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A growing body of social science literature has examined the organizational innovations and staffing practices comprising new flexible forms of work. Researchers have investigated the depth and scope of these changes and questioned how they affect diverse groups of workers in the United States. Reviewing the research on this transformation reveals a model of combined and uneven flexibility, characterized by the opening of opportunities that are differentially distributed across different groups of American workers, emerging under conditions in which effort is intensified, control is decentered, and employment is destabilized. The essay concludes by suggesting additional areas of inquiry for sociologists concerned with new forms of work organization.

This report provides a snapshot of the policy actions being taken by OECD, EU and G20 countries in response to growing diversity in forms of employment, with the aim of encouraging peer learning where countries are facing similar issues. It shows that many countries are reflecting on whether existing policies and institutions are capable of addressing effectively the current (and future) challenges of a rapidly changing world of work. In recent years, many countries have seen the emergence of, and/or growth in, particular labour contract types that diverge from the standard employment relationship (i.e. full-time dependent employment of indefinite duration). These include temporary and casual contracts, as well as own-account work and platform work. Several countries have also seen growth in false self-employment, where employers seek to evade tax and regulatory dues and obligations. These changes are driving policy makers worldwide to review how policies in different areas – labour market, skills development, social protection – can best respond. How can policymakers balance the flexibility offered by a diversity of employment contracts, on the one hand, with protection for workers and businesses, on the other?

I have always admired labor organizers, in part because their long hours and incredible ability to listen, engage, and sympathize with people from every political persuasion make it possible for the labor movement to survive. I do not envy them, however, particularly at this moment in history. They often find themselves in untenable situations, faced with impossible moral and political dilemmas. As one Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Worker organizer from the Tufts University campaign—where the union recently lost an election—explained to me in January 2010, "You can't win an election without employer neutrality. Yet you can't get neutrality without making concessions you don't want to make."

In the Netherlands, the social security rights of platform workers have still not been formally defined. At present, the level of social security protection accorded to all workers is derived directly from the labour law qualification. In the continuing absence in the Netherlands of specific legislation for platform workers, specifically as regards labour law and social security law, the existing legislation is steering. This means that the platform worker is either included using the status of employee with the corresponding extensive protection package, or the status of self-employed with limited social protection. For the majority of platform workers, this second option is applied to date. Nevertheless, recent developments point to possible improvements in the social security position of platform workers in the Netherlands.

Ensuring social protection for people having lost their jobs is an important part of the social protection system. Although health insurance and pension insurance have traditionally been the most important social protection systems, then social guarantees (both passive and active measures) for the unemployed cannot be underestimated in the changed forms of employment. New forms of work necessitate attention to whether and how people working under new forms of employment, e.g. platform workers, can register as unemployed and whether short-term employment may worsen their standing compared to other unemployed. This article analyses the Estonian social protection system for the unemployed and the planned changes in connection with platform work.

PurposeThis paper aims at understanding the relationship between the adoption of new forms of work organizations (NFWOs) and measures of country impact, in terms of national culture and economic development.Design/methodology/approachThe adoption of NFWO practices is measured through data from the fourth edition of the International Manufacturing Strategy Survey, while Hofstede's measures are adopted for national culture, and gross national income (GNI) per capita is used as an economic development variable. Multivariate linear regression is applied to investigate relationships, using company size as a control variable. A cluster analysis is utilized to identify groups of countries with similar cultural characteristics and to highlight different patterns of adoption of NFWO practices.FindingsThe authors show that it is possible to explain different patterns in the adoption of NFWO practices when considering company size and cultural variables. GNI is instead only significant for some practices and does not always positively influence the adoption of NFWO. On the other hand, cultural variables are linked to all the practices, but there is no dominant dimension to explain higher or lower NFWO adoption.Research limitations/implicationsResults are limited because only Hofstede's cultural variables are used and manufacturing performance is not considered. Therefore, it is not possible to discriminate between more or less successful NFWO variations.Practical implicationsThis paper provides managers with insights on how to take into account cultural variables when transferring organizational models to different countries.Originality/valueThis paper contributes to previous studies showing the importance of including several contextual variables, country impact in particular, in the study of operations management.

The 'deconstruction' of the so-called Swedish model -a form of corporatism at the societal level has been very much discussed. New forms of work organization in combination with a rapid development of company level schemes for bonuses, profit-sharing, convertibles and employee share ownership may hit the core of the model, the solidaristic wage policy. In order to maintain the Swedish model, more or less modified, the unions probably have to improve their knowledge of work organization development, support their local bodies and make negotiations on new forms of work organization possible. To be able to prevent increasingly arbitrary wage differences the unions have to develop job classification systems, local job evaluation systems and overall wage statistics. If the unions do not succeed in this policy, the Swedish model will convert into a Japanese form of industrial relations, i.e. managerial corporatism.