Employment status congruence and job quality

Abstract

While recognizing the daunting task of defining universal indicators of job quality we may overlook something more fundamental: in North America about a third of people may not want to be employed in their current job status. Job status congruence (i.e. the extent to which people are working full-time, contract, or part-time by choice) may now be an integral part of high quality work. We test this proposition using a process-oriented theoretical model reflecting established relationships in the work design literature. Findings suggest that a socio-economic predictor (job status congruence) may rival established psychological predictors of job quality (e.g. intrinsic job characteristics and role stressors) in predicting aspects of workers’ personal and organizational functioning. Our findings also suggest that different mediators may be operating for each outcome. The model is tested on 171 full-time workers; a revised model is then supported on a holdout sample of 172 full-timers, and replicated on 132 contract/part-time workers using multi-group structural equation modeling. Implications for future research are discussed.

Alternative Work Arrangements: Two Images of the New World of Work

“…Workers appear to have a more positive experience when they enter into alternative work arrangements by choice to enable a more flexible working life in terms of what, where, and when work is accomplished. Indeed, recent research suggests that job status congruence (i.e., the extent to which people are working full time, in contract positions, or part time, by choice) rivals psychological predictors of workers' personal and organizational functioning (Loughlin & Murray 2013). Choice suggests that being in an alternative work arrangement is volitional or perhaps even self-determined.…”

Job Preferences in Comparative Perspective 1989–2015: A Multidimensional Evaluation of Individual and Contextual Influences

“…Predominantly lower extrinsic, as well as more limited intrinsic job qualities, are generally found in more precarious jobs that provide a lower degree of attachment to the labor market, such as part-time jobs, where women are typically overrepresented (Clark 2005a(Clark , 2005bOlsen 2012, 2018;Greenan, Kalugina, and Walkowiak 2014;Kalleberg 2009Kalleberg , 2011Loughlin and Murray 2013;Stier and Yaish 2014). Assuming decreasing extrinsic qualities with more precarious or distant labor market positions, stronger extrinsic and intrinsic values would be expected among full-time workers, but to a lesser extent among part-time workers and weaker among unemployed persons or persons engaged mainly in (unpaid) domestic work.…”

Unacceptable forms of work: A multidimensional model

“…The Good Jobs literature tends in particular to neglect the insights of legal doctrinal-theoretical scholarship and can, as a result, overstate the promise of regulatory interventions. 9 Taxonomies of Good Jobs, further, have been criticized for valorizing the 'standard' model of employment that is associated with post-Fordist manufacturing (Loughlin and Murray 2013). Neither has this literature strongly integrated the social location of the worker or the social context of the job (see further Section 1.3 below), although both are beginning to feature: Findlay et al (2013), for example, have recognized that job quality "[i]s a contextual phenomenon, differing among persons, occupations and labour market segments, societies and historical periods."…”