Flexible Employment as a Unidirectional Career? Results from Field Experiments

Abstract

Although the number of flexible workers is constantly growing, little is known about career paths built up on flexible employment. In this article, we investigate the chances of former flexible workers to be employed in a permanent full-time position. In two field experiments, we asked for employers' evaluation of applicants with a flexible employment history. Results indicate that former part-time work is in fact perceived as a disadvantage for candidates when applying for a permanent full-time position while other types of flexible work (e.g., fixed term contracts, part-time work, and interorganizational mobility) are not. Implications of these results for individual careers and employers' understanding of personnel are discussed. Key words: flexible employment, standard employment, contemporary careers, evaluation of CVs Introduction Since flexible employment arrangements like temporary work, project-based employment, and freelancing are continuously gaining importance (Connelly/Gallagher 2004), variety in employment is constantly growing. From an organizational point of view, this development challenges the traditional understanding of personnel. While, in the past, organizations mainly turned individuals into personnel using standard employment, today a vast majority of organizations uses some kind of flexible employment as an integral part of their staffing policy (e.g., Matusik/Hill 1998; Brewster/ Mayne/Tregaskis 1997). In terms of working arrangements, the category 'personnel' is thus likely to become more and more diffuse and heterogeneous. The boundaries between those who are inside an organization and those who are not are getting blurred (Pfeffer/Baron 1988). On the individual level, variety in employment arrangements is reflected in the decline of the traditional organizational career; the number of workers spending at least some time of their career within flexible work arrangements is growing (Ashford/George/Blatt2007). Despite the ongoing diffusion of the traditional category 'personnel', standard employment is still the norm - within organizations as well as within individuals' minds (Ashford/George/Blatt 2007; Currie/Tempest/Starkey 2006). The co-existence of standard and flexible forms of employment raises the issue of the permeability of the boundaries between the new and the traditional ways of working. If the boundaries between standard employment and flexible employment are permeable, the rising variety in employment does not seem to indicate the 'end of personnel'. Rather, this would imply that our traditional understanding of the category 'personnel' needs to be extended to individuals with various career pathways. In this case, individual careers will include periods of standard as well as flexible employment. If, however, the boundaries between standard employment and flexible employment are not permeable, the classical category of 'personnel' will be split up into two subgroups: a decreasing group of traditional personnel and a growing segment of individuals following alternative flexible career pathways. Prior research on the permeability of career boundaries indicates that flexible employment may impede chances for future standard employment (Barker 1998; Oschmiansky/Oschmiansky 2003). Flexible employment is therefore often perceived as a one-way street leading into a unidirectional career (Barker 1998). However, studies investigating employment chances of individuals with similar qualifications and motivation are still rare. By presenting results from two field experiments, our study aims at filling this gap. We gathered employers' evaluations of fictitious applicants with a flexible employment history. We focused on three research questions: First, we analyzed if potential employers generally favor applicants with a standard career pathway over applicants with a non-standard employment history. Second, we investigated whether different types of flexible employment (i. …