The fragmentation of traditional employment: Challenges raised by the diversity of typical and atypical jobs

During the past decades, the environment for organizations has become incre asingly unpredictable. They are compelled to become more flexible, especial ly through the use of contingent employment (Cappelli et al. 1997). Statist ics indicate a relative decrease of traditional employment over the past tw enty years, whereas contingent employment has increased dramatically. This raises new issues for managers, workers, and society in general (Hipple 199 8; Matte 1998; Simard 1998). Although numerous authors acknowledge the rapid growth of contingent employ ment (e.g., Betcherman 1995; Kochan et al. 1994; Levesque 1999), little pro gress has been made toward the understanding of the complexity of the issue s raised. One of the reasons for this is the absence of a common definition of contingent employment (Simard 1988), which renders comparisons among st udies virtually impossible. Another problem is the heterogeneity of conting ent workers (Eberhardt and Moser 1995; Simard 1998; Walsh and Deery 1999). This article posits that researchers and managers can only address the chal lenges posed by nonstandard employment if they comprehend the diversity of contingent employment. We therefore propose a typology of jobs and a typolo gy of workers in order to better understand the reality of contingent emplo yment. The first typology constitutes an attempt to classify jobs according to the ir features. Traditional employment is defined as a permanent position (i.e ., an open-term contract), with a full-time, regular schedule, and where th e work is being performed at the employer's location. Contingent employment differs from this definition on four characteristics: the type of employme nt contract, the place of work, the number of hours worked, and the regular ity of work schedules. These four characteristics constitute the four dimen sions of our typology of jobs. Three types of employment contracts may be offered by an organization. The traditional employment contract, often referred to as permanent employment, does not stipulate any specific date for the termination of the employment relationship. The second type of contract indicates a specific date for th e termination of employment and is often referred to as temporary employmen t. It provides more flexibility to the organization and less certainty for most workers. Finally, independent contracting is a situation in which the relationship ends upon the completion of specified tasks. The place where the work is performed is the second dimension of this typol ogy. Whereas independent contractors have never performed their duties excl usively at their place of employment, permanent and temporary workers custo marily did so. However, in recent years, the growth of telecommuting indica tes that jobs are moving away from the employer's premises. An employment contract may be based either on an averaged full-week of work (i.e., more than 35 hours of work) or on an averaged reduced-week of work, irrespective of the type of contract. The number of hours worked is only o ne dimension of the work schedule. The regularity of schedule is the other dimension, and this plays a crucial role in defining the certainty of earni ngs. These four dimensions allow us to profile 18 different forms of employment, of which only two can be described as traditional (permanent full-time and part-time). This typology emphasizes the fact that nonstandard employment may take a large variety of very different forms, which vary in terms of pr ecariousness, task variety, and ability to reconcile work and private life. However, a typology of jobs does not suffice to capture the fact that indiv iduals may hold more than one type of job. In order to understand the reali ty of contingent workers, a second typology is necessary. Multiple job hold ing is one dimension along which workers may differ. While most people with a permanent, full-time employment contract do not hold another job, many w orkers in a contingent position do hold more than one such position (Krahn 1995). Those workers may hold multiple positions simultaneously or successi vely, sometimes with a gap between each position. The duration of employmen t over a one-year period is therefore an important dimension to consider wh en categorizing contingent workers. The third dimension is the desirability of employment form. While some contingent workers may have chosen their em ployment status (e.g., permanent part timers), workers in other forms of em ployment may be less likely to have chosen their particular status (e.g., f ull-time temporary workers). Studies indicate that the choice of status inf luences work-related attitudes and behaviours (Armstrong-Stassen, Horsburgh and Cameron 1994; Bishop, Okori-Dankwa and McKether 1993). A better understanding of the variety of contingent workers calls for more diverse and individualized human resource management practices in order to better serve the various needs of employees. For example, mobilization stra tegies aimed at involuntary temporary workers ought to be different than th ose targeting voluntary independent contractors. Companies using contingent employees must take account of these differences, while maintaining the eq uity in treatment that is necessary to foster harmonious work relationships . At the individual level, this paper highlights the fact that contingent w orkers experience a large variety of work situations, which differ in terms of certainty, desirability, skills development, and so on. When engaging o n the path of contingent employment, workers must be aware of the opportuni ties and the risks that lie ahead. Last but not least, this article stresse s the need for society as a whole to consider the consequences of the devel opment of some second-class jobs with poor working conditions.