Drawing on nationally representative data for British employees, the article argues for a more comprehensive concept of job insecurity, including not only job tenure insecurity but also job status insecurity, relating to anxiety about changes to valued features of the job. It shows that job status insecurity is highly prevalent in the workforce and is associated with different individual, employment and labour market characteristics than those that affect insecurity about job loss. It is also related to different organizational contexts. However, the article also shows that the existence of effective mechanisms of employee participation can reduce both types of job insecurity.

This chapter begins with a brief discussion of the emergence of quality of work issues in the social agenda of many European societies during the last decade of the 20th century. It then discusses dimensions of quality of work, approaches to measuring job quality, and perspectives on changing job quality. An overview of the preceding chapters is presented.

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Family and work, Work-life balance, Work conditions, European Social Survey, Job pressure,

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Production regime theory has been one of the most innovative and influential recent contributions to neo-institutional debates about the varieties of capitalism. This review takes issue with its claim that there are major differences in the quality of work between the two principal regime types that are held to characterize European societies—coordinated market economies and liberal market economies—by examining the evidence for Denmark, Finland, Germany, Sweden, and the UK. Although the broad pattern of skill differences corresponds reasonably well to the arguments of the theory, the evidence does not confirm the other claims about work and employment conditions, in particular with respect to employee job control, autonomous work teams, organizational participation, and job security. Rather, it points to the distinctiveness of the Scandinavian countries and hence to the importance of factors that lie outside the explanatory framework of the thesis.

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Task discretion has held a central place in theories of work organization and the employment relationship. However, there have been sharply differing views about both the factors that determine it and the principal trends over time. Using evidence from three national surveys, this article shows that there has been a decline in task discretion since the early 1990s. This contrasts with an increase in other forms of employee involvement such as direct participation and consultative involvement. Many of the arguments in the literature about the factors that favour higher task discretion are supported by our evidence -in particular those emphasizing the importance of skill levels and the broader organizational ethos with respect to employee involvement. However, such factors do not account for the decline in task discretion, implying that existing theories fail to address some of the crucial determinants. It is tentatively suggested that it may be necessary also to take account of macro factors such as competitive pressure, public sector reform programmes and the growth of accountability structures. KEY WORDSemployee involvement / job control / new technology / participation / quality of working life / skill / task discretion / trade unions 243