Temporary Positions Research Articles

Demand Uncertainty, Cost Behavior, and the Asian Financial Crisis: Evidence from Korea

The mix of fixed and variable costs in response to environmental changes is important for the sustainability of a firm. This study examines how demand uncertainty affects managers’ cost structure decisions. Using data on Korean firms from 1982 to 2015, my study provides evidence that cost rigidity increases in demand uncertainty. This finding implies that managers under higher uncertainty will increase the committed capacity to reduce congestion costs, resulting in a more rigid (less elastic) cost structure with higher fixed and lower variable costs in the short term. I also investigate the effect of the 1997 Asian financial crisis on cost rigidity. I predict that the massive structural changes entailed by the crisis, such as the deteriorated access to external funds, increase in the tendency of loss aversion, and expansion of outsourcing and temporary job positions, will reduce the magnitude of cost rigidity following greater demand uncertainty. Consistent with the prediction, the positive relation between demand uncertainty and cost rigidity becomes weaker in the period following the crisis, compared to the pre-crisis period.

Divided we stand: reasons for and against strike participation in Amazon's German distribution centres

Little attention has been devoted to the individual motivations behind strike participation - particularly in minority strikes, such as the labour struggle affecting Amazon's German distribution centres. This study surveyed 223 Amazon employees asking questions relating to strike participation, income, reliance on trade unions, work dissatisfaction, employment status, professional background and demographic background. Our results, based on logistic regression analysis, evidenced that work dissatisfaction, reliance on trade unions, and having temporary or permanent positions predicted decisions vis-à-vis strike participation with 92% accuracy. The union's main goal, improving workers’ income, did not play a major role.

A vulnerable generation? Youth agency facing work precariousness

Agencia y vulnerabilidad no son términos alternativos; al contrario, su encuentro hace emerger una característica distintiva de la agencia: la del “débil” que se enfrenta con dificultad a las restricciones y que descubre nuevas oportunidades. Tras una discusión teórica en torno a la relación entre agencia y vulnerabilidad y de las transformaciones de los procesos de subjetivación, este artículo se centra en la situación específica de vulnerabilidad en el mercado de trabajo que vive la actual generación de jóvenes. El texto analiza, apoyándose en una investigación realizada en Italia entre 2013 y 2017, los límites y potencialidades de la agencia de los jóvenes como una obligación en un contexto de precariedad en el trabajo. El objetivo es recalcar cómo agencia y vulnerabilidad —más que ser características intrínsecas del individuo— han de entenderse en relación con posiciones temporales, en la intersección de categorías y recursos, en condiciones situadas y relacionales.

Becoming a ‘Labour Migrant’: Immigration Regulations as a Frame of Reference for Migrant Employment

This article addresses the role of immigration regulations as a frame of reference for migrant employment before obtaining permanent residency status. Drawing on interviews with non-EU migrants and service sector employers in the Helsinki area, the article examines how immigration regulations inform migrant employment and contribute to the hierarchisation of labour markets. The analysis focuses on the legal significance of employment for migrants during the immigration process, which is related to the financial requirements for residence permits and manifested in the work permit process in particular. Immigration regulations increase migrants’ dependency on paid employment, consequently decreasing their bargaining power in the labour market. The findings demonstrate the changing dynamics of the supply and demand of labour in the low-paid service sector, where employers prefer to recruit migrants in temporary legal positions over local workers and ‘labour migrants’, resulting in what the author calls the juridical division of labour.

Danish universities under transformation: Developments in staff categories as indicator of organizational change

Claims of fundamental changes of the organizational model of universities have been widespread during the latest decades. To empirically assess the character and extent of organizational change is however not straightforward. This article contributes with partial, but also very tangible evidence of long-term organizational changes at Danish universities by analyzing detailed data on staff composition and salary distributions. The article shows that Danish universities indeed have undergone significant transformations, but that the full extent of these changes only becomes visible when a fine-grained analytical approach is employed. On the academic side of the organizations, relatively low-wage temporary positions have boomed at the expense of more expensive permanent ones. On the administrative side, specialized and highly educated administrative staff has surged substantially, while less expensive positions such as clerks, technicians, and service staff conversely have diminished in relative terms. Hence, while the analysis supports the overall claims in the literature, it also adds important nuances to the dominant narratives of organizational change.

Trapped on Love Boat: Middling and Transient Entrapment among Balkan Seafarers in the Cruise Industry

Globalization has led to a plethora of temporary, seasonal and transient jobs characterized by poor work conditions, tolerated by workers with the hope that such jobs will lead to better positions. Yet, it is not uncommon to find workers that spend years in temporary positions. Examining a cadre of cruise crew members from the Balkans who have repeatedly occupied transient jobs, this study addresses the underpinning discourses of savings, care and human capital that serve both to sustain and to entrap workers in transient positions. The ability to save and remit savings to their families allow transient workers to engage in “middling” back home, saving money to invest in homes, businesses or mobility capital. However, structural constraints on labor markets and a disconnect from local networks limit their ability to reach their goals and leverage their time on board to secure more permanent jobs, prompting the workers to repeatedly return to their temporary seafarer positions.

Science (without) youth: Gendering Early Academic Careers in Slovenia

How is it possible to foster gender equality in academia if the academic field is gradually marked by precarity, particularly in the early stages of academic careers? How do early career scholars deal with the challenges of their professional environments and what are the potential strategies of structural change that can contribute to the improvement of equal opportunities in academia? These are the questions that Science (without) Youth: Gendering Early Careers in Slovenia [Znanost (brez) mladih: Zgodnje stopnje znanstvene kariere skozi perspektivo spola] raises and strives to discuss in its introduction and the seven chapters that follow. The book is a result of the GARCIA project that targets combating gender inequalities in academia by taking an innovative approach – focusing on researchers in non-tenured, temporary positions.

New managerialism in the academy: Gender bias and precarity

In the era of global competition, academic institutions are increasingly being managed as efficient organizations where early career academics are the most vulnerable group in the academic hierarchy. We use gender budgeting to deconstruct the financial and managerial processes and procedures in a selected academic institution in Iceland. Drawing on multiple data collection methods, we argue that new managerialism enhances the precarious position of early career academics, especially women and those in the more feminized fields. Furthermore, we show that the system's bias in favour of so‐called hard science generates gendered consequences for early career academics. We demonstrate this structural gender bias in each of the first three stages of an academic career: PhD, postdoc and other temporary positions, and assistant professorship. By highlighting the gendered consequences of new managerialism, we want to direct attention to the need to include a gender perspective in the budgeting and all the decision‐making processes in academic institutions.

Invisibility in the Profession: A Qualitative Examination of the Experiences of Contingent Faculty

Recent years have seen a transition within the United States from full-time tenure-track faculty positions to temporary nontraditional faculty positions within higher education. While the use of a ...

Work–Life Conflict, Professional Commitment, and Job Satisfaction Among Academics

ABSTRACTBased on the job demands-resources model and role conflict theories, we developed and tested hypotheses to elucidate the consequences that work-to-life and life-to-work conflicts have on job satisfaction and how affective, normative, and continuance professional commitment moderate these relationships. Using data collected from German academics, our results confirmed theoretical assumptions that work-to-life conflict and continuance commitment act as stressors that reduce job satisfaction, while affective commitment serves as a resource, as it lowers job satisfaction directly and buffers the negative impact of a work-to-life conflict on job satisfaction. Neither life-to-work conflict nor normative commitment had a direct impact on job satisfaction, but their interaction had a positive effect on job satisfaction. A groupwise analysis of academics with temporary positions and academics with permanent positions revealed that affective commitment was a moderator only in association with work-to-life conflict among temporarily employed academics and that normative and continuance commitment were moderators in association with the life-to-work conflict among permanently employed academics. We discuss the implications of these results for theory and policy.

Scientific Advice and Administrative Traditions: The Role of Chief Scientists in Climate Change Adaptation

The role of the chief scientist (CS), a key administrative position in various Israeli ministries, is to fund policy‐oriented research and support evidence‐based decision‐making. Has the CS's role promoted or constrained incorporation of scientific advice regarding climate change adaptation into governmental policy? Have administrative traditions affected the adaptation planning process in Israel? Analysis of documents and 26 in‐depth interviews with key stakeholders sheds light on the ongoing climate change adaptation policy formulation process. Our study reveals that the CS of the Ministry of Environmental Protection functions as a bridge at different interfaces and can be characterized as a boundary worker between institutions. The inherent independence of this position facilitates the CS's ability to initiate, foster, and prioritize complex issues such as adaptation. Our findings further suggest that the perception that Israel has already adapted, or will easily adapt, has negatively affected the adaptation process. 科学建议和行政传统：首席科学家在气候变化适应工作中的作用 首席科学家是以色列各部门的一个关键行政职务, 其具体作用是为政策性研究提供资金, 并支持循证决策。对于有关气候变化适应的科学建议, 首席科学家的作用是促进还是限制了其被纳入到政府政策中？行政传统是否影响了以色列的气候适应规划进程？通过文件分析及与关键利益相关者的26次深入访谈, 笔者揭示了正在进行的适应气候变化政策的制定过程。研究表明, 环保部门的首席科学家在不同的层面上起着桥梁作用, 在不同机构的分界线上工作以彼此连接。该职位的内在独立性能促进首席科学家在发起问题、培养和优先考虑包括适应气候等复杂问题的能力。研究进一步表明, 以色列已经适应了或即将轻易适应某些观点, 而这已经对气候适应过程产生了负面影响。 Asesoria cientifica y tradiciones administrativas: el papel que juegan los cientificos principales en la adaptacion al cambio climatico El papel que juegan los cientificos principales, un puesto administrativo clave en varios ministerios israelies, esta especificamente designado para el financiamiento de investigacion orientada hacia la politica y el apoyo a decisiones basadas en evidencia. ?El papel que juegan los cientificos principales ha promovido o limitado la incorporacion de asesoria cientifica en lo que concierne a la adaptacion al cambio climatico dentro de las politicas del gobierno? ?Las tradiciones administrativas han afectado el proceso de planeacion para la adaptacion en Israel? El analisis de los documentos en 26 entrevistas exhaustivas con partes afectadas clave ilustra el proceso de formulacion de las politicas de adaptacion al cambio climatico actual. Nuestro estudio revela que el Cientifico Principal del Ministerio de Proteccion Ambiental funciona como un puente para diferentes interfaces y puede ser caracterizado como un trabajador limitrofe entre las instituciones. La independencia inherente de esta posicion facilita la habilidad del cientifico principal para iniciar, fomentar y darle prioridad a complejos problemas como la adaptacion. Nuestros hallazgos sugieren que la percepcion de Israel ya se ha adaptado, o se adaptara facilmente, y ha afectado negativamente el proceso de adaptacion.

Precarious Labor and the Digital Humanities

Precarious Labor and the Digital Humanities Christina Boyles (bio), Anne Cong-Huyen (bio), Carrie Johnston (bio), Jim McGrath (bio), and Amanda Phillips (bio) We want to believe that we can be agile and innovative, like Silicon Valley says it is, by making DH run with short-term grants, app contests, and temporary labor. We want to have a sort of Uber-style sharing economy for DH-research. But this is not how one supports careful, enduring scholarship and teaching. —Miriam Posner, "Money and Time" Despite the money and prestige that seems to come with the label, digital humanities is a field that relies on grants and temporary positions to establish credibility on campuses. As a result, DH laborers are frequently precarious across institutions. They occupy a startling range of positions: administrators, adjuncts, postdocs, graduate and undergraduate students, tenure-track and contingent faculty, librarians, archivists, programmers, IT and edtech specialists, consultants, museum curators, artists, authors, editors, and more. Members of the American Studies Association Digital Humanities Caucus, who work across other precarious fields like African American studies, disability studies, ethnic studies, feminist studies, and more, recognize the many ways in which the value of our labor has been challenged, taken for granted, dismissed outright, or explained away as at best a fad or at worst the manifestation of neoliberalism in its most craven form within the humanities.1 These experiences have motivated us to make forms of digital labor and the agents behind this labor more visible, to create standards of evaluation that help practitioners and nonpractitioners define and describe the value of digital scholarship, and to sustain generative relationships that address the ethical dimensions of collaborative labor on digital humanities initiatives. It is our hope that this conversation can contribute to building solidarity with other precarious workers across the academy. [End Page 693] The Precarity of DH in and beyond American Studies Within American studies, students and faculty members interested in digital scholarship encounter many situations where support for digital labor could be greatly improved. While there has been compelling digital scholarship in American studies that takes a traditional form, collaborative, public-facing, and iterative digital scholarship proves challenging in environments that privilege the monograph. Consider the tenure-track faculty member required to print hard copies of born-digital scholarship far afield from the monograph, whose portfolio may be read by a department and an administration with no clear guidelines for how to promote the employees they hired to "do" digital work. Consider the graduate student encouraged to situate herself within digital humanities by completing digital projects in addition to a dissertation, taking on part-time positions, or even paying for additional credentials. While several humanities departments and professional organizations have taken steps to develop guidelines for professional evaluation of digital labor, these recommendations may not serve the varied forms of academic labor beyond the tenure-track model. How do we help members of the community interested in more creative or multimodal endeavors or forms—films, exhibitions, games, documentaries, oral histories—demonstrate the institutional and professional value of their labor to audiences who do not find its importance self-evident? Scholars looking for collaborators or material resources on campus may find their work challenged by the conditions of labor created by understaffing, particularly if a single employee is expected to serve a wide range of campus needs. Digital scholarship in American studies often involves the labor of experts who institutionally reside elsewhere on campus. Many of these individuals work in libraries, where they may collaborate with American studies students and faculty members. Others may be former American studies students who earned library degrees or gained employment in traditional or "alt-ac" roles. While some of these employees work in supportive environments where their time and expertise is valued or where their contributions to digital scholarship are visible and documented, this is not always the case. For example, Leigh Bonds and Alex Gil note that many experts in digital scholarship "have been given the mandate to coordinate and support digital scholarship at our institutions without being part of a fully-staffed center or institute" and are expected to operate as "miracle workers" on campus, performing as scholars, tech support, administrators, project...

Left Out in the Academic Field: Doctoral Graduates Deal with a Decade of Disappearing Jobs

In 2001–2002, the authors of this article interviewed 31 ethno-culturally diverse doctoral students about their experiences in a sociology of education program at a Canadian university. Approximately 10 years later, in a second qualitative study, we had the chance to conduct semi-structured interviews with 13 of the former students to find out what had happened to them in the intervening years. Two of the 13 had become tenured academics, three were on the tenure track after years in temporary positions, and most of the others worked in the contingent sector of the academic labour market. Bourdieu’s concepts of “habitus” and “field” are particularly useful for our analysis, and we explore the tensions between these concepts for our participants.

Left Out in the Academic Field: Doctoral Graduates Deal with a Decade of Disappearing Jobs

In 2001–2002, the authors of this article interviewed 31 ethno-culturally diverse doctoral students about their experiences in a sociology of education program at a Canadian university. Approximately 10 years later, in a second qualitative study, we had the chance to conduct semi-structured interviews with 13 of the former students to find out what had happened to them in the intervening years. Two of the 13 had become tenured academics, three were on the tenure track after years in temporary positions, and most of the others worked in the contingent sector of the academic labour market. Bourdieu’s concepts of “habitus” and “field” are particularly useful for our analysis, and we explore the tensions between these concepts for our participants.

Why do you publish? On the tensions between generating scientific knowledge and publication pressure

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine researchers’ motivations to publish by comparing different career stages (PhD students; temporarily employed postdocs/new professors; scholars with permanent employment) with regard to epistemic, pragmatic, and personal motives.Design/methodology/approachThis qualitative analysis is mainly based on semi-structured narrative interviews with 91 researchers in the humanities, social, and natural sciences, based at six renowned (anonymous) universities in Germany, the UK, and the USA. These narratives contain answers to the direct question “why do you publish?” as well as remarks on motivations to publish in relation to other questions and themes. The interdisciplinary interpretation is based on both sociological science studies and philosophy of science in practice.FindingsAt each career stage, epistemic, pragmatic, and personal motivations to publish are weighed differently. Confirming earlier studies, the authors find that PhD students and postdoctoral researchers in temporary positions mainly feel pressured to publish for career-related reasons. However, across status groups, researchers also want to publish in order to support collective knowledge generation.Research limitations/implicationsThe sample of interviewees may be biased toward those interested in reflecting on their day-to-day work.Social implicationsContinuous and collective reflection is imperative for preventing uncritical internalization of pragmatic reasons to publish. Creating occasions for reflection is a task not only of researchers themselves, but also of administrators, funders, and other stakeholders.Originality/valueMost studies have illuminated how researchers publish while adapting to or growing into the contemporary publish-or-perish culture. This paper addresses the rarely asked question why researchers publish at all.

LANDSCAPES OF UNREST: HERBERT GIERSCH AND THE ORIGINS OF NEOLIBERAL ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY

This article bridges the gap between the intellectual history and critical geography of neoliberalism through a study of the overlooked figure of the German economist Herbert Giersch. As a public economist and director of the Kiel Institute for the World Economy from 1969 to 1989, Giersch blended German traditions of location theory with liberal globalism to lay the foundation of a neoliberal economic geography. We show the origins of globalism at Kiel through the work of the institute's founder, Bernhard Harms, and Giersch's influences, including Johann Heinrich von Thünen, August Lösch, and Alfred Weber. We argue that Giersch's neoliberal economic geography emerged out of two perceived necessities in the 1970s. On the one hand, he saw a need to reorient German industry through import competition with the global South. On the other hand, he felt the need for an ethically defensible global imaginary to pose against both traditional German social democracy and the promise of the global South's New International Economic Order. In his metaphor of a landscape of so-called Schumpeterian volcanoes in which regions were locked in perpetual struggle for temporary monopoly positions against competitors, Giersch provided a powerful distillation of the geographic imaginary at the heart of the neoliberal movement since the 1970s.

National Bioethics Commissions as Educators.

As has become tradition, executive directors of United States' presidential bioethics committees offer reflections about their experience shortly after the orderly shutdown of the commission staff. After the records are filed according to government records regulations; after all the staff members, who are hired into temporary positions that must be renewed every two years, have secured permanent employment; after preparations are made to ensure that the next commission staff (should there be one) has a budget and standard operating procedures in order to begin its work in a timely manner; after the lights are turned out for the last time, the executive director makes the final climb up the stairs into the sunlight and reflects on the whirlwind. There is much about my work with the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues that deserves comment, but one aspect of the commission that has been especially valuable to me is its work to educate the nation on bioethical issues. This is, moreover, a contribution in which the commission staff was central, and it is one that, as an ethics educator myself, I will cherish deeply.

DOES FIRM’S HIGHER INNOVATION POTENTIAL LEAD TO ITS SUPERIOR FINANCIAL PERFORMANCE? CASE OF CEE COUNTRIES

Innovation is one of the most commonly used word in the business and academic world. Naturally the firms are willing to innovate to leverage on future profits and growth generated by the new products and supported by temporary monopolistic positions on the market. However, the question is about how much the companies should invest to record higher profitability. The authors tried to answer this question analyzing the companies within the Central and Eastern European region taking intangible assets as innovation proxy. It was concluded that the companies having higher investments in the intangible assets are able to generate higher margins. However, positive effect of possibly higher innovation potential is seen only if investments in intangibles are substantial, i.e. over 10%.

Flexible working arrangements and strategic positions in SMEs

PurposeUnder the Australian Fair Work Act 2009, employees can request flexible working arrangements (FWAs) from their employers. Provision of FWAs is costly to small and medium enterprises (SMEs). They can, however, use FWAs to achieve competitive advantage. The purpose of this paper is to investigate strategic positions associated with FWA availability in SMEs. It also examines the effects of size and industry sector on FWA availability in SMEs.Design/methodology/approachWith a sample of 1,541 cases comprising micro, small and medium firms from the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ Business Longitudinal Database, binary regression models were used to analyse the relationships between FWAs and the independent variables: strategic position, firm-size and industry of operation.FindingsFlexible working hours, flexible leave arrangements and roster/shift selection were used by SMEs pursuing a strategy focussed on human resources. In contrast, a strategic focus on cost correlated negatively with paid parental leave and flexible rosters/shifts. SMEs pursuing innovation were unlikely to provide flexible leave while job sharing was less visible in SMEs focussing on quality. An industry effect was evident with working from home unlikely for firms in industry sectors where employees had to be present at work. Micro- and small-sized firms were less likely than medium firms to provide FWA to their employees.Originality/valueSMEs with competitive positions based on human capital could use FWAs to attract the required skills. Employees in SMEs that compete on cost may benefit from FWAs in the form of temporary and casual positions.

Does Better Teacher Selection Lead to Better Students? Evidence from a Large Scale Reform in Colombia

In 2002 the career of Colombian public school teachers was significantly reformed through the introduction of a selective entry competition and of further quality incentives. This paper estimates how the new quality-screened teachers impact students’ high school performance. We exploit the fact that the novel regulation applied only to newly hired teachers, whereas those already in office in 2002 remained exempt, creating a mix of New-Regulation and Old-Regulation teachers in Colombian schools. Using data at the school-year-subject level, we eliminate any school-level confounders and associate the proportion of New-Regulation teachers to the variation in student test scores. We pin down a positive and significant, although not very large, effect of New Regulation teachers on student performance. New Regulation teachers have decreasing marginal returns, are more effective in larger schools and when surrounded by colleagues holding postgraduate degrees. We also document that the enforcement of the New Regulation has been somewhat unsatisfactory, since in the period 2008-2013 around 30% of all New Regulation teachers are employed in temporary positions without having passed the compulsory entry exam. These teachers have lower and less robust impacts on student performance.