Downward flexibility: Who is willing to take an inferior job?

The European Journal of Industrial Relations is the principal English-language forum for the analysis of key developments in European industrial relations and their theoretical and practical implications.

It embraces a broad definition of industrial relations and includes articles which relate to any aspect of work and employment. It publishes rigorous and innovative work on and from all European countries. All social science disciplines are relevant to its remit, and interdisciplinary approaches are particularly encouraged. A major objective is to foster cross national comparative analysis; for this reason, single country monographs are unlikely to be accepted unless framed by a strong comparative perspective. Work which relates European developments to broader global experience is welcome. Abstract:

Most workers look forward to better jobs across their careers, but in an age of rising inequality and insecurity at work, some are willing to accept an inferior job in order to avoid joblessness. We use the Work Orientations III survey from the 2005 International Social Survey Programme to explore such ‘downward flexibility’ and develop several regression models specified for 19 OECD countries to test hypotheses and explore macro- and individual-level variations.

Workers in liberal ‘labour market regimes’ are more tolerant of downward adaptations, in line with evidence that these regimes produce strongly institutionalized norms of flexibility. Tolerance of a worse job is also higher among those with weak labour market positions (low-income respondents, women and young people). Further macro-level analysis suggests that the ‘model’ country with the most downwardly flexible workers would be rich and unequal, with weak unions and low levels of social protection and industrial rights.