual assumption in most sociological literature, firmly rooted in classical sociology, is that irregular and long work hours negatively affect well-being. Sociological research has focused on the conditions that produce these results. The issue is when and how irregular schedules affect well-being. Recent research indicates that working irregular hours may have negligible negative and sometimes even positive effects on well-being when the worker is in control of the work hours. Lyness, et al. 2012 shows that control of schedule and hours positively affects well-being. Mills and Täht 2010 argues that couples in the Netherlands may have a preference for irregular work hours because it allows tag-team parenting. In more recent years, the issue of long work hours has attracted interest from the perspective of the flexible work organization. Researchers hypothesize that new work organizations encourage people to work long hours. Perlow shows how in a software engineering company, management stretches the work boundary at the cost of family time (Perlow 1998), while in the same company a culture emerges that perpetuates an experience of “time famine” (Perlow 1999). Van Echtelt, et al. 2006 explains the preference of workers in Western countries to reduce work hours from the demands of the new, post-Fordist work organization.

Lyness, K. S., J. C. Gornick, P. Stone, and A. R. Grotto. 2012. It’s all about control: Worker control over schedule and hours in cross-national context. American Sociological Review 77:1023–1049.
DOI: 10.1177/0003122412465331Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Argues that workers’ ability to control work hours and work schedules has strong beneficial effects on well-being. Analyses for twenty-one countries show that control has positive effects on work-family conflict, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment.
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Mills, M., and K. Täht. 2010. Nonstandard work schedules and partnership quality: Quantitative and qualitative findings. Journal of Marriage and Family 72:860–875.
DOI: 10.1111/j.1741-3737.2010.00735.xSave Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Shows that in the Netherlands, marriage partners with varying work hours experience less family conflict and spend more time with their children. Non-standard work schedules are used for tag-team parenting or to maintain full-time motherhood norms.
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Perlow, L. 1998. The social ordering of work and family time in a high-tech corporation. Administrative Science Quarterly 43:328–357.
DOI: 10.2307/2393855Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Qualitative study of a software development group that shows how managers control the hours worked by employees, as well as how workers and their spouses react to this control of the temporal boundary between work and family.
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Perlow, L. 1999. The time famine: Toward a sociology of work time. Administrative Science Quarterly 44:57–81.
DOI: 10.2307/2667031Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Ethnographic research on the experience of constant time famine in a team of software engineers. The engineers spend much time solving the problems of other team members. The feeling of perpetual crisis combined with a reward system based on presence and visibility results in a vicious cycle of long work hours.
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Van Echtelt, P. E., A. C. Glebbeek, and S. M. Lindenberg. 2006. The new lumpiness of work: Explaining the mismatch between the actual and preferred working hours. Work, Employment and Society 20.3: 493–512.
DOI: 10.1177/0950017006066998Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Develops and tests the thesis that in post-Fordist work organizations workers, laboring under the illusion of enjoying autonomy over work-hours decisions, are so focused on finishing their tasks on time that they spend more hours on work than they actually want to.
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Self-employment

A relatively recent labor market development in Western countries is the growing number of self-employed workers (i.e., independent workers without personnel). During most of the 19th and 20th centuries, the number of self-employed workers declined, whereas the number of wage workers increased. The present rise of self-employment is associated with the growth of the flexible labor market and shows differences between countries and sectors. A vivid ethnographic description of the at the end of the 20th century fastly expanding market for high tech contractors in the United States is provided by Barley and Kunda (2004). In the explanatory literature, the focus lies mainly on two issues. The first issue concerns the determinants of the increase of the number of self-employed. An overview of individual background variables is provided by Le 1999. Research initially concentrated on the question whether the new growth of self-employment is a response to barriers in the labor market, such as unemployment and discrimination. Clark and Drinkwater 2000 focuses on discrimination in the labor market as explanation for the overrepresentation of ethnic minorities in self-employment, and Craig, et al. 2012 explores the work-family balance to explain the increasing number of self-employed women. This research, however, does not provide an adequate explanation for the growth of self-employment, since ethnic minorities and women only make up a small percentage of the total of self-employed workers. A new line of research is the relation between the growth of self-employment and legislation, especially in labor law and fiscal policies. Researchers distinguish between the “genuine” self-employed (i.e., self-employed workers who operate as independent entrepreneurs) and “dependent” or “false” self-employed. The latter are formally self-employed workers who in practice are strongly dependent on one client. Behling and Harvey 2015 relates the strong growth of the number of self-employed in the British construction industry to sector-specific fiscal policies. The second issue explored in 21st-century literature concerns the extent to which self-employed workers are satisfied with this status. Benz and Frey 2008 shows that the self-employed experience high job satisfaction. Hetschko 2016 provides evidence that loss of work has even more negative effects for self-employed than for employed workers.

Barley, S. R., and G. Kunda. 2004. Gurus, hired guns and warm bodies: Itenerant experts in a knowledge economy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
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Ethnographic description and analysis of the market for high-tech contractors in the United States at the height of the economic cycle. The focus is on the contractors, their hiring managers and brokering agencies. The authors argue that occupation is the quintessential category to understand the working and development of this market.
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Behling, F., and M. Harvey. 2015. The evolution of false self-employment in the British construction industry: A neo-Polonyian account of labour market formation. Work, Employment and Society 29:969–988.
DOI: 10.1177/0950017014559960Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The extraordinarily high share of self-employed in the British construction industry is explained from the co-evolution of labor law and a sector-specific fiscal regime. Authors argue that this is false self-employment, because its main rationale is fiscal. It leads to fiscal losses for the state and underinvestment in workers’ skills.
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Benz, M., and B. Frey. 2008. The value of doing what you like: Evidence of the self-employed in 23 countries. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization 68:445–455.
DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2006.10.014Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Shows that self-employed workers experience higher job satisfaction than employed workers. The higher job satisfaction among the self-employed is attributed to the fact that they have more interesting work and greater autonomy. Job security, income, and advancement opportunities hardly affect the difference.
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Clark, K., and S. Drinkwater. 2000. Pushed out or pulled in? Self-employment among ethnic minorities in England and Wales. Labour Economics 7:603–628.
DOI: 10.1016/S0927-5371(00)00015-4Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Investigates why ethnic minorities are disproportionally overrepresented in self-employment. Shows that self-employment offers ethnic workers better opportunities of obtaining a high income than employment, thus suggesting wage discrimination among ethnic workers. In addition, pull-factors, such as living in an ethnic enclave and adherence to a non-Christian belief, explain overrepresentation.
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Craig, L., A. Powell, and N. Cortis. 2012. Self-employment, work-family time and the gender division of labour. Work, employment and society 5:716–734.
DOI: 10.1177/0950017012451642Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Investigates how self-employment affects the gender division of labor for women and men with young children. Self-employed mothers work fewer hours in paid work and spend more time on childcare than employed mothers, whereas the time allocation of self-employed and employed fathers hardly differs.
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Hetschko, C. 2016. On the misery of losing self-employment. Small Business Economics 47:461–478.
DOI: 10.1007/s11187-016-9730-0Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The well-being of formerly self-employed workers is affected more strongly by unemployment than the well-being of formerly employed workers. This greater sense of loss is attributed to non-monetary reasons.
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Le, A. T. 1999. Empirical studies of self-employment. Journal of Economic Surveys 13:381–416.
DOI: 10.1111/1467-6419.00088Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Still useful overview of individual background characteristics that determine self-employment. It shows that better educated and more experienced workers are overrepresented among the self-employed. Self-employment further depends on factors such as father’s employment status, access to capital, and living in an ethnic enclave.