Abstract
Jennifer Tomlinson (University of Leeds, UK)
Marian Baird (University of Sydney, Australia)
Peter Berg (Michigan State University, USA)
Rae Cooper (University of Sydney, Australia)
The world of work and employment in the 21st century continues to evolve in ways that demand new perspectives and concepts to understand and explain the reconfigured employment relationship. Capital mobility, technological change, developments in business strategy and the dominance of neo-liberalism coupled with new and established forms of precarious work have altered labour markets, industries, occupational structures and jobs. In addition, gender, age and generational shifts in the labour force as well as changing dynamics of care have altered what people need and expect from their work experience over the life course. It is within this terrain that we situate our research agenda of ‘flexible careers’.
In recent years, much literature and research on the quality of working lives focuses on jobs as the unit of analysis, emphasizing job quality and flexibility (Kalleberg, 2011). Through this call, we seek to shift the focus to careers and, in particular, develop the construct of a ‘flexible career’ drawing attention to the fact that work occurs over time in sequence and trajectory. We are interested in the conditions under which flexible and sustainable careers can develop and flourish. Given this perspective, the overarching objective of this special issue is to encourage new analytical approaches to studying the concepts and intersection of flexibility and careers. More specifically, it is to provide a space to examine the meaning of flexible careers from different disciplinary perspectives and to question the extent to which careers can be forged and maintained at different points across the life course in the current social and economic context. In doing so, we focus on what is perhaps the one of the greatest tensions in contemporary labour markets and societies: how to combine the social and economic need for individual life-long work opportunity, accomplishment and development (careers) with the need for a workforce able to continuously adjustment to the supply and demand for labour in space, time and function (flexibility).
There have been numerous important special issues in Human Relations and other comparator journals connected to the study of workplace flexibility and job quality (Warhurst et al. [eds], 2013 and Appelbaum [ed.], 2012), reconciliation of work and private life through organisational change (Kossek et al. [eds], 2010), the study of contemporary careers (Khapova and Arthur [eds], 2011) and the gendering of careers (Sabelis and Schilling [eds], 2013). While each of these fields of study touch on issues pertinent to this call, none are as broad as our aim to transcend disciplinary boundaries and draw together key conceptual issues of contemporary careers, namely flexibility, career sustainability and the life course.
Few contributions to date have coupled explicitly the concepts of career and flexibility. For example, in Connelly and Gallagher’s (2004) review of emerging trends in research on contingent work, they identify 12 dominant research themes including commitment, well-being, justice/unfair treatment, role conflict and organisational citizenship behaviours. No theme focuses on the ability of contingent or flexible workers to develop careers, what the reality of careers are for a contingent worker (upwardly or downwardly mobile, flat lined, stagnant) or what resources those working flexibly might require to develop and sustain a meaningful career.
Given that careers are sequences of jobs or an occupation with a trajectory that provides opportunities to progress to other jobs or tasks over time, either in a stable upward trajectory, or in other cases, more unstable trajectories, moving between positive and negative job experiences which may lead to downward mobility, we are interested in more than just ‘good’ or ‘bad’ jobs at a specific point in time. Instead we seek to understand how, in the context of labour market instability and precarity, careers are experienced by different individuals – for example, young people looking to launch careers, those in mid-career who may be seeking adjustments to work careers due to care and other responsibilities and those in late career stages approaching decisions about if, when and how to retire. We are also concerned with the extent to which careers can become more sustainable through flexibility and produce positive outcomes for individuals at different (early, mid, late) life course stages while remaining mutually beneficial for employers and employees.
Much of the recent literature on careers has focused on individual agency and the notion of ‘boundaryless’ careers (Arthur, 1994) where individuals are increasingly mobile and self-directed (Gubler et al., 2014). However, we see individuals still very much bounded by wider economic and social contexts that shape career orientations (Rodrigues and Guest, 2010; Rodrigues et al., 2013) and the realities of work for individuals at different points across the life course. In addition, individuals, at different points across the life course and in varying ways, are increasingly bound and shaped by the institutional context (Piszczek and Berg, 2014). Institutions and changing economic conditions have the capacity to shape and impact individuals’ careers, and are the means through which individuals equip themselves to adapt to changing social and economic environments. Indeed, Rodrigues and Guest (2010: 1170) ask that future careers research ‘incorporate the simultaneous effect of multiple boundaries in structuring people’s careers’ and the themes outlined here speak to their call.
With respect to the concept of flexibility, it is contested, often contradictory and its application and use spans disciplinary boundaries within the social sciences. Flexibility has many different meanings connected to labour in terms of time, space and function, but it can also refer to our individual capacity for growth and willingness or ability to adapt. For example, labour flexibility or flexible working time arrangements sometimes referred to as contingent, non-standard or precarious (Kalleberg, 2011; Applebaum, 2012), are terms synonymous with neo-liberal economies but now are features of many labour markets around the world (Lee and Kofman, 2012; Standing, 2011). Often this vision of flexibility enables employers and states to transfer ‘economic risk’ onto employees and their families and communities through a range of flexible staffing adjustments (Lambert, 2008). While often positioned as beneficial to both employers and employees, by design, flexibility in this sense has the potential to exacerbate labour market inequality, insecurity and lead to the erosion of labour standards, working conditions and protections.
This ‘low road’ approach to labour flexibility (Kalleberg, 2003) is not without alternatives and research contributing to our understanding of how we can build a more progressive agenda with regards to flexibility and not jobs – but careers – will be the one of the central ambitions of this special issue. With this challenge in mind, three stakeholders can be identified in the quest for flexible careers – the state, employers and individuals. The state is instrumental in creating a policy environment that supports employability and adaptability. The creation of an institutional context characterized by education and training opportunities, employee choice and control of working time arrangements, mechanisms to exercise employee voice, rights to paid time off, incentives for life-long learning and phased retirement is instrumental in supporting positive flexible careers (Berg et al., 2004).
Employers and employer associations located within organizational, industrial or occupational contexts also play key roles in shaping opportunity for flexible careers. Organizations can structure jobs in a flexible way that shifts risks to employees and encourages precarious employment, or they can structure jobs that allow, and facilitate, workers to adapt to their changing needs over the life course. Providing high quality jobs, access to different working time options, and some employee control over their working time can be a critical foundation for a career that is sustainable and adapts to life demands.
At the level of the individual, flexibility in its simplest sense refers to our ability to change and adapt to, and within, our environment – our elasticity, versatility or stretch. In relation to this interpretation, flexibility could refer to individual agency, and environment permitting, our abilities to adapt to changing labour market conditions and develop new skills, to remain employable, to become flexible in the workplace through expanding role function and task variety.
Together, all three stakeholders manage, respond to and renegotiate work and non-work boundaries (Kreiner et al., 2009) and consider new ways of working to facilitate career sustainability as well as transitions into and exiting out of work (Elder and Pavalko, 1993). Therefore the temporal dimension of flexibility is central to the flexible careers agenda. Additionally, given the blurring of work boundaries, changes in locations of work and patterns migration, transformations in technology and worker geographical mobility are also key issues.
Given these considerations, we seek submissions from a range of social science disciplines connected to two overarching themes and six research questions:
The roles that governments, occupations, industries, organisations and individuals play in attempts to enable, or undermine, the flexibility and sustainability of careers at different points across the life course.
Innovations in work practice and policy solutions designed to structure careers in ways that provide individuals with more flexible and sustainable careers at different points across the life course.
In what ways can interdisciplinary social science perspectives sharpen our understanding, both theoretically and empirically, of the dynamics of flexible careers?
In economic contexts of increased flexibilization and precarity, what are the career orientations and realities for individuals located at different points across the life course (e.g. young, mid-career and older workers)?
What roles do institutions play and what resources do individuals draw upon in attempts to forge career paths that are more sustainable across the life course?
What sorts of novel ways do individuals look to redefine their careers and adapt to changing labour market conditions in more flexible ways?
How do different aspects of labour market flexibilization impact on the potential to create sustainable careers – does flexibility sustain or undermine career trajectories at different points across the life course?
What innovative policy and practice solutions might be developed to create sustainable and/or flexible careers?
This call is open and competitive, and the submitted papers will be double-blind reviewed by experienced scholars in the field.
Submitted papers must be based on original material not accepted for publication by, or under consideration for publication with, any other journal or publication outlet.
For empirical papers based on data sets from which multiple papers have been generated, authors must provide the guest editors with copies of all other papers based on the same data to ensure a unique intellectual contribution is being made.
The guest editors will select a limited number of papers to be included in the special issue. Other papers submitted to the special issue may be considered for publication in other issues of the journal at the discretion of the Editor-in-Chief.
To be considered for this Special Issue, submissions must fit with the Aim and Scope of Human Relations (http://www.tavinstitute.org/humanrelations/about_journal/aims.html) as well as this call for papers.
Papers should also adhere to the submission requirements: http://www.tavinstitute.org/humanrelations/submit_paper.html.
Papers should be submitted through the online system: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/hr
Please indicate in your covering letter that your article is intended for this special issue.
The deadline for submission is 1st March 2016 and submissions should not be submitted before 1st February 2016.
The special issue is intended for publication in the second half of 2017 or early 2018.
Please direct questions about the submission process, or any administrative matter, to the Editorial Office: