1st Edition

Employment Contracts and Well-Being Among European Workers

By Nele De Cuyper, Kerstin Isaksson Copyright 2005

    Temporary employment contracts are now commonplace in business. However the move towards such employment structures has a significant, and hitherto little understood impact on 'the psychological contract' between employee and organizations. This book is amongst the first to tackle this problem. With detailed research findings from seven countries: Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, the UK and (for a non-European perspective) Israel, it presents an integrated model of the effects of temporary work. The model incorporates key recent trends, including the expansion of non-permanent employment as a persistent form of employment flexibility, the increasing importance of the psychological contract, and the diversity of the European labour market as a result of state legislation. By presenting the results of an overview of the research literature on this contemporary labour market trend this book is of real value to researchers, practitioners and policy makers.

    Contents: Employment contracts and well-being among European workers introduction, Kerstin Isaksson, Nele De Cuyper and Hans De Witte; Employment contracts - how to deal with diversity? Nele De Cuyper, Hans De Witte and Kerstin Isaksson; Psychological contracts - how to deal with complexity? Nele De Cuyper, Hans De Witte and Kerstin Isaksson; Temporary employment in Belgium: is it really precarious? Nele De Cuyper and Hans De Witte; German flexibility: loosening the reins without losing control, Thomas Rigotti and Gisela Mohr; Employment contracts and psychological contracts in Israel, Moshe Krausz and Noga Stainvartz; Temporary employment in the Netherlands: between flexibility and security, Jeroen de Jong and René Schalk; Current evidence concerning employment contracts and employee/organizational well-being among workers in Spain, Amparo Caballer, Inmaculada Silla, Francisco Gracia and Jose Ramos; Work-related well-being and job characteristics among temporary workers in Sweden, Claudia Bernhard-Oettel and Kerstin Isaksson; Contracting in the UK: current research evidence on the impact of flexible employment and the nature of psychological contracts, David E. Guest and Michael Clinton; Temporary employment in Europe. conclusions, Nele De Cuyper, Hans De Witte and Kerstin Isaksson; Index.

    Biography

    Nele De Cuyper is PhD-student at the Research Centre for Stress, Health and Well-being, Department of Psychology, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium. Kerstin Isaksson is Associate Professor at the Department of Psychology, Stockholm University, Sweden, and a researcher at the National Institute for Working Life, Stockholm, Sweden. Hans De Witte is Associate Professor in Work Psychology at the Research Centre for Stress, Health and Well-being, Department of Psychology, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium.

    ’...theoretically sophisticated, empirically based and well-coordinated...a major advance in our knowledge of the psychological consequences of temporary employment...required reading for anyone seeking to understand how changes in employment relations and psychological contracts have affected well-being in industrial societies.’ Professor Arne L. Kalleberg, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA '...an integrated model of the effects of temporary work, currently an inescapable topic in an age of so much financial anxiety and instability.' The RoSPA Occupational Safety & Health Journal