Trust within enterprises as a limit to the spread of atypical employment forms

Abstract

"What makes atypical employment forms attractive from the point of view of enterprises is the personnel-policy leeway that they provide with regard to working hours, remuneration or continuity of employment. In particular company-internal social relations based on trust are important for the ability of enterprises to make innovation and change, because trust increases workers' willingness for commitment and co-operation and promotes the diffusion of knowledge within the organisation. According to the thesis, the production factor of trust sets relatively narrow limits to the spreading of atypical forms of employment, since the establishment and strengthening of trust in organisations is strongly influenced by subjectively perceived employment and labour market prospects. Where individual job insecurity is perceived, a climate of mistrust prevails which is accompanied by an activation of non-co-operative behaviour among the employees. Although atypical forms of employment do not generally result in a loss of trust, fixed-term employment and temporary agency work, owing to their temporary character, can not bring about stable and lasting relations of trust between employers and employees. Thus the business-management interest in a maximum flexibility of the staff depending on the order situation conflicts with the interest in the workers' demonstrating a high level of willingness for performance and productivity. The latter requires the workers' trust and can best be achieved in stable and permanent regular full-time jobs with a relative employment 'guarantee'. For this reason for many enterprises maximum staff flexibility is not synonymous with optimum flexibility." (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku) ((en))

Cite article

Seifert, M. & Pawlowsky, P. (1998): Innerbetriebliches Vertrauen als Verbreitungsgrenze atypischer Beschäftigungsformen. In: Mitteilungen aus der Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung, Vol. 31, No. 3, p. 599-611.