Part‐time work in Europe

Seeks to contribute to the flexibility debate by addressing the following research questions: What are the European trends pertaining to the use of part‐time workers? How has the situation changed over the past three years? To what extent do organizational characteristics, such as size, unionization and sector, impact on the nature and extent of part‐time employment? Despite recent attempts by the European Union to bring to the fore the issue of working time, it has a rather long pedigree in labour management literature. The main arguments dictating the direction of change in working time arrangements are associated with discretion/choice debates, labour force changes, equality issues, technology and organiza‐tional efficiency and the unemployment/work‐sharing argument. Focuses specifically on one workforce variable, namely part‐time work. Believes that the classification of the labour market into the core (typical) and periphery (atypical), in the context of labour flexibility, is far too simplistic. Refers to how it has been argued in the literature that the components of the peripheral workforce possess different characteristics and cannot be lumped together.