Skip Navigation

The quality of employment and decent work: definitions, methodologies, and ongoing debates

  1. Nurjk Agloni*
  1. * University of Cambridge (BB, AP), University of Chile (KS, NA). We thank Sarah Gammage, Richard Jolly, Ivanka Mamic and three anonymous referees for their thoughtful and encouraging comments that have informed and improved this article. We also gratefully acknowledge funding from the Cambridge Humanities Research Grants (2012) and from the European Union’s FP7 project ‘Nopoor’ that contributed to this research.
  1. Address for correspondence: Agnieszka Piasna, Department of Sociology, University of Cambridge, Free School Lane, Cambridge, CB2 3RQ, UK; email: ap582{at}cam.ac.uk
  • Received August 10, 2012.
  • Revision received September 10, 2013.

Abstract

This article explores the development of concepts related to the ‘quality of employment’ in the academic literature in terms of their definition, methodological progress and ongoing policy debates. Over time, these concepts have evolved from simple studies of job satisfaction towards more comprehensive measures of job and employment quality, including the International Labour Organization’s concept of ‘Decent Work’ launched in 1999. This article compares the parallel development of quality of employment measures in the European Union with the ILO’s Decent Work agenda and concludes that the former has advanced much further due to more consistent efforts to generate internationally comparable data on labour markets, which permit detailed measurements and international comparisons. In contrast, Decent Work remains a very broadly defined concept, which is impossible to measure across countries. We conclude by proposing three important differences between these two scenarios that have lead to such diverging paths: the lack of availability of internationally comparable data, the control over the research agenda by partisan social actors, and a prematurely mandated definition of Decent Work that is extremely vague and all-encompassing.

Key words:

Key words

JEL classifications:

JEL codes

| Table of Contents

This Article

  1. Camb. J. Econ. 38 (2): 459-477. doi: 10.1093/cje/bet067 First published online: December 4, 2013
  1. » AbstractFree
  2. Full Text (HTML)
  3. Full Text (PDF)
  4. A correction has been published
  5. All Versions of this Article:
    1. bet067v1
    2. 38/2/459 most recent

Classifications

Share

  1. Email this article

Current Issue

  1. November 2016 40 (6)
  1. Cambridge Journal of Economics
  1. Alert me to new issues

Most

Disclaimer: Please note that abstracts for content published before 1996 were created through digital scanning and may therefore not exactly replicate the text of the original print issues. All efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, but the Publisher will not be held responsible for any remaining inaccuracies. If you require any further clarification, please contact our Customer Services Department.