ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the traditional and new employment contracts defining the relationships between firms and workers. It examines workplace transformations from bureaucratic labor-management relations toward more participatory practices. Both employers and governments resisted changing corporate and public policies to permit employees to adjust their work hours and work locations around family demands, to return to their jobs after parental leaves, and to receive referrals and subsidies for day care services. Theoretical explanations of increased flexible staffing arrangements stressed changing organizational requirements rather than worker preferences for more temporary, part-time, and contingent employment. Institutionalization theories emphasized how growing availability of temp agencies and independent contractors providing high-quality labor services widely legitimated their use, regardless of any actual efficiency or cost reduction. The weakened bonds between employers and employees rupture the supportive psychological connections sustained under the traditional employment contract. The new employment contract encouraged white- and blue-collar workers alike to assume that their working careers would extend far beyond the employer.
