Flexibilized Employment in the Public Sector: Surprising Similarities and Important Differences between the United States and the United Kingdom

Abstract

How have employment relationships changed as government experiences greater and greater exposure to market ebb and flows? How have public sector managers responded to increasingly dynamic product and labor markets, and to what extent are these responses dictated by regulations and practices surrounding the employer-employee relationship? In this paper, we contrast the institutional contexts of the US and UK, and hypothesize that more liberalized institutions surrounding US employment in government, compared to those in the UK, accompanies greater use of flexibilized working arrangements. We demonstrate that, in fact, the use of NSWAs in the United States and the UK is similar.

Keywords:

• human resource management
• flexible staffing arrangements
• nonstandard work arrangements
• public personnel management

Notes

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