1st Edition
Working in the Service Sector A Tale from Different Worlds
The rise to prominence of the service sector - heralded over half a century ago as the great hope for the twenty-first century - has come to fruition. In many cases, employment in the service sector now outnumbers that in manufacturing sectors, and it is accepted that in all developed countries, the service sector is the only one in which employment will grow in future. The reasons for this is the subject of much controversy and debate, the outcomes of which are not merely of academic interest but of decisive importance for economic policy and the quality of working and living conditions in future.
In order to examine these various arguments, research teams from eight European countries worked together for three years on a comparative study of the evolution of service sector employment in EU member states. They also investigated working and employment conditions in five very different service industries (banking, retailing, hospitals, IT services and care of the elderly) in a number of countries, and the results of their research are presented in this informative new collection, of interest to students academics and researchers involved in all aspects of industrial economics.
Contents
List of figures viii
List of tables x
Acknowledgments xii
1. Introduction
Service economies: high road or low road? 1
Gerhard Bosch and Steffen Lehndorff
Different service societies in Europe
The different worlds of service work
Institutions matter
Conclusions
Part IDifferent service societies in Europe 53
2. Measuring economic tertiarisation: a map of various European service societies 54
Gerhard Bosch and Alexandra Wagner
Introduction
Indicators of employment in services
Sectoral and functional tertiarisation
Sectoral differences
Functional differences
The absolute level of tertiarisation
The structure of services
Country profiles
Conclusions
3. The incidence of new forms of employment in service activities 75Mark Smith
Introduction
Non-standard work and services
Service growth and non-standard work
Service sector growth and structural change
Service sector growth in detail
Service jobs and access to work
Conclusions
4. Why do countries have such different service-sector employment rates? 97
Gerhard Bosch and Alexandra Wagner
Introduction
Services and the cost disease
Household structures and services
The welfare state, welfare state regimes, and services
The demand for services in manufacturing industry
Quality of the supply
Employment intensity in the service sector
Different development paths: societies with high and low volumes of market services
Conclusions
5. Services and the employment prospects for women 135
Alexandra Wagner
Introduction
Tertiarisation, women’s employment and part-time work – what do the data say?
Women’s employment: rates are growing faster than volumes
Service sector not dominated by women
Women predominate in social services
Women’s employment, service work and part-time work: no conclusive link
Women’s employment and the service society: the various configurations
Various forms of the gender division of labour
The ‘high road’ and ‘low road’ to higher female participation and more services
Some political implications of the ‘high road’
Risks and contradictions
New models for economic activity and social security
Conclusion
Part II
The organization of service work: An analysis of five sectors 172
6. The family, the state, and now the market: the organisation of employment and working time in home care services for the elderly 173
Dominique Anxo and Colette Fagan
Introduction
Gender, care, and welfare state regimes
The Nordic social democratic ‘universalist’ system of eldercare
The Dutch social democratic ‘hybrid’ system of eldercare
The UK’s liberal ‘marketised’ system of eldercare
The Italian ‘family-based’ system of eldercare
Different national models of home care services
The dynamics of change in the organisation of home care services
The dynamics of change: findings from the organisational case studies
Organisational restructuring
Service rationing and subcontracting
Work reorganisation: rationalisation and taylorisation of home care jobs
Working-time restructuring
Recruitment problems and professionalisation
Technological innovation
Conclusions
7. The reluctant nurses: labour shortage and recruitment crisis in the hospital sector – a comparison of Belgium, Italy, France, the Netherlands, Sweden and the United Kingdom 223
Christophe Baret
Introduction
Theoretical framework based on societal analysis
The socio-economic relationship
The organisational relationship
The domestic relationship
The industrial relationship
Employment and working time organisation: figures and reforms
The sectoral level
The organisation and reorganisation of the healthcare sector
The structure of employment
The national and sectoral regulation of working time
At hospital level
The management of human resources at hospital level
Reform of the qualification structure and of work organisation
The department level
The obstetrics department
The orthopaedic department
The evolution of employment and working time and the context of change
The organisational relationship
The domestic relationship
Conclusion
8. Work hard, play hard? Work in software engineering 265
Janneke Plantenga and Chantal Remery
Introduction
Socio-economic environment and organisational structure
Industrial relations
Employment profile and actual working time patterns
Working arrangements
Beyond the statistics: determining factors of IT work organisation and working time
Characteristics of the service provided
Planning complexities and the frequency of overtime
Location of the service provided: the absent employee
Profile of the workforce
Flexibility requirements
Conclusion
9. Work organisation and the importance of labour markets in the European retail trade 298
Florence Jany-Catrice and Steffen Lehndorff
Introduction
The restructuring of the industry and of employment by the large retail companies
The reorganisation of mass distribution
Personnel strategies
Fragmentation of working time
The influence of the labour supply on personnel strategies
The retail trade and female labour supply
The growing importance of juvenile workers
Personnel management on the ‘shop floor’ – a tightrope act
At your service at any time
High commitment at low cost
The full-time ‘anchors’ in a part-time operation
Conclusion
10. Lean banking: Retail and direct banking in France and Germany 339
Thomas Haipeter and Martine Pernod
Introduction
International financial markets and the strategy of lean banking
Impact of national regulations on company strategies
National regulations
Country-specific profiles of strategy
The case studies: new forms of flexibility in call centres and branch offices
Call centres
Retail branches
Conclusion
Part III
Common challenges 372
11. The shaping of work and working time in the service sector: a segmentation approach 373
Jill Rubery
Introduction
Revisiting segmentation theory
The role of organisations in shaping employment systems
The rise of the service economy and the restructuring of inter-firm relations
The reshaping of organisations: new forms of governance
Organisational employment practices: new requirements and new conflicts and contradictions
Introducing the supply side: mutual interactions, path dependency and constraints on adjustment
Societal effects and segmentation
Conclusions
12. The delegation of uncertainty: flexibility and the role of the market in service work 421
Steffen Lehndorff and Dorothea Voss-Dahm
Introduction
Flexibility through competition
Beneath the surface of the ‘flexible firm’
The internalisation of external pressure
Imposing markets on workers
The market as an instrument of control
Mobilising the subject
Between indicators and customers
The risks of flexibility
Availability at any time
Flexibility for free
Self-managed intensification and ‘extensification’ of work
Conclusions
13. Can trade unions meet the challenge? Unionisation in the marketised services 467
Jon Erik Dølvik and Jeremy Waddington
Introduction
Tertiarisation of labour and union membership
Industrial variation in unionisation rates
The changing composition of union membership
Changing conditions for collective organisation in services
Trade union challenges and the search for solutions
Servicing or organising?
Trade union structural adaptation
Reforming the bargaining agenda
Improving the legal basis for representation and social pacts
Agreements for specific workforce groups
Modernising the bargaining agenda
Conclusions
14. Diversity and regulation of markets for services 509
Jean Gadrey
Introduction
The ‘pure’ market is a normative myth
The utopia of a market without rules
The case of the labour market
The other markets: all regulated to a greater or lesser extent
Two types of justifications for rules
A society has the markets it creates for itself
Conclusion
Biography
Gerhard Bosch is Professor for sociology at the university Duisburg-Essen and Vice President of the Institute for Work and Technology. He is an expert on labour market policy, working time and employment policy.
Steffen Lehndorff is an economist and Director of the Working Time and Work Organisation Research Unit at the Institute of Work and Technology (Institut Arbeit und Technik, IAT), Gelsenkirchen / Germany. His major research interests include international comparative studies of employment and working-time structures and regulation and of working time, work organisation and industrial relations in services and manufacturing.
"Working in the Service Sector provides a valuable overview of the European Service Sector, brings together a considerable range of perspectives, and sets an impressive benchmark for comparative studies of work and organizations in terms of depth, focus, and theoretical outlook" Industrial Relations Review
