Is job insecurity changing the psychological contract?
| Pages | 680-702 |
| Date | 01 December 2000 |
| Published date | 01 December 2000 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/00483480010296465 |
| Author | Janet Smithson,Suzan Lewis |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour |
Personnel
Review
29,6
680
Personnel Review,
Vol. 29 No. 6, 2000, pp. 680-702.
#MCB University Press, 0048-3486
Received October 1998
Revised February 1999
Accepted February 1999
Is job insecurity changing the
psychological contract?
Janet Smithson and Suzan Lewis
Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, UK
Keywords Job security, Young people, Career development, Employee attitudes, Gender
Abstract The paper examines young adults' perspectives on and experiences of job insecurity,
including both objective insecurity and perceived uncertainty, as they emerged in a series of focus
groups and interviews. It discusses young adults' changing notions of security and career, effects
of insecurity and uncertainty on planning future work and non work lives for people with
different levels of occupational skills and qualifications, the gendered effects of insecurity and the
impact of insecure employment on attitudes to employers. The impact of perceptions and
experiences of job insecurity on young men and women's expectations of work are considered in
terms of a changing psychological contract.
Introduction
The growing participation of women in the labour force and demise of the
traditional male breadwinner family have focused attention on the work-family
interface and its management (e.g. Lewis and Cooper, 1987; 1995; Brannen et al.,
1994). Most discussion of work-family issues, however, has been based, at least
implicitly, on an assumption that it is family that is problematic and
changeable, and that work is unproblematic in that it is stable and secure. This
is increasingly inappropriate, particularly for young people as they enter the
contemporary labour market in what has been termed ``a post-job-security era
in the wake of downsizing and contractual flexibility'' (Tulgan, 2000).
In the 1970s Ashton and Field identified three main routes by which young
people entered the labour market: the ``extended'' career involving higher
education and access to the graduate labour market; ``short term'' careers
involving short term training leading to skilled manual and non-manual work;
and ``careerless'' routes which meant leaving school at the end of compulsory
schooling and taking up semi- and unskilled work (Ashton and Field, 1976). A
major change between the 1970s and the 1990s has been the disappearance of
collectivised transitions with their own clear timetables and the emergence of a
picture of much greater complexity. The transition from school to work has
become more protracted (Banks et al., 1992; Roberts and Parsell, 1992; Metcalfe,
1997). As the pool of semi- and unskilled work has dried up with the change in
Britain's industrial base and the growth of new technology, opportunities to
pursue the ``short term'' and ``careerless'' types of career have diminished.
Moreover, greater emphasis is placed today upon the individual ``navigating''
the risks of the absence of clear pathways into work and the current period of
uncertainty in the labour market (Evans and Furlong, 1997). The subjective
perceptions of risk and uncertainty constitute an important break with earlier
transitions. Young people's current transitions into work are no longer a
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Job insecurity
681
confirmation of earlier experiences and expectations, as they were for earlier
generations (Ashton and Field, 1976), but with the accelerating uncertainty of
labour markets, they involve not only individualised routes but also
increasingly difficult and complex ones (Nilsen, 1998).
In this paper we examine experiences of ``jobinsecurity'' among young adults,
using this term in the psychological sense of perceived impermanence, which
may or may not reflect objective insecurity. There has been a growth in non-
permanent employment contractsthroughout most of Europe.While the increase
in flexible working arrangements is often thought to be associated with worker
choice, the drive for increased use of non-permanent contracts has come from
management (Meadows, 1996). Most employees with a temporary or fixed term
contract would prefer a permanent one (Brewster et al., 1998). Official figures in
Britain show only a slight increase in temporary contracts over the last decade.
Of employees, 7 per cent were in some form of temporary employment in 1997
(when the study on which this paper is based took place), compared with 6 per
cent in 1987 (Eurostat, 1997). Nevertheless, measures of perceived job insecurity
show a consistentincrease (Clark and Grey, 1997; Burchell et al., 1997; 1999). The
perception of increased insecurity could be a function of unemployment and
temporary contracts becoming more evenly spread across all industries and
occupations (Robinson, 1997; Burke, 1998). It is possible that the public
perception of rising levels of insecurity may be more to do with whom it now
affects (graduates and professional workers as well as manual workers) than
with an overall rise in the phenomenon. The rise in perceived job insecurity is
also age related.The strongest feelings of job insecurity are held by the youngest,
and the oldest, members of the workforce (Burchell et al., 1997; 1999). Younger
workers are particularly likelyto be in insecure jobs: 13 per cent of UK employees
under 25 were onfixed term contracts, compared with 7 per cent ofall workers in
1997 (Eurostat,1997).
In addition to the distinction between objective insecure employment (for
example, contract work, or the first two years of employment in any job in
Britain) and subjective uncertainty, Sengenberger (1995) has also made a
distinction between three inter-related aspects of work-based security: job
security (the chance of continued employment in a particular job with the same
employer), employer security (continued employment in a different job and/or
location with the same employer), and employment security (which includes the
possibility of changing employers). Perceived job and employer insecurity are
likely to be reflected in the ``psychological contract''.
The psychological contract
It has been argued that workers today experience new psychological contracts
(Herriot, 1992), as societal attitudes and the work situation change. The
``psychological contract'' refers to the expectations of employer and employee
which operate over and above the formal contract of employment (Argyris,
1960), i.e. the perceptions of the different parties to the employment
relationship of what each owes the other (Rousseau, 1995). It incorporates
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