Involuntary vs. voluntary flexible work: insights for scholars and stakeholders

ABSTRACT

Building on insights from the early stages of our research partnership with a U.S. Fortune 500 organization, we came to differentiate between voluntary and involuntary schedule variability and remote work. This differentiation underscores the complexity behind flexible schedules and remote work, especially among white-collar, salaried professionals. We collected survey data among the partner firm's information technology (IT) workforce to evaluate whether these forms of flexibility had different implications for workers, as part of the larger Work, Family, and Health Network Study. We find that a significant minority of these employees report working variable schedules and working at home involuntarily. Involuntary variable schedules are associated with greater work-to-family conflict, stress, burnout, turnover intentions, and lower job satisfaction in models that adjust for personal characteristics, job, work hours, family demands, and other factors. Voluntary remote work, in contrast, is protective and more common in this professional sample. Employees working at least 20% of their hours at home and reporting moderate or high choice over where they work have lower stress and intentions to leave the firm. These findings point to the importance of both stakeholders and scholars distinguishing between voluntary and involuntary forms of flexibility, even in a relatively advantaged workforce.     

Ausmass und Struktur von arbeitnehmerinduzierter Abstiegsmobilität

This study analyses the extent and determinants of voluntary downward earnings mobility in western Germany using data from the German socio-economic panel. The findings show that about one in five voluntary job shifters undergo a downward earnings shift. These downward earnings shifts are often accompanied by a reduction of working time. However, the earnings reduction does not solely result from reduced working hours, but also from shifts to less demanding jobs. Unlike upward shifters, downward shifters experience an improvement in their working situation concerning the work load and the flexibility of working hours, indicating that a significant number of workers may trade lower pay for better working conditions. This paper argues that the assessment of the quality of voluntary job shifts should take into account not only extrinsic job rewards, such as pay and prestige, but also non-pecuniary job characteristics. The results of our research challenge the practice of equating downward earnings mobility with involuntary job shifts, which can be found in many sociological studies of job mobility.     

The impact of union direct voice on voluntary and involuntary absenteeism

Using a Spanish panel of large establishments, we test the reliability of the exit-voice theory to understand absenteeism (making the distinction between voluntary and involuntary absences). In the Spanish institutional framework, union direct voice (as opposed to union representative voice) is proxied by the existence of a collective agreement at the firm level. We find a positive influence of union direct voice on involuntary absenteeism, which is consistent with a greater protection of workers’ rights through that institution. We do not find a robust effect of direct voice on voluntary absenteeism. The first result lends support to the exit-voice theory but not the second one. Our interpretation underlines the need for re-construction of the exit-voice theory as a more general and precise one.     

Turnover as a Strategy to Escape Job Insecurity: The Role of Family Determinants in Dual-Earner Couples

Job insecurity is a stressful condition with well-known negative consequences. This study investigated the extent to which individuals voluntarily changed jobs as a strategy to cope with job insecurity, taking into account the family context. We tested whether job insecurity promoted voluntary turnover. Family factors were expected to either hamper or stimulate turnover, and to affect the relationship between job insecurity and turnover. Using longitudinal data from the Swiss Household Panel (2004–2013), we showed that men facing job insecurity were more likely to experience voluntary turnover. For women this was only true when they did not have preschool-aged children at home and experienced low levels of economic hardship. Moreover, family factors influenced voluntary turnover differently for men and women: Economic hardship increased the odds of voluntary turnover for men, whereas a partner’s job insecurity lowered the odds for women.     

Correlates of Voluntary vs. Involuntary Part‐time Employment among US Women

This article presents a study of the extent to which type and duration of labour force attachment add to the explanatory power of psychological, demographic, and family household characteristics to predict voluntary (n=166) vs. involuntary part‐time (n=160) employment of women in the United States. We use the terms ‘voluntary’ and ‘involuntary’ to reflect the woman's choice in accepting to work in paid part‐time employment. In this context, voluntary part‐time work is not meant to be construed as charitable, non‐paid activities, but rather is construed as individuals who are working part‐time but who would prefer to be working full‐time, if a suitable job were available. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Labor Market Experience (NLSLME), we found that labour market attachment characteristics added little to predict part‐time employment status (involuntary vs. voluntary) and had virtually no effect on the odds of any other correlates on employment status. The major exception was number of years of unemployment. The longer working women were previously unemployed, the greater the likelihood they were involuntarily employed in part‐time jobs. In addition, we found that marriage and private sector employment decreased the likelihood of involuntary part‐time employment. Findings suggest that involuntarily part‐time employed women appear to be ‘settling’ for what they can get, namely, part‐time rather than full‐time jobs and that unmarried part‐timers may be viewed as a stigmatized or marginal group more likely to be employed in the public rather than private sector. Policy implications and future research are discussed.     

Intergenerational Mobility in East Asian Countries: A Comparative Study of Japan, Korea and China

Abstract:  There have been fewer cross-national comparative works on social mobility in East Asian countries than in Western countries. The present study aims to explore the similarities and differences of intergenerational social mobility in three East Asian countries and to examine whether the Featherman–Jones–Hauser (FJH) hypothesis would fit well into the mobility tables for Japan, Korea, and China. Log-linear and log-multiplicative models are applied to the mobility tables of respondents' occupations according to the father's occupation in the three countries. The analysis of relative rates of mobility did not completely support the FJH hypothesis in a strict sense, even though it reasonably accounts for the total association of origin and destination in the three countries. My analysis demonstrates that a level of social fluidity has been higher in Korea and China than in Japan. Focusing on how relative mobility patterns differ between the three countries, intergenerational mobility in Korea is characterized by lower rates of class inheritance compared to Japan, while there seems to be a similarity between the patterns of social fluidity in Japan and Korea, even though they are to a certain extent deviant from Erikson and Goldthorpe's core model. In contrast to Korea, class inheritance rates in China are almost as large as in Japan. However, the mobility pattern between classes appears to differ substantially between the post-socialist and two capitalist countries. In particular, both downward and upward mobility between the white collar bloc and the unskilled manual position are more pervasive in China than in Japan and Korea. These results imply that sociologists interested in cross-national comparison of the social mobility between the East Asian countries should pay attention to both political institutions and the local labor market situatuion which can substantially affect social mobility.     

INTERNATIONAL TRADE AND THE COMPOSITION OF LABOR MARKET TURNOVER

The composition of labor market turnover is shown to influence patterns of international trade. Job and worker turnover have opposing marginal effects on industry export intensity, highlighting the importance of relative turnover shares on either side of the labor market, as opposed to total volumes of labor mobility, in shaping economic outcomes. Industries with relatively greater shares of worker turnover export more of total production, and those with higher job turnover export less. Furthermore, relatively high job turnover hinders industry adjustment following trade liberalization. These predictions receive support for U.S. manufacturing industries using turnover data in the Quarterly Workforce Indicators available from the U.S. Census Bureau. (JEL F16)     

Patterns of Childlessness among Catholic and Non-Catholic Women in the U.S.: A Log-Linear Analysis*

The principal objective of this paper is to conduct a log-linear analysis of patterns of childlessness among Catholic and non-Catholic women in the United States. We address this issue by examining white women between the ages of thirty-five and forty-four, ascertaining whether they are voluntarily, involuntarily, or temporarily childless or childed. Given the long-standing emphasis of the Catholic Church regarding the importance of children in marriage and the family, an emphasis which was not reversed during the Second Vatican Council, we suggest that even after controlling for religious activity and educational attainment, Catholic women should be less disposed than non-Catholic women to choose voluntarily to have no children. We review various aspects of Church doctrine leading to such an hypothesis. Our results do not suggest an “end” to Catholic-non-Catholic differentials in childlessness. Catholic women between the ages of thirty-five and forty-four in 1976 were very far apart from non-Catholic women with respect to the voluntary decision to have no children. And they are also very different from non-Catholic women regarding patterns of involuntary childlessness. These differential patterns of voluntary and involuntary childlessness are discussed and analyzed.     

EVALUATING PENSION PORTABILITY REFORMS: THE TAX REFORM ACT OF 1986 AS A NATURAL EXPERIMENT ABSTRACT

This article exploits a change in the vesting rules for employer‐sponsored pension plans introduced by the Tax Reform Act of 1986 to identify the causal effect of pension portability legislation on workers' voluntary mobility decisions. We pool data from different years of the Survey of Income and Program Participation to estimate the impact of this reform using difference‐in‐differences methods. Our results suggest that the reform had a positive and significant impact on voluntary job mobility of the treatment group. (JEL J24, J44, J62, J63, J68)     

Volunteer Engagement: Exploring the Distinction Between Job and Organizational Engagement

Retaining engaged volunteers is crucial to many non-profit organizations. However, research on volunteer engagement is limited, and the distinction between job and organizational engagement in volunteers remains to be investigated. In this paper, we examine both organizational- and job-level engagement, and specifically, whether perceived organizational support would enhance volunteer engagement and associated attitudes. We surveyed 221 volunteers, and asked them about their perceptions of organizational support; their engagement with their volunteer job and the organization they volunteer for; satisfaction; commitment; and turnover intentions. Both organizational and job engagements had significant relationships with the attitudinal variables. However, we found that organizational rather than job engagement mediated the relationship between organizational support and volunteer satisfaction and commitment. While organizational engagement correlated with turnover intentions, neither job nor organizational engagement mediated the relationship between support and the intent to leave. Our findings advance the research on volunteer engagement, and highlight the importance of organizational engagement for this important, but too often overlooked, workforce.     

Combining Egalitarian Working Lives with Traditional Attitudes: Gender Role Attitudes in Taiwan,Japan, and Korea

In a simple theoretical framework, egalitarian gender role attitudes emerge as more and more women participate in the labor market. Most advanced Western nations enjoy relatively gender-egalitarian working environments, and consequently more egalitarian gender attitudes than their East Asian counterparts. Women in East Asian societies, on the other hand, are said to support both the conditions resulting in stagnant female labor-force participation and traditional attitudes toward gender roles. In Taiwan, however, women are more economically active than in two other East Asian societies—Japan and South Korea—even though women in all three societies favor the traditional gender division of labor. Thus, in Taiwan, women experiencing inconsistencies between their active working lives and their traditional values. This study hypothesizes that this inconsistency, or the coexistence of the old and the new, is reflected in the very mind-set of women. Using comparative data from the 2006 East Asian Social Survey, we analyzed the gap between responses to questions on gender attitudes in relation to working conditions, and other general gender role attitudes. We found there were significant differences in the size of these gaps. Taiwanese women expressed more egalitarian views insofar as the questions were concerned with practical economic interests, while they retained their basic traditional attitudes towards gender roles in their homes. This gap is larger in Taiwan than in Japan or South Korea.     

US and them: Job quality differences between natives and immigrants in Europe

Using microdata from the European Union Labour Force Survey (EU-LFS) and aggregate indicators of labour market institutions, this article compares the job quality of native and non-native workers across European countries and analyses the impact of the institutional settings on the job quality differential between both groups. The LFS is used to measure a job quality index for the period 2005–2017. We find that some immigrant groups fare worse than natives, the contribution of the “composition effect” to explain this differential is large, and the institutional framework affects the immigration gap in job quality. In particular, some labour market institutions (more centralized wage bargaining, stricter employment protection legislation) tend to be detrimental for immigrants relative to natives, while integration policies seem to work well in reducing these differences.     

The long-run effect of part-time work

Unlike most of the literature concerning the effects of nonstandard work, we examine the long-term impact of part-time work. Our main focus is on earnings and several important benefits. As might be expected, voluntary part-time work while in school increases earnings of both women and men, whereas involuntary part-time work has no significant impact. Surprisingly, however, voluntary part-time work while not in school has a substantial positive effect for women but is not significant for men. Furthermore, we find that the provision of health insurance, profit-sharing, defined-benefit and defined-contribution plans is primarily determined by factors other than work experience.     

Toward a better estimation of the effect of job loss on health

Previous research has shown that involuntary job loss may have negative health consequences, but existing analyses have not adequately adjusted for health selection or other confounding factors that could reveal the association to be spurious. Using two large, population-based longitudinal samples of U.S. workers from the Americans' Changing Lives Study and the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study, this analysis goes further by using respondents' self-reports of the reasons for job loss and information about the timing of job losses and acute negative health shocks to distinguish health-related job losses from other involuntary job losses. Results suggest that even after adjustment for numerous social background characteristics and baseline health, involuntary job loss is associated with significantly poorer overall self-rated health and more depressive symptoms. More nuanced analyses reveal that among involuntary job losers, those who lose their jobs for health-related reasons have, not surprisingly, the most precipitous declines in health. Job losses for other reasons have substantive and statistically significant effects on depressive symptoms, while effects on self-rated poor health are relatively small.     

Young Women's Job Mobility: The Influence of Motherhood Status and Education

Previous research has found that women who become mothers in their 20s face larger wage penalties compared to women who delay childbearing until their 30s. Explanations for this have focused on the consequences of employment breaks early in one's career and reduced opportunities in the workplace following the birth of a child. In this article, the author uses panel data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (N = 4,566) to examine another possible explanation: differences in patterns of and wage returns to job mobility. She found that young mothers, relative to childless women, make fewer wage‐enhancing voluntary job separations and often receive lower wage returns for these separations. Educational attainment exacerbates these patterns, largely to the disadvantage of women with less education.     

Employment mobility or turnover? An analysis of child welfare and protection employee retention

This article challenges the commonly held assumption that there is a high level of occupational turnover of social workers in all child protection and welfare agencies. By analysing occupational mobility patterns (turnover, retention and attrition) in five child protection social work teams, the article demonstrates how occupational mobility is a complex phenomenon and needs to be understood within wider shifts in employment patterns and the gendering of professions. In this paper we argue that it is important to distinguish between employee turnover and employee mobility, and that an examination of the posts taken up after leaving, at least in Ireland, may provide a different perspective on the narrative of high turnover of workers in this sector. Within the five teams, it is estimated that there was a turnover rate of 8 percent in 2006 and 11 percent in 2010, with 72 percent of child protection workers in post at the end of 2005 being retained and still in post at the end of 2010. While this should not lead to complacency, or a failure to recognise and respond to the stressful nature of child protection, it does raise questions for employers about how they might plan for occupational mobility within a stable workforce made up of largely women, aged between 25 and 35, frequently newly-qualified, who are often the main carers for children and adults outside the workplace.     

Education and Social Mobility in Postwar Japan: Trends and Some Institutional Aspects

Abstract  This paper examines the trend in social mobility in postwar Japan, especially focusing on the mediating role of education. The data set is derived from the SSM (Social Stratification and Social Mobility) surveys. Applying log-linear models to the data of five periods, we analyze the trend of the relationship among origin, education, and destination. Occupations are classified according to type of job, and son's first job is used for the analysis. The result reveals that the unmediating transmission of position has declined, and education is becoming a more significant mediator between origin and destination. These changes proceed in the form of reduction in the random sphere of 'movers' as well as replacement of 'stayers' with 'movers'. However, the association between origin and destination has hardly changed for several decades. This stablity results from the inequality in educational resources available to families and the specificities, not universality, of relations surviving into the higher level of education.     

International Mobility of New Migrants to Australia1

Statistical models for residential spells and mobility data are used to examine the probability of repeat and return migration and ongoing mobility among New Zealand and British citizens who migrated to Australia between August 1999 and July 2002. The paper focuses on identifying the relationship between ongoing mobility patterns and personal and environmental circumstances, including institutional barriers to immigration and a discrete change in the social welfare eligibility of New Zealanders in Australia. The results confirm that ongoing migration patterns are far more complex than traditional migration paradigms suggest, with repeat and return migration and ongoing mobility being an important part of actual migration experiences.     

Corporate and Environmental Influences on Personnel Outcomes in Organizational Labor Markets: A Cross-National Comparison of US and German Branch Offices of a Multinational Bank

Many firms competing in the current global economy are multinational corporations (MNCs) that operate across national boundaries. Multinational corporations have the dual imperatives of maintaining internal consistency among their subsidiaries while simultaneously adapting to different local environments. Comparing personnel outcomes between subsidiaries of the same multinational corporation located in different countries would provide a specific context within which we can examine the relative importance of these two imperatives. Using personnel data from a multinational bank, we compare personnel outcomes such as turnover and hiring rates, tenure distributions, proportion of part-time workers, and gender composition of its subsidiary retail banking operations in the Federal Republic of Germany and in the United States. We further analyze differences in outcomes between comparable job levels in each country, recognizing that different levels in the hierarchical structures of MNCs may face varying pressures for internal consistency and local adaptation. Our results show that the local environment has a strong effect on personnel outcomes, although differences between countries decrease at higher job levels. The possible sources and implications of increasing similarity at higher job levels is discussed.     

Embeddedness in Voluntary Associations and the Timing of Geographic Moves

I develop and test a theory of the relationship between geographic mobility and the geographic scope of voluntary associations (VAs). Geographic scope is linked theoretically to overlap in the membership sets of VAs. Local VAs are theorized to have a high degree of overlap in membership, while cosmopolitan VAs have a low degree of membership overlap. While membership in local VAs suppresses geographic mobility, membership in cosmopolitan VAs does not. In addition, the effect of geographic mobility on VA membership is found to vary by geographic scope.