Portfolio Workers Research Articles

Parental leave vs. competition for clients: Motherhood penalty in competitive work environments

Objective: This paper explores the role of parental leave for gendered career patterns in individualized, competitive labor markets in Norway, a culturally and politically family-friendly and gender-equal society. Background: Despite family-friendly policies and little prejudice against mothers, there is a significant gap in wages and careers between mothers and fathers in Norway. This is particularly true in individualized, competitive parts of the labor market, such as finance banking. To understand this pattern, we must examine the institutionalized rules of the game in which portfolio workers, with individual responsibility for their portfolio of clients, operate. Method: Drawing on in-depth interviews with 30 women and men working in Norwegian business banking, we analyze accounts of parental leave practices and how these bankers navigate the market conditions. Results: The analyses show how the market structure for finance banking and portfolio careers limits family policies, changing parenthood norms, and firms’ goodwill. Fathers postpone, split, and adapt "leave" to fit clients' needs, thus sustaining their portfolio and career progress. In contrast, mothers, who typically take longer actual leave, give up clients and start from scratch upon return. Conclusion: Gendered use of parental leave within competitive market conditions leads to gendered career and wage patterns. More individualized competition in the wider labor market may increase inequality in parenting and careers, despite favorable cultural norms and policies, as long as public authorities, firms, and families accept individualized logics and gender-unequal practices of parental leave.

Employee voice mechanisms, transformational leadership, group prototypicality, and voice behaviour: a comparison of portfolio career workers in Japan, Korea and China

ABSTRACT This study analyses the relationship between two kinds of employee voice mechanisms and voice behaviour among portfolio career workers in Japan, Korea and China. Using the conservation of resources theory, we focus on the role of managerial leadership. Under similar sampling procedures, data on 400 managers in each country were collected via web-based surveys conducted for Japan and Korea in 2017 and for China 2018. The findings are as follows: First, the number of team voice mechanisms is positively and directly related to voice behaviour in each country. Second, the number of representative voice mechanisms is positively and indirectly related to voice behaviour in Japan and China. Third, the number of team voice mechanisms is positively and directly related to transformational leadership in each country. Fourth, the number of representative voice mechanisms is positively and indirectly related to the level of transformational leadership in Japan and China. Fifth, transformational leadership is positively related to leader group prototypicality in Japan and China. Finally, leader group prototypicality is positively related to voice behaviour in Japan and China.

The Portfolio Ideal Worker: Insecurity and Inequality in the New Economy

Abstract The white-collar ideal worker norm helps to explain why social inequality persists in the workplace, yet the concept reflects corporate workplaces of the mid-twentieth century. This article identifies emerging cultural ideals for white-collar workers in today’s economy by examining the experiences of high earners in financial services. Despite its glorification of flexibility and independence, scholars have shown how the “new economy” produces different forms of inequality at work than in the post-World War II era. Drawing from interviews with 48 hedge fund workers and field observations at workplaces and industry events, I bring together well-known features of work in the new economy to update the white-collar ideal worker norm to reflect changes in the organization of work. I call this the portfolio ideal because it captures how white-collar workers must make ongoing investments in resources and development to create a portfolio of skills and experiences that allows them to navigate the turbulence of the neoliberal new economy. As portfolio workers, hedge fund workers identify as independent workers, value a passion for the work, take risks to get ahead, and invest in social capital. Although it appears to be disembodied, the portfolio norm reflects implicit assumptions about gender, race, and social class. By shedding light on cultural responses to job polarization and income inequality, this research helps to identify a shift from a more collective work arrangement to one that is individually oriented, which transfers the risks of employment from employers to workers.

Citizen Learner Discourse and Emergent Global Knowledge Societies

This chapter locates learning, as an increasingly lifelong commitment and a lifewide endeavour as societies adjust to living and working within turbulent, often surprising, and always dynamically complex, evolution of an increasingly technology-dominated world. Absolute and global rather than relative national standards of excellence and skills are what count in this interconnected world according to UNESCO, OECD, WEF, EU, China, Japan and USA authorities. So those without current and continually updated credentials to compete in the global market face a steady decline in income and social inclusion. Your curriculum vitae or “Brand you” (Peters, 1997) is the ticket to enter the global marketplace. The Higher Education sector exists to provide the means to get a better ticket and improved position for “brand you” in the age of the gig economy and portfolio workers. Critical Cosmopolitanism (Delanty,2006) and complexity theory are used to discuss emergent scenarios of transformation in personal and business commitment in knowledge societies.

Formal voice mechanisms and portfolio career workers’ prosocial voice in Japan and Korea: the mediating role of managers’ issue-related leadership activities

ABSTRACTThis study analyses the relationship between formal voice mechanisms and prosocial voice among portfolio career workers (PCWs) in Japan and Korea. We particularly focus on the leadership activities of managers as human resource management agents and issue sellers. Under similar conditions, data on 400 and 409 PCWs in Japan and Korea, respectively, are gathered through web-based longitudinal surveys conducted in 2017 and 2018. The findings are threefold. First, when PCWs perceive that formal voice mechanisms are activated, they also rate the levels of their managers’ issue-related leadership activities more highly. Second, when PCWs evaluate the issue-related leadership activities of managers as being at a high level, they perceive that employment relations are based on a social exchange relationship. Third, when PCWs perceive employment relations based on a social exchange relationship, they provide their prosocial voice more actively. These results are discussed relative to the internal labour market models of Japan and Korea.

Paradox and potential: Fine Art employability and enterprise perspectives

Abstract This article explores the Fine Art curriculum in relation to the increasing focus on employability and enterprise within art and design institutions in the United Kingdom. The connection between the curriculum and enterprise and employability in the art school is under pressure from different fronts. On the one hand, the introduction of higher tuition fees in the United Kingdom has focused the student (but also staff and institutions) on the necessity to make a living after completing studies, and preferably enter into a career. The art school could be seen to have an ethical responsibility for their students here. On the other hand, within contemporary art practice there is an increased resistance towards current models of labour within neo-liberal capitalism; in particular, the idea of the ever-flexible portfolio worker, resilient and ideally adapted to an uncertain future (i.e., an artist), is increasingly being rejected as unsustainable and exploitative. The UK Fine Art curriculum is in flux, and questions have been asked about what exactly artists need to know and learn to prepare for their future. As a subject, Fine Art has not been consistently considered through a lens of employability and enterprise in the way more industryorientated design-based subjects have, but in the United Kingdom this is changing. This article asks: can art schools both prepare Fine Art graduates for a successful career in the arts to make them entrepreneurial and employable, and provide them with the critical tools to fundamentally question their place within this system (which some regard as a financially and environmentally unsustainable order)? It also considers whether this is a useful question and asks whether courses should perhaps make a choice and declare their position to potential students.

Challenge and hindrance stressors and wellbeing-based work–nonwork interference: A diary study of portfolio workers

Stress-based work–nonwork interference, or negative spillover, is associated with transference of negative emotions from the work to the nonwork domain. It is argued that work–nonwork interference resulting from high work demands does not necessarily entail the reproduction of any affective states. First, calmness can result in lower work–nonwork interference and enthusiasm in higher levels. Second, hindrance stressors can be negatively related to enthusiasm and calmness, while challenge stressors are positively associated with them. Hypotheses about the relationship between stressors and interference that reflect this rationality are developed and tested using longitudinal data from a six-month diary study of portfolio workers. The results offer some support for them and indicate that both challenge and hindrance stressors are positively related to interference. However, for hindrance stressors the indirect effect is positive when mediated by calmness and negative for enthusiasm. In contrast, for challenge stressors the indirect effect is negative when mediated by calmness and positive when mediated by enthusiasm. The mediation paths are significant only for transient effects. Thus, there are indications that well-being can both increase or decrease interference depending on the nature of the stressor and whether it is mediated by calmness or enthusiasm.

New and Emerging Research

The research is reported in a paper published in 2015: S. Wood and G. Michaelides, Hindrance and challenge stressors and well-being based work-non-work interference: A diary study of portfolio workers , Human Relations.

Psychological determinants of portfolio workers’ satisfaction with life

<b>Background</b><br /> The objective of the study was to evaluate which psychological variables are determinants of the level of satisfaction with life in the case of workers employed in more than one workplace, called portfolio workers. In the research, the transactional model of satisfaction with life by A. Zalewska, and also the model of multiwork by A. Lipińska-Grobelny, were referred to.<br /> <br /> <b>Participants and procedure</b><br /> Two hundred and eighteen portfolio workers and 218 monoworkers participated in the research. The studied individuals completed a self-made survey. The following techniques were also applied: the Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS); the Rokeach Value Survey (RVS); the Formal Characteristics of Behaviour – Temperament Questionnaire (FCZ-KT); the Masculinity and Femininity Scale (SMiK); the Organisation Climate Questionnaire (KKO); and the Marital Communication Questionnaire (KKM).<br /> <br /> <b>Results</b><br /> The results indicate that satisfaction with life in the case of portfolio workers is determined by personal characteristics (ascribing a greater significance to the sphere of ‘achievements’, a higher level of activity), demands at work (exercising flextime control, a positive assessment of the system of rewards in a workplace), and demands in the family (a low level of depreciation in the relationship). In turn, a high level of satisfaction with life in the case of workers employed in a single workplace depends on: ascribing lower significance to the sphere of ‘achievements’ and to the values of ‘pleasure’ and ‘talented’, attaching major importance to the values of ‘loving’, a positive assessment of the system of rewards in a workplace, the number of children and a low level of depreciation in the relationship.<br /> <br /> <b>Conclusions</b><br /> The data referred to above constitute an important source of information about the ways of strengthening the cognitive dimension of satisfaction with life in the case of workers, with particular attention being paid to portfolio workers.

Portfolio working – a psychological analysis of the phenomenon

<b>Background</b><br /> It turns out from the latest Eurostat data that Poland holds the second place in Europe in terms of the number of so-called portfolio workers, i.e. persons who work for more than one employer. From the psychological point of view, there arises the question regarding the possible determinants of the mentioned phenomenon. Therefore the general purpose of this study is to present the personal and situational indicators of portfolio working. <br /> <br /> <b>Participants and procedure</b><br /> Two hundred and eighteen portfolio workers and 218 workers employed in one workplace (i.e. monoworkers) participated in research using the following set of ‘paper-pencil’ techniques: a self-made survey, the Value Scale by Rokeach, the Formal Characteristics of Behaviour – Temperament Questionnaire by Zawadzki and Strelau, the Masculinity and Femininity Scale by Lipińska-Grobelny and Gorczycka, and the Organizational Climate Questionnaire by Kolb. <br /> <br /> <b>Results</b><br /> Portfolio working is mainly determined by a number of personal variables (temperamental characteristics, values and spheres of motivation, intensity of masculinity and femininity). A specific role is played by values represented by portfolio workers. The discriminant analysis conducted in groups selected on the basis of working hours indicates that the prediction of participation of the examined persons in the group of portfolio workers with the greatest accuracy appeared in the case of a workload of 48 or more hours, next in the case of a smaller workload up to 47 hours, and finally for the whole group. <br /> <br /> <b>Conclusions</b><br /> The examination of the phenomenon of portfolio working from the psychological perspective presents an important contribution to the discussion on work and directions of its transformations.

The impact of fluctuating workloads on well-being and the mediating role of work−nonwork interference in this relationship.

Heavy workloads have been central to the discussion of well-being. However, fluctuations in workloads have received sparse attention, even though transient and routine levels of workloads may have independent effects on well-being. The article assesses this, particularly focusing on the effort-recovery model of the workload/well-being relationship in which work-nonwork interference mediates this relationship. Using data from a weekly diary study of freelance or portfolio workers, multilevel analyses showed that both routine and transient levels of work to nonwork interference mediated the job demands-calmness relationship. Work to nonwork interference also negatively mediated the hours worked-calmness relationship, but the direct relationship between hours worked and calmness was a positive one so the mediating effect reduced this positive effect. In the case of enthusiasm, which was a second measure of well-being, there were no mediating effects but both routine and nonroutine levels of job demands and transient levels of hours worked were related to it. The study highlights the value of introducing the temporal dimension into the study of the work-nonwork interface, and the diversity of relationships that occur across different dimensions of workload and well-being.

A Portfolio Worker – an Analysis of Modern Multiple Jobholders

The general purpose of this article is the presentation of portfolio worker’s concept in connection with types of worktime organization and types of employment. In accordance with Ch. Handy [16] portfolio working becomes a future of labour market or at least unavoidable consequence of changing organizations. His optimism is stopped by R. Sennett [40], who states that development of portfolio working is the effect of blockade of other types of career and the promotion of self-employment. Nevertheless Poland is the third country in Europe considering the number of portfolio workers. It explains why it is worth to analyze such a phenomenon and research it from various psychological perspectives.

Permanent Temporariness? Changes in Social Contracts in Knowledge Work

Many sociologists have argued that work no longer plays the central role in contemporary life experience because we have entered an age of insecurity in relation to employment, and knowledge workers are often pictured as egoistical portfolio workers who are only interested in their careers and no longer loyal to their employers. Cappelli (1999) on the other hand argues that more insecure employment relations is a result of employers’ strategy to buy workers rather than offering them long-term relations. Using case studies from seven different knowledge work contexts in Norway, this article argues that more temporary employment relations is not the result of career-seeking portfolio workers, but of changes in employment practices of their employers. These are not primarily changes in the formal employment contracts from permanent to temporary employment, but in the social contracts as they are practiced by the employers and experienced by the knowledge workers in the different contexts of knowledge work. The reason for more temporary relations was not because work does not matter for knowledge workers. On the contrary, we found that they accepted insecure conditions because work mattered and because they were eager to take on new tasks, learn the trade in new fields, and show that they were able to do the job. When they left their employer, it was because they were not able to do a good job in their positions or because they were increasingly directly exposed to an insecure market that signaled that they were not profitable (enough) for their employer. Although changes in employment practices by the employers toward more short-term relations are not caused by disloyal portfolio workers, these practices may produce the problem of disloyal workers who have to secure their employment in the labor market.

Clusteranalytische Bestimmung von Patchworkertypen sowie deren quantitative und qualitative Validierung

In der vorliegenden Studie wurden Patchworker, das heißt Personen mit mehreren Beschäftigungsverhältnissen, in einer Fragebogenerhebung und nachfolgenden Interviews untersucht, um diese Personengruppe anhand einer Typenbildung näher zu beschreiben. Mithilfe der Kriterien „Gründe für Patchwork“, „Bevorzugung einer anderen Form der Erwerbstätigkeit“ und „Selbstkontrolle“ erfasst durch die Kombination von Beschäftigungsverhältnissen wurden mittels Clusteranalyse drei Typen von Patchworkern gebildet. Diese Typen werden „zufriedene Teilselbstständige“, „Selbstverwirklicher“ und „unfreiwillige Patchworker“ genannt. Die Typen wurden mit den Sekundärvariablen Selbstwert und Burnout varianzanalytisch überprüft und anhand von Interviews qualitativ validiert. Die Typenbildung wird durch die qualitativen Ergebnisse gestützt, aber die Typen unterscheiden sich nicht hinsichtlich der Sekundärvariablen. Die untersuchten Patchworker sind wenig burnoutgefährdet und berichten einen hohen Selbstwert. Möglicherweise erlaubt die Arbeitsform Patchwork, eine belastende Stelle durch andere Beschäftigungsverhältnisse auszugleichen.

Testing a Psychological Contract Measure in a Swiss Employment Context

In this study, we validated a questionnaire measuring psychological contracts in a Swiss employment context. We argue that this measure sufficiently considers the characteristics of a stable employment situation and meets the criteria for the validity of psychological contract measures. The sample consisted of the employees of two firms and portfolio workers. An item and scale analysis was conducted and the dimensionality of the instrument was tested by means of confirmatory factor analyses. Finally, the instrument consists of three factors measuring employee expectations and employer inducements as well as two factors measuring employer expectations and employee contributions. Validity was evaluated by comparing groups with different employment status and by hierarchical regression analyses predicting intention to quit and performance.

Careers and temporal flexibility in the new economy: an Anglo‐Dutch comparison of the organisation of consultancy work

Knowledge workers are widely considered to represent the vanguards of a new employment era, characterised by a greater degree of balance in the relationship between the employer and the knowledge worker. This fundamental shift in power relations is expected to lead to the emergence of a new group of so‐called ‘free’ or empowered portfolio workers, who share boundaryless career arrangements and internationally ‘universal’ forms of flexibility. However, such propositions have been made without extensive comparative research. This paper therefore examines the organisation of knowledge worker careers and the nature of the temporal flexibility available to knowledge workers through an Anglo‐Dutch case‐study of a multinational consultancy firm. The data collected by this study provides little evidence to support the notion of free/boundaryless career models and demonstrates that national context has a significant impact on the construction of consultancy careers and the availability, level and form of flexibility offered to consultants.

Academics on Non‐Standard Contracts in UK Universities: Portfolio Work, Choice and Compulsion

AbstractThis paper analyses the profile and motivation of over 1,300 academics employed on part‐time, fixed term or temporary contracts at 10 post‐1992 UK universities, whom it categorises as ‘non‐standard academics’. Based on a questionnaire survey, it investigates their demographic background, including age, gender and ethnic background, as well as the factors behind acceptance of their current employment status. It reveals that six out of ten chose their status and correspond in some ways to the profile of ‘portfolio worker’ (high level of qualifications, multiple job holding and sense of independence). This tends to correct the perception of them as mainly ‘casual’. However, commitment to their current employment status is less clear, with over one‐third stating that they would accept a permanent job on their current hours. There are, therefore, signs of adaptation to certain forms of non‐standard status (hours) but not to others (impermanence). Such uncertainty illustrates the hazy boundaries between casual and portfolio status.

Exploring career transitions: accounting for structure and agency

PurposeTo apply and develop Stephen Barley's model of career structuration to offer insights into the transition into portfolio working.Design/methodology/approachA qualitative case study methodology is used. Interviews were conducted with managers who had left the National Health Service to develop portfolio careers.FindingsThe adoption of the Barley model of career structuration as a sensitising device has made it possible to show how individuals have drawn from existing scripts embedded in institutional forms but have also contributed to developing new career scripts, such as portfolio working. Their enactment of career scripts is a dynamic process whereby they impact back on those scripts in both intentional and unintentional ways. Thus the transformative capacity of individual career actions is asserted but, critically, alongside awareness of constraints as bound up in structures which have salience for individuals and for collectives.Research limitations/implicationsThis is a study based in one large public sector organisation. Further exploration of the potential role of career as a way of understanding socially embedded action and its capacity for change is required, which takes account of different occupational settings.Practical implicationsThe study outlines some of the frustrations experienced by portfolio workers and has practical implications for the ways in which they should be managed.Originality/valueThe paper contributes to the debate concerning structure and agency in career theory.

A Grounded Theory of Portfolio Working

Portfolio working has been championed, most noticeably by Handy (1995), as a new way in which we should understand many working lives. It is said to be characterized by obtaining and doing a variety of pieces of work for a number of different clients or employers and is suggested by many to be an increasing practice. To understand how individuals who work in this way experience portfolio working, 26 semi-structured interviews were carried out with a range of portfolio workers and then analysed using a grounded theory technique. The model that was generated suggested that a particular combination of features characterized portfolio working: the self-management of work, the independent generation of work and income, the development of a variety of work and clients, and a working environment situated outside any single organization. The model further demonstrated how these combined features engendered three main psychological processes central to the experience of portfolio working: autonomy, uncertainty and social isolation. The nature of the processes had a subsequent impact upon the individual's work intensity, well-being and work–life balance. Personal and situational characteristics also emerged as playing a notable role in how portfolio working is experienced.

An intra‐individual test of the demands‐control model: A weekly diary study of psychological strain in portfolio workers

Twenty‐five years of research on Karasek's job strain model has produced evidence that jobs involving high demands, low control and low social support may produce psychological strain. The present study takes this research in a new direction by using a time‐sampling methodology with a group of portfolio workers (self‐employed individuals who work for multiple clients) to examine whether working weeks that involve more of these characteristics are associated with greater psychological strain. The study also examines whether workers' optimism moderates the intra‐individual relationship between job characteristics and strain. Every week for 26 weeks, 65 portfolio workers completed a diary containing measures of work demands, job control, social support and strain. Multi‐level analyses supported the additive but not the interactive form of the job strain model. However, differences in portfolio workers' optimism moderated an interactive effect of weekly demands and control on anxiety and depression, such that the highest levels of strain were experienced by pessimists under conditions of low control and high demands. The results suggest that psychological strain can vary with temporal variations in job characteristics and that a person‐situation approach is appropriate for understanding these dynamics.