Study title

Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.This research into changing organisational forms and the re-shaping of work was prompted by the recognition that, despite an apparent increase in the number and importance of 'new' organisational forms, their implications for the future of work had yet to be fully explored. Current accepted frameworks for analysing organisations, work and employment tend to be founded upon one of two premises. The first, prevalent in human resources management (HRM), industrial relations, occupational psychology and employment law literature, takes work and employment to be organised and shaped by a single employing organisation, having well-defined boundaries and considerable control over its internal policies. This approach largely ignores the growth of inter-organisational relationships and the permeability of organisational boundaries, even in situations where work is sub-contracted. The second, associated with much organisational analysis, strategic management and industrial economics literature, attends to inter-organisational relationships, but also treats each organisation as an essentially coherent and unitarist entity, capable of displaying entity-wide attitudes and values such as organisational trust. Analysis of the employment relationship and its well-known contested nature is widely disregarded. In a context of increasing fragmentation and permeability of organisations, and evidence that human resources (HR) policies are unable to resolve the potential conflicts and contradictions inherent in the employment relationship, a fresh approach is needed. This departs from methodological traditions focused on the single organisation as the unit of analysis, with data often gathered through the lens of a single respondent, and with a lack of attention to inter-organisational relations. This research built on work in the ESRC Contracts and Competition Programme that has analysed trust between firms (for...