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T H E OX F O R D H A N D B O O K O F

J OB QUA L I T Y
THE OXFORD HANDBOOK OF

JOB QUALITY
Edited by
CHRIS WARHURST, CHRIS MATHIEU
AND RACHEL E. DWYER
 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,
United Kingdom
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First Edition published in 2022
Impression: 1
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 Acknowledgements

Job quality is as important as ever, if not more so given the double assault on jobs from
the Global Financial Crisis and the global Covid pandemic. But if this Handbook is
timely, it has been a long time in the making. Pulling together and keeping together so
many of the world’s leading authorities on job quality has been challenging at times. It
has been a marathon, not a sprint. We would like to thank our commissioning editors
at Oxford University Press, first David Musson and more recently Jenny King, for
their support. Likewise our contributors, most of whom have been with us since the
beginning—​we want to thank them for both their patience and efforts. Amanda Kerry,
formerly of the Warwick Institute for Employment Research, supported our editing
work and we are grateful to her for that work. Of course, as we laboured over the book,
other responsibilities suffered. In this respect, we thank our families and friends for
their understanding—​in particular, Doris and Hannah, and Katja, Ossian, Malaïka
and Emilia, and David, Henry and Anna. Finally, the study of job quality is expanding,
and we would like to thank all longstanding and new researchers to the field for their
commitment to both wanting to understand and, often, wanting to improve job quality,
the latter sometimes working with likeminded policymakers and practitioners. We
hope that this Handbook is a useful tool for them and look forward to learning from
their work in turn.
 Contents

List of Figures  xi
List of Tables  xv
List of Contributors  xvii

Job Quality Matters  1

Chris Warhurst, Chris Mathieu and Rachel E. Dwyer

PA RT I T H E F O U N DAT ION S OF J OB Q UA L I T Y
1. The Quality of Working Life  23
David Guest
2. The Swedish Contribution to Job Quality  41
Ian Hampson and Åke Sandberg
3. Job Quality: A Family Affair?  63
Chris Warhurst, Sally Wright and Chris Mathieu

PA RT I I U N DE R STA N DI N G J OB Q UA L I T Y
4. Understanding Differences and Trends in Job Quality: Perspectives
from Cross-​National Research  87
Sven Hauff and Stefan Kirchner
5. Understanding Job Quality Using Qualitative Research  107
Angela Knox and Sally Wright
6. Quantitative Approaches to Assess Job Quality  126
Rafael Muñoz de Bustillo, Enrique Fernández-​Macías and
José-​Ignacio Antón
7. Job Quality as the Realization of Democratic Ideals  148
John Godard
viii   CONTENTS

PA RT I I I K E Y I S SU E S I N J OB Q UA L I T Y
8. Job Polarization: Its History, an Intuitive Framework and Some
Empirical Evidence  169
Maarten Goos, Emilie Rademakers, Anna Salomons and
Marieke Vandeweyer
9. Geographies of Job Quality  203
Sally Weller, Tom Barnes and Nicholas Kimberley
10. The Cornerstone of Job Quality: Occupational Safety and Health  220
Maria Albin, Chris Mathieu, Esa-​Pekka Takala and
Töres Theorell
11. Innovation and Job Quality  244
Rafael Muñoz de Bustillo, Rafael Grande and
Enrique Fernández-​Macías
12. Immigration and Job Quality  274
Amada Armenta and Shannon Gleeson
13. Job Quality for Service and Care Occupations:
A Feminist Perspective  299
Orly Benjamin
14. Inequality in Job Quality: Class, Gender and Contract Type  318
Duncan Gallie

PA RT I V R E G IONA L DE V E L OP M E N T S
I N J OB QUA L I T Y
15. Job Quality in the United States and Canada  339
Arne L. Kalleberg, Sylvia Fuller and Ashley Pullman
16. The Great Recession and Job Quality Trends in Europe  363
Christine Erhel, Mathilde Guergoat-​Larivière,
Janine Leschke and Andrew Watt
17. Job Quality in Emerging Economies through the Lens of the
OECD Job Quality Framework  389
Sandrine Cazes, Paolo Falco and Bálint Menyhért
 CONTENTS   ix

PA RT V SE C TOR A L DE V E L OP M E N T S
I N J OB QUA L I T Y
18. Job Quality in High-​Touch Services  415
Mary Gatta
19. The Changing Quality of Office Work  433
Chris Baldry
20. The Steady but Uneven Decline in Manufacturing Job Quality  452
Jeffrey S. Rothstein
21. Neoliberalism’s Impact on Public-​Sector Job Quality: The US and
Germany Compared  469
Carsten Sauer, Peter Valet, Vincent J. Roscigno and
George Wilson
22. Job Quality and the Small Firm  485
Paul Edwards and Monder Ram

PA RT V I I M P ROV I N G J OB Q UA L I T Y
23. Human Resource Management and Job Quality  505
Peter Boxall and John Purcell
24. Using Efficiency, Equity and Voice for Defining Job Quality, and
Legal Regulation for Achieving It  522
Stephen F. Befort, Silvia Borelli and John W. Budd
25. Trade Unions and Job Quality  542
Melanie Simms

Index  559
 List of Figures

3.1 Job quality categorization using subjective and objective approaches 66

4.1 Job quality as a relational concept 101
5.1 Job quality categorization 119
6.1 Average index of job satisfaction in 33 countries and territories, 2005 128
6.2 Average and differences in importance given to job characteristics 131
6.3 JQI and EJQI in the EU (15), 2010 143
8.1 Smoothed average 5-​year employment share changes by ICT-​capital
intensity (in percentage points, 1980–​2005) 183
8.2 Smoother average 5-​year output price changes by ICT-​capital intensity
(in percentage points, 1980–​2005) 186
8.3 Smoothed average 5-​year output volume changes by ICT-​capital intensity
for manufacturing and all sectors (in percentage points 1980–​2005) 187
8.4 Smoothed average 5-​year employment share changes by ICT-​capital
intensity for manufacturing and all sectors (in percentage points,
1980–​2055) 191
8.5 Share of employment in routine occupations over 1-​digit sectors,
ranked by their ICT-​capital intensity 193
10.1 Interaction between the human and work 229
10.2 The work system Modified from Smith and Sainfort 1989 232
11.1 Relations between technological innovation and job quality 245
11.2 GDP per capita in Europe (EU-​12) and USA, 1870–​2010 246
11.3 Wages and productivity growth. OECD countries, 1970–​2006 248
11.4 Telephone and telegraph operators in England and Wales 250
11.5 Job quality by major sectors of economic activity; JQI 2005 and
2010, EU-​15 250
11.6 Probability of computerization and JQI in 39 sectors of
economic activity 252
11.7 Five-​year averages of annual number of deaths related to coal mine
explosions in the United States, 1901–​1995 254
xii   List of Figures

11.8 Summary Innovation Index and Technical Innovation Index from the
EWCS in the EU-​27, 2010 261
11.9 Innovation: new processes or technologies introduced in current
workplace during the last 3 years by Job Quality Index. EU15 countries,
EWCS 2010 264
15.1 Trade union density in the United States and Canada, 1960–​2020 344
15.2 Employment rate in the US and Canada, total working-​age
population 25–​54 346
15.3a Share of involuntary part time among part-​time workers in the US and
Canada, men 1998–​2020 349
15.3b Share of involuntary part time among part-​time workers in the US and
Canada, women 1998–​2020 349
15.4 Real hourly minimum wage, 1965–​2020 351
15.5a US occupational percentage shares, indexed to 2003 353
15.5b Canadian occupational percentage shares, indexed to 2003 353
16.1 Changes in sub-​indices of Job Quality Index between 2005
and 2010, EU27 368
16.2 Developments in overall Job Quality Index by country, 2005–​2010 370
16.3 Change in the unemployment rate between 2005 and 2010 and change in
the overall Job Quality Index, 2005–​2010 371
16.4 Changes in unemployment rate and changes in share of people ‘not
worried about losing job’, 2010–​2005 373
16.5a Box plot of level-​2 residuals (i.e. country-​specific effects): not employed vs
job quality staying the same or improving 379
16.5b Box plot of level-​2 residuals (i.e. country-​specific effects): job quality
deteriorating vs job quality staying the same or improving 379
17.1 Job quantity, job quality and well-​being 391
17.2 Earnings quality 398
17.3 Labour market insecurity due to unemployment 399
17.4 Labour market insecurity due to extreme low pay 401
17.5 Overall labour market insecurity 402
17.6 Incidence of very long hours 403
17.7 Job quality and quantity outcomes by sociodemographic groups 404
17.8 Job quality among formal and informal workers 406
21.1 The share of part-​time employees in the public sector for the US and
Germany from 1985 to 2015 477
 List of Figures    xiii

21.2 The share of exempt public-​sector workers for the US and the share of
fixed-​term contracted workers in Germany from 1985 to 2015 478
21.3 The share of public-sector workers who work overtime for the
US and Germany from 1985 to 2015 479
24.1 An aggregate scorecard for US job quality 532
24.2 An aggregate scorecard for job quality in the European Union 534
 List of Tables

4.1 Dimensions of job quality captured in EWCS 2005 and ISSP data and their
uses in different studies 90
4.2 Approaches to analysing cross-​national differences and trends in job quality 94
4.3 Index approaches based on the EWCS 2005 data 98
6.1 Dimensions of job quality suggested by the different traditions 133
6.2 List of acronyms, complete names, sources and databases of the indices of
job quality reviewed 136
6.3 Summary of the main indicators of job quality 138
6.4 European Job Quality Index and Job Quality Indicator 142
7.1 Frege-​Godard measures of civic principles 154
8.1 ICT-​capital intensity, employment shares, output volume and output price
by sector averaged across countries, 1980–​2005 180
8.2 Changes in employment shares by ICT-​capital intensity, 1980–​2005 182
8.3 Changes in output price by ICT-​capital intensity, 1980–​2005 186
8.4 Changes in output volume by ICT-​capital intensity, 1980–​2005 187
8.5 Changes in employment shares, output price and volume by ICT-​capital
intensity, 1980–​2005 189
8.6 Changes in employment shares, output price and volume by ICT-​capital
intensity, 1980–​2005 190
10.1 Ergonomics actions as a process 233
11.1 Index of job quality 258
11.2 Index of innovation. EU-​27, 2010 260
11.3 Pearson correlation coefficient among Job Quality Index and index of
innovation by sector, EU(15), 2010 263
11.4 Determinants of job quality (linear regression), EU-​15, 2010 266
12.1 Job quality and immigration (select dynamics facing immigrant workers) 279
12.2 South Philly Survey descriptive statistics by gender 282
15.1 Labour market policies and public expenditures 343
15.2 Employment characteristics 347
xvi   List of Tables

15.3 Earnings quality and labour market insecurity in Canada and

the United States 351
16.1 Most pronounced improvements and deteriorations in Job Quality Index
(total and sub-​indices)—​2005–​2010 369
16.2 Results of the empty model 377
16.3 Role of individual characteristics on job quality change between
2007 and 2009 377
16.4 Results of the ‘best’ model 378
23.1 Job facet priorities of British workers 511
 List of Contributors

Maria Albin MD PhD is Professor in Occupational and Environmental Medicine,

Institute of Environmental Medicine, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden. She is
former head of the Unit of Occupational Medicine and principal investigator for the
research programme, ‘A sustainable new working life—​trends, health effects and govern-
ance’. Her research has focused mainly on chemical and physical occupational exposures
and health but more recently more generally on sustainable working life, including the
ageing workforce. She has served as an expert to, amongst others, the Swedish Criteria
Group for Occupational Standards, the Swedish Work Environment Agency and the
Swedish National Commission on Social Inequalities in Health.
José-​
Ignacio Antón PhD is Associate Professor at the Department of Applied
Economics of the University of Salamanca. His research interests include labour,
health and public economics. He has been a consultant for the European Commission,
the European Parliament, the International Labour Organization and several Spanish
public administrations and agencies.
Amada Armenta PhD is Associate Professor of Urban Planning at the UCLA Luskin
School of Public Affairs. She is the author of Protect, Serve and Deport: The Rise of
Policing as Immigration Enforcement (University of California, 2017). Her articles have
appeared in Social Problems, Annual Review of Sociology, Annual Review of Law and
Social Science and Sociology of Race and Ethnicity.
Chris Baldry is Emeritus Professor attached to the University of Stirling Management
School, Scotland. He has published in the areas of information technology and em-
ployment relations, occupational health and safety, and space and the built working
environment. Past books include, with colleagues, The Meaning of Work in the New
Economy (Palgrave, 2007). He is a former editor of the journal New Technology, Work
and Employment.
Tom Barnes PhD is an economic sociologist at the Institute for Religion, Politics and
Society at Australian Catholic University in Melbourne. His current research project
focuses on the demise of Australian automotive manufacturing. He has written sev-
eral articles and chapters on insecure, precarious and informal work in Asia (especially
India) and Australia, including his new book on Indian auto workers, Making Cars in
the New India (Cambridge University Press, 2018).
xviii   list of Contributors

Stephen F. Befort is the Gray, Plant, Mooty, Mooty, and Bennett Professor of Law at the
University of Minnesota Law School. He teaches courses in Labour Law, Employment
Law, Employment Discrimination, Disability in the Workplace and Alternative Dispute
Resolution, and seminars in Comparative Labor and Employment Law and Advanced
Topics in Labor and Employment Law. He has authored eight books and more than
50 articles on labour and employment subjects. He is the former Chair of the Labor Law
Group, a member of the National Academy of Arbitrators, and a fellow of the American
College of Labor and Employment Lawyers.
Orly Benjamin PhD is Associate Professor at the Sociology Department at Bar-​Ilan
University, Israel. She is the author of Gendering Israel’s Outsourcing: The Erasure of
Employees’ Caring Skills (Palgrave, 2016) and co-​author of Feminism, Family and Identity
in Israel: Women’s Marital Names (Palgrave, 2011). Her work on the topic of women
and precarious employment and on mothers’ poverty employment has been published
in Human Relations, Journal of Family Issues, Social Policy and Administration, The
Sociological Review and Sociological Perspectives. She chairs the committee on the soci-
ology curriculum for Israeli high-​schools and is an activist with the coalition for direct
and fair employment.
Silvia Borelli is Associate Professor in Labour Law at the University of Ferrara. She is a
member of the editorial committee of Lavoro e Diritto and Rivista giuridica del lavoro
(journals members of the International Association of Labour Law Journals). She
participates in the Réseau académique sur la charte sociale européenne et les droits sociaux
and collaborates with the European secretariat of the Italian General Confederation
of Labour. During her career, she has taken part in several national and European re-
search projects on gender equality, anti-​discrimination law, the quality of employment,
networks of enterprises and transnational labour law.
Peter Boxall PhD is a Professor in Human Resource Management and leader of the
disciplinary area in HRM and Organisational Behaviour at the University of Auckland
Business School. He is interested in strategic HRM and employee well-being. With
John Purcell and Patrick Wright, he co-edited the Oxford Handbook of Human Resource
Management (OUP, 2007) and with Richard Freeman and Peter Haynes, he co-edited
What Workers Say: Employee Voice in the Anglo-American Workplace (Cornell University
Press, 2007). He is the co-author with John Purcell of Strategy and Human Resource
Management (Bloomsbury Academic), now in its fifth edition.
John W. Budd holds the Industrial Relations Land Grant Chair at the University of
Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management. His current research interests include
employee voice, frames of reference, conflict resolution and other industrial relations
topics. His books include Employment with a Human Face: Balancing Efficiency, Equity,
and Voice; Invisible Hands, Invisible Objectives: Bringing Workplace Law and Public Policy
Into Focus; The Thought of Work and Labor Relations: Striking a Balance. Professor Budd
has served on the executive board of the Labor and Employment Relations Association,
 list of Contributors    xix

and has been Director of the Center for Human Resources and Labor Studies at the
University of Minnesota.
Sandrine Cazes is a Senior Economist at the OECD in the Directorate for
Employment, Labour and Social Affairs. Prior to joining the OECD, she worked at the
OFCE-​Sciences Po French observatory and at the International Labour Organization,
both in the Budapest sub-​regional office and in the Geneva headquarters where
she was the Head of the Employment Analysis and Research Unit. Her main topics
of interest include comparative analysis of labour market policies and institutions,
job quality, employment protection and labour relations. She has authored several
publications in the fields of labour economics, flexicurity, labour market segmenta-
tion and collective bargaining, and is a regular contributor to the OECD Employment
Outlook. Since September 2017, she is also co-​Chair of the Evaluation Committee of
the ‘Ordonnances’ French Reforms.
Rachel E. Dwyer PhD is Professor of Sociology and Faculty Affiliate of the Institute
for Population Research at The Ohio State University. She studies the causes and
consequences of rising economic inequality and insecurity in the US across several
social arenas. She has contributed a series of institutional analyses of job polarization
and economic restructuring in US labour markets, including as intersecting with racial
and gender disparities in job quality. In related work, she analyses credit, debt and in-
equality, and the relationship between financialization and rising economic insecurity.
Her published work on these issues has appeared in, for example, American Sociological
Review, Social Forces, Annual Review of Sociology, Social Science Research, Gender &
Society and Social Problems.
Paul Edwards is Emeritus Professor of Employment Relations at Birmingham Business
School in the UK, where he was Head of the Department of Management. He was pre-
viously at Warwick Business School, where he was Director of the Industrial Relations
Research Unit as well as holding several Associate Dean positions. He is a Fellow of the
British Academy and a former editor-​in-​chief of Human Relations. He served on two
sub-​panels for the UK Research Excellence Framework. His research interests include
workplace employment relations and critical realism, on which he continues to publish.
Christine Erhel is a Professor in Economics at the Conservatoire National des Arts
et Métiers (CNAM, Paris) and Director of the Employment and Labour Research
Centre (Centre d’Etudes de l’Emploi et du Travail). She is a labour economist with a
particular focus on researching comparative European labour markets, labour market
policy reforms and job quality. In her research she has regularly participated in com-
parative projects, including a book published in 2016 on productivity trends in France,
Germany, Spain and the UK. She has been regularly involved in EU-​funded research
projects, such as the QuInnE project (http://​qui​nne.eu/​), analysing the relationships
between innovation, job quality and employment, in which she coordinated the quanti-
tative work package.
xx   list of Contributors

Paolo Falco is a Labour Market Economist at the OECD in the Directorate for
Employment, Labour and Social Affairs, where he contributed to the design of the
OECD Job Quality Framework and is currently investigating how different megatrends
will shape the future of work. He previously worked at the University of Oxford and
collaborated with various international organizations, including the World Bank and
the International Monetary Fund. His academic work uses experimental methods to
understand how labour markets in developing countries can be made more efficient and
inclusive. His research has been published in a number of academic journals and he
is a regular contributor to the OECD Employment Outlook. He holds a PhD from the
University of Oxford.
Enrique Fernández-​Macías PhD is a researcher working in the Joint Research Centre
of the European Commission. He previously worked in the Employment Unit of
Eurofound and as a lecturer and researcher at the University of Salamanca. He has a
PhD in Economic Sociology from the University of Salamanca, and his main research
interests are in the areas of job quality, occupational change, technology and employ-
ment, and inequality.
Sylvia Fuller is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of British Columbia,
and the Academic Director of the British Columbia Inter-​University Research Data
Centre. Her research centres on understanding how labour market inequalities de-
velop and erode and the implications of changing employment relations and social
policy for people’s economic security and mobility. Recent publications explore how
organizational context mediates parenting pay gaps, temporary workers’ employment
trajectories, divergence in the career pathways of new immigrants and the medicaliza-
tion of welfare among lone mothers.
Duncan Gallie CBE FBA is an Emeritus Fellow of Nuffield College and Professor of
Sociology in the University of Oxford. His research has involved comparative European
studies of the quality of employment and of unemployment. Most recently, he has
published on issues of inequality in work conditions, job insecurity and participation at
work. He has advised the French government as a member of an expert group on psycho-
social risks at work. He was a member of the advisory committee of a recent OECD ini-
tiative to provide guidelines to national governments for monitoring the quality of work.
Mary Gatta PhD is the Director of Research and Policy at National Association of Colleges
and Employers (NACE). She has published numerous books and articles including
Waiting on Retirement: Aging and Economic Insecurity in Low Wage Work (2018) and All
I Want Is a Job! Unemployed Women Navigating the Public Workforce System (2014).
Shannon Gleeson is Professor of Labor Relations, Law, and History at the ILR School
of Cornell University. Her books include Conflicting Commitments: The Politics of
Enforcing Immigrant Worker Rights in San Jose and Houston (Cornell University Press,
2012) and Precarious Claims: The Promise and Failure of Workplace Protections in the
United States (University of California Press, 2016).
 list of Contributors    xxi

John Godard is at the Asper School of Business, the University of Manitoba. His main
interest is in the relationship between institutions and the attainment of democratic
values at work. Although a sociologist by inclination, his work has appeared primarily
in industrial relations journals, and from 2012 to 2017 he served as chief editor of the
British Journal of Industrial Relations.
Maarten Goos is Professor of Economics at Utrecht University. His research focuses on
labour markets, including technological progress, labour market intermediation, in-
equality and institutions. He received his PhD from the London School of Economics
(LSE) and held positions at Erasmus University Rotterdam, University College London
and KU Leuven before joining Utrecht University. He also held visiting positions at
Princeton University, the Centre for Economic Performance at LSE, the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology and Boston University. He is currently coordinating the Future
of Work initiative at Utrecht University and is involved in various initiatives by the
European Commission, national policy institutes and multinational corporations.
Rafael Grande PhD is a lecturer and researcher at the University of Málaga in Spain.
He has a PhD in Social Science from the University of Salamanca, a Master’s degree in
Latin-​American Economics Studies and a BA in Sociology. His fields of interest are soci-
ology of labour, demography and international migration. He is currently working on
the effects of digitalization and innovation on working conditions, the relationship be-
tween fertility and employment patterns, and the issues of an ageing population.
Mathilde Guergoat-​Larivière PhD works as a Full Professor of Economics at University
of Lille (Clersé) and is a research associate in Cnam-CEET in Paris. She has worked on
the issue of job quality from a European comparative perspective for fifteen years and
published a number of articles on that topic. Her research topics also include gender
equality, labour market transitions and the impact of innovation on employment, job
quality and inequalities. She has participated in various international projects over the
last years for the European Commission, OECD and World Bank.
David Guest is Emeritus Professor of Organizational Psychology and Human Resource
Management at King’s Business School, King’s College, London. He has previously worked
at Birkbeck, University of London, and at the London School of Economics. He is a pre-
vious editor of the Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology and the British
Journal of Industrial Relations. His research addresses the link between HRM, well-​being
and performance, the concept of the new career, the role of the psychological contract
and developments in quality of working life. He has published numerous articles, and his
recent books, with colleagues, are HRM and Performance: Achievements and Challenges
(Wiley, 2013) and the Oxford Dictionary of Human Resource Management (Wiley, 2014).
Ian Hampson is Honorary Professor at the Centre for Workplace Futures at Macquarie
University, and an associate of the Industrial Relations Research Centre at the University
of New South Wales, Australia. Ian gained a PhD in Politics, and Science and Technology
Studies, from the University of Wollongong in 1994. He has published and taught in the
xxii   list of Contributors

fields of politics, industrial relations, sociology of work, training policy and skill recog-
nition. He was lead author of the Australian Research Council funded report The Future
of Aircraft Maintenance in Australia, and is a member of the editorial committee of the
Economic and Labor Relations Review.
Sven Hauff PhD is Professor of Human Resource Management and holds the Chair
of Labor, Human Resources and Organization at the Helmut Schmidt University in
Hamburg. His main research interests are in the interrelationships between the design
of human resource management and its effects on employees and organizational per-
formance. Most recently, he has worked on HRM systems, job quality and job satisfac-
tion, as well as the influence of national institutions and culture. He has published in
journals such as Human Resource Management, Human Resource Management Journal,
International Journal of Human Resource Management and International Business Review.
Arne L. Kalleberg is a Kenan Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the University
of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He has published extensively on topics related to the
sociology of work, organizations, occupations and industries, labour markets, and
social stratification. His recent books are Good Jobs, Bad Jobs (2013) and Precarious
Lives (2018). He is currently editing (with David Howell) an issue of the RSF of the
Social Science on ‘Changing Job Quality’. He served as the President of the American
Sociological Association in 2007–​2008 and is currently the editor of Social Forces, an
international journal of social research.
Nicholas Kimberley PhD is a candidate in economic geography at the University of
South Australia in Adelaide, Australia. His current research explores the labour market
changes following major job losses in regional economies. Prior to studying at ACU, he
completed a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in the School of Geography at the University of
Melbourne.
Stefan Kirchner PhD is Professor in the Sociology of Working Worlds’ Digitalization
at the Technische Universität Berlin. His research revolves around changes in work, or-
ganization and the economy. Currently, he focuse on how digital technology affects job
quality and enables work on digital marketplaces (e.g. crowdsourcing and gig economy).
He has published his work in journals such as the Socio-​Economic Review and Zeitschrift
für Soziologie.
Angela Knox PhD is an Associate Professor of Work and Organisational Studies at
the University of Sydney Business School. Her research focuses on job quality, inse-
cure and precarious work and employment regulation. She has co-​edited (with Chris
Warhurst) a book on job quality in Australia and published in various leading inter-
national journals, including Gender, Work and Organisation, the Human Resource
Management Journal, the International Journal of Human Resource Management and
Work, Employment and Society.
Janine Leschke PhD is Professor in Comparative Labour Market Analysis at the
Department of Management, Society and Communication at Copenhagen Business
School (CBS). Her main research area is comparative European labour market and
 list of Contributors    xxiii

welfare state analysis. She is particularly interested in the interface between labour
market flexibility and security. She has been working extensively on non-​standard
employment, EU cross-​border labour mobility and job quality as well as gender and
labour markets. She is currently one of the Danish lead partners in the EU project
Disruptive Technologies Supporting Labour Market Decision Making (HECAT). She is
one of the editors of the Journal of European Social Policy.
Chris Mathieu PhD is Reader in the Sociology of Work and Organisation at the
Department of Sociology, Lund University. From 2015 to 2018 he coordinated the
Horizon 2020 project QuInnE—​Quality of Jobs and Innovation Generated Employment
Outcomes (quinne.eu), and currently works on the Horizon 2020 project Beyond 4.0.
(beyond4-​0.eu). His primary research is on innovation, work, employment, organiza-
tion, and careers in the arts/​creative industries and hospitals. He currently co-​edits the
Sociology and Management of the Arts book series on Routledge.
Bálint Menyhért is a Research Fellow at the Finance and Economy Unit of the European
Commission’s Joint Research Centre in Ispra, Italy. His areas of expertise include eco-
nomic history, labour markets and poverty measurement. He obtained his PhD in
Economics from the Central European University in 2017. He has previous work experi-
ence from the Federal Reserve Banks of Boston and New York, the Hungarian Financial
Supervisory Authority and the OECD.
Rafael Muñoz de Bustillo PhD is Professor of Applied Economics at the University
of Salamanca. He has published a large number of books and articles on labour issues
and the economics of the welfare state, among them Measuring More than Money: The
Socio-​Economics of Job Quality (Edward Elgar, 2011) in collaboration with E. Fernandez-​
Macías and J. I. Antón. He has been consultant for the European Commission, the
European Parliament, the International Labour Organization and several Spanish
public administrations and agencies.
Ashley Pullman is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Education Policy Research Initiative
(EPRI) in the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of
Ottawa, Canada. Ashley completed her PhD at the University of British Columbia in
2017 in education with a sub-​specialization in Measurement, Evaluation, and Research
Methodology. Her current research focuses on the interplay among education, skill and
work, with a particular focus on socio-demographic inequality.
John Purcell DLitt held Chair appointments at Warwick and Bath universities with
earlier appointments at Oxford and Manchester universities. His main book publica­
tions include Human Resource Management in the Multi-​Divisional Company (OUP,
1994), the Oxford Handbook of HRM (OUP, 2007) edited with Peter Boxall and Patrick
Wright, and Strategy and Human Resource Management (written with Peter Boxall)
(Bloomsbury Academic 2022). His career has been devoted to the study of the man-
agement of labour including the links with business performance, the role of front
line managers, contingent workers and employee voice systems: see Consultation at
Work: Regulation and Practice with Mark Hall (OUP 2012).
xxiv   list of Contributors

Emilie Rademakers is an Assistant Professor at the Utrecht University School of

Economics. She obtained her PhD in economics from the University of Leuven in 2019.
Her research focuses on labour markets, including the consequences of technological
change and gender inequalities in labour market outcomes. Her research has been
published in international peer-​reviewed journals and she is a frequent speaker at inter-
national academic conferences and policy institutes.

Monder Ram is Professor and Director of the Centre for Research in Ethnic Minority
Entrepreneurship at Aston Business School in the UK. He publishes widely on small
business and ethnic minority entrepreneurship, employment relations and small firm
policy. Much of his work involves collaborations with academics, practitioners and
communities from diverse backgrounds.

Vincent J. Roscigno PhD is Distinguished Professor of Arts & Sciences in Sociology at

Ohio State University. His research foci and interests include social inequality and mo-
bility, relational dynamics in the workplace, sociology of education, and politics and so-
cial movements. Some of his work has been published in American Sociological Review,
Human Relations, Academy of Management Review, American Journal of Sociology,
Work & Occupations and Work, Employment & Society.

Jeffrey S. Rothstein PhD is Professor of Sociology at Grand Valley State

University in Allendale, Michigan. He is the author of When Good Jobs Go Bad:
Globalization, De-​Unionization, and Declining Job Quality in the North American
Auto Industry (Rutgers University Press, 2016). His research on the impact of global-
ization on labour relations, job quality and prospects for economic development can
also be found in Social Forces, Critical Sociology, Competition & Change, Research in the
Sociology of Work and New Labor Forum.

Anna Salomons is Professor of Economics at Utrecht University. She obtained her PhD
in economics from the University of Leuven in 2012 and held visiting positions at the
Centre for Economic Performance at LSE, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
and Boston University. Her research focuses on labour markets, including the
consequences of technological change, and on applied micro-​econometrics. Her re-
search has been published in international peer-​reviewed journals and she is a frequent
speaker at international academic conferences and policy institutes.

Åke Sandberg holds an MBA from the Gothenburg School of Economics and a
PhD in sociology from Uppsala. He is Emeritus Professor in sociology at Stockholm
University. Earlier he worked at KTH, The Royal Institute of Technology and at
Arbetslivsinstitutet (the National Institute for Working Life). He has published
Nordic Lights: Work, Management and Welfare in Scandinavia (SNS, 2013) and På jakt
efter framtidens arbete (Tiden, 2016), on work–life research policy (in Swedish with
English abstracts). An earlier book was Enriching Production: Perspectives on Volvo’s
Uddevalla Plant as an Alternative to Lean Production. The two latter books may be
 list of Contributors    xxv

downloaded at the homepage, akesandberg.se. A recent volume is Arbete & välfärd

(Studentlitteratur 2019) in which 27 researchers contribute chapters on Swedish
working life and welfare.
Carsten Sauer PhD is Professor of Sociology at Bielefeld University, Germany. He is
interested in labor markets and organizations, social inequalities, justice perceptions,
and survey experiments. Recent publications have appeared in the American
Sociological Review, the American Journal of Sociology, and Social Forces.
Melanie Simms PhD is Professor of Work and Employment at the University of Glasgow
in Scotland. Her research focuses on trade unions, the future of work and young people’s
transitions into employment. Her latest book is What Do We Know and What Should We
Do About the Future of Work? (Sage, 2019).
Esa-​Pekka Takala MD PhD is Docent in Ergonomics at the University of Eastern
Finland and Physiatricts at the University of Helsinki. He has studied relationships be-
tween work and musculoskeletal disorders since the 1980s at the Finnish Institute of
Occupational Health (FIOH). The approach of his research has varied from work physi-
ology and biomechanics to epidemiology, clinical trials and rehabilitation. The number
of his scientific publications covers over 100 original peer-​reviewed reports and 25
reviews or chapters in textbooks.
Töres Theorell became a licensed physician in 1967 and completed his doctoral disser-
tation at the Karolinska Institute in 1971. He worked clinically in internal medicine, car-
diology, primary care and occupational medicine until 1986, but became more involved
in research work. He became Professor at the National Institute for Psychosocial Factors
and Health in 1981 and Professor at the Karolinska Institute in 1995 and at the same time
Director of the National Institute for Psychosocial Factors and Health. After retire-
ment in 2006 he has remained active as a researcher. His focus is physiological stress
mechanisms, occupational health epidemiology and interventions.
Peter Valet PhD is an Assistant Professor and Chair of Sociology at the University of
Bamberg in Germany. His main research interests are in the areas of social inequality,
distributive justice, and empirical methods. His recent work has been published in the
American Journal of Sociology, Work & Occupations, and Social Psychology Quarterly.
Marieke Vandeweyer is a labour market economist in the Employment, Labour and
Social Affairs Directorate of the OECD. She has authored several OECD reports in
the areas of skills, activation policies and labour market reforms. Marieke holds a PhD
in Economics from the University of Leuven in Belgium and has published a range of
articles related to employment, skills and wage inequality.
Chris Warhurst PhD FRSA is Professor and Director of the Warwick Institute for
Employment Research at the University of Warwick in the UK and a Research Associate
of SKOPE at Oxford University. With colleagues, he has published a number of books
and articles on job quality, including, Are Bad Jobs Inevitable? (Palgrave, 2012) and Job
xxvi   list of Contributors

Quality in Australia (Federation Press, 2015). He has been expert advisor on job quality
to Oxfam Scotland and the Carnegie Trust, and on skills policy to the UK, Scottish and
Australian Governments and an International Expert Adviser to the OECD’s LEED
programme. He was also a member of the Measuring Job Quality Working Group
established to develop recommendations on Good Work from the UK Government’s
Taylor Review of Modern Working Practices.
Andrew Watt is Head of the European Economic Policy Unit and Deputy Head at the
Macroeconomic Policy Institute (IMK), part of the Hans-​Böckler Foundation. His
main fields are European economic and employment policy and comparative political
economy, with a particular interest in the interaction between wage-​setting and macro-
economic policy. Recent work has focused on reform of the economic governance of
the euro area, emphasizing the need to coordinate monetary, fiscal and wage policy in
order to achieve balanced growth and favourable employment outcomes. He has served
as adviser to numerous European and national institutions, including the European
Commission and Eurofound. Regular commentary can be found on https://​twit​ter.
com/​Andre​wWat​tEU and http://​andrewwatt.eu/​
Sally Weller PhD is an economic geographer and Associate Professor at the University
of South Australia in Adelaide, Australia. Her work on labour market change, regional
development and industrial transformation in Australia. She is a frequent contributor to
public policy and has conducted consultancy projects for the Australian Government,
Victorian State government and non-​profit organizations.
George Wilson PhD is Professor of Sociology and department Chair at the University
of Miami. His research interests include social stratification and mobility, public-​sector
work, minority vulnerability, and social class, racial/​ethnic and gender inequalities in mo-
bility pathways. His work has appeared in journals such as Social Forces, Social Problems,
Research in the Sociology of Work, Work & Occupations, and the DuBois Review.
Sally Wright PhD is a Senior Research Fellow at the Warwick Institute for Employment
Research (IER) at the University of Warwick in the UK. Since joining IER, she has
undertaken research on job quality for sponsors including the European Commission,
Eurofound, Oxfam UK and UK CIPD. She is currently involved in several European-​
funded research projects on the impact of technology on work, convergence in job
quality in the EU, and measuring outcomes from active labour market policies for the
long-​term unemployed. Her doctoral thesis investigated job quality in Australia.
 J OB QUALIT Y MAT T E RS

chris warhurst, chris mathieu and

rachel e. dwyer

The aim of this Handbook of Job Quality is to provide an interdisciplinary and inter-
national benchmark text for anyone wanting to understand job quality. Job quality
matters and has long and continually done so, even if the terminology used to describe
job quality has, and continues, to vary. For example, struggling in many cases to physic-
ally subsist, British workers in the first industrial revolution of the eighteenth century
agitated against the poor working conditions of the new factory system (Hall 2009). In
the mid-​twentieth century, expressed as the Quality of Working Life, job quality was held
up as the route to improved organizational productivity and efficiency and what would
now be termed ‘employee well-​being’ (e.g. Trist and Bamforth 1951; also the chapter in
this Handbook titled ‘The Quality of Working Life’ by Guest). By the late twentieth cen-
tury trends in job quality became a concern. Often contrasting even competing, grand
claims of historical inevitability of distinct trajectories for job quality were made. Some
scholars predicted that job quality was inevitably improving as the nature of production
and what was being produced changed (e.g. Bell 1973). Others argued that job quality
would degrade due to the competitive nature of capitalism (e.g. Braverman 1974).
Job quality still matters. Understanding trends continues to be important, as the de-
bate about a polarization in job quality exemplifies (see the chapter in this Handbook
titled ‘Job Polarization: Its History, an Intuitive Framework and Some Empirical
Evidence’ by Goos and colleagues and the chapter titled ‘Job Quality in the United States
and Canada’ by Kalleberg and colleagues). Debate about the future of work and job
quality in the twenty-​first century centres on the impact of the new digital technologies
of the putative fourth industrial revolution (Schwab 2016). Whilst most of the debate
about the impact of these technologies has foregrounded job loss, another strand has
attempted to focus on the quality of the remaining jobs, with, on the one hand, fears
that it might be little more than machine minding or, alternatively, hopes that it will be
more complex and socially interactive (Dwyer and Wright 2019; Warhurst and Hunt
2019). This debate about the coming of the clever robots compounds existing concerns
about the restructuring of employment (e.g. Fernández-​Macías et al. 2010), the trans-
formation of work (Doogan, 2009) and, importantly, a worrying proliferation of poor-​
quality jobs (e.g. Gautié and Schmitt 2010) often within the context of neo-​liberal
political-​economic hegemony since the early 1980s or the economic crisis that followed
2    chris warhurst, chris mathieu and rachel e. dwyer

the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) of the late 2000s (see the chapter titled ‘The Great
Recession and Job Quality Trends in Europe’ by Erhel and colleagues).
Job quality is thus the focus of significant international and multi-​disciplinary
academic interest and debate, much of which has been shaped by the contributors to this
volume. It is also increasingly a concern of policymakers. Governments and politicians
around the world are now not just taking an interest in job quality but actively advocating
its improvement, as the 2015 Ankara Declaration signed by the G20 countries illustrates.1
Underneath this growing consensus about its importance lurks a number of significant,
and in some cases unresolved, issues about job quality. If job quality matters, there are
matters to do with job quality that need to be explored and understood. This introductory
chapter sets out these matters and the ways that they are explored in the Handbook.

Why Job Quality

An obvious starting point is the question, why job quality? This simple question can be
interpreted in at least two ways. The first is why job quality is important. The answers
to this first interpretation of the question comprise the fundamental rationale and
justification for this volume. The central importance of job quality to a range of so-
cial, economic and political challenges is what warrants devoting a Handbook to the
topic. Job quality is offered as a solution to challenges such as health, welfare, prod-
uctivity, innovation, economic competitiveness, democracy and democratic partici-
pation, Bildung/​cultivation, societal equality, individual and collective quality of life
and environmental sustainability. Along with poverty eradication and environmental
sustainability, the International Labour Organization (ILO) (2015) even claims that
decent work, as an expression of job quality, is one of ‘the three defining challenges
of the twenty-​first century’ (p.4). As job quality is a key factor in addressing these
and the other challenges, it needs to be understood in all its complexity in terms of
what it affects as well as what affects it. This Handbook draws together into a single
volume: first, an explicit focus on job quality both as a significant factor in and of itself
and as producing instrumental effects on a range of other processes and outcomes;
second, a catalogue of the diverse range of multiple contributions and applications
related to job quality; and third, the complexity and multiple interpretations of the
concept of job quality. Each chapter provides distinct responses to the question of why
job quality matters, coupled to a contention about for whom or for what job quality
matters most. As the chapters with their respective answers and arguments attest,
there are a range of ways in which job quality is relevant to an equally broad range of
social, economic and political concerns.

1
www.dol.gov/​ilab/​media/​pdf/​2015-​G20-​Ministerial-​Declaration.pdf/​.
 JOB QUALITY MATTERS    3

The second interpretation centres on why the term or concept of job quality is now
being used or preferred over other possible terms or concepts in framing and discussing
solutions to social, economic and political challenges. The obvious alternative is skills.
Over the last quarter century, education and training policy has shifted from being a
secondary concern for government to a primary concern, and regarded as the solu-
tion to a range of social and economic problems (Keep and Mayhew 2010). This shift,
Keep and Mayhew note, was epitomized in the UK Government’s Leitch Review of Skills
which stated that ‘where skills were once a key driver of prosperity and fairness, they are
now the key driver’ (Leitch 2006: 9).2 Unfortunately boosting skills supply, typically by
increasing rates of higher education participation amongst young people, has failed to
significantly shift the dial on these problems. Part of the reason is that skill deployment
is as important as skill development (Livingstone 2017). Wider workplace issues within
which skills are embedded have also been marginalized in debate. Keep and Mayhew
argue that the shift to skills ignores key issues that need to be addressed: work organ-
ization and job design; employee ‘voice’, wage setting and income distribution and pro-
gression opportunities—​all of which feature as part of the dimensions of job quality in
contributions to this volume. Thus, skills remain important. However, skills alone are
insufficient. Instead, what is needed, Keep and Mayhew insist, are ‘improvements to the
quality of working life’ (p.574).
If job quality really is the answer, the obvious question is to ask why it took so long
to be recognized as such by policymakers. One explanation forwarded by Guest in this
volume is that the wider political and economic tilt to neo-​liberalism from the 1970s
pushed job quality off the policy agenda. Another explanation is that job quality has
been overshadowed by industrial relations. Whilst interest in some aspects of job quality
existed throughout the mid-​to-​late twentieth century, as Bell (1973) and Braverman
(1974) illustrate, during this period those concerns were ‘masked and subsumed’ by the
policy focus on industrial relations or, more specifically the ‘labour problem’ that was
said to hamper productivity and stifle organizational efficiency (Knox et al. 2011: 8). The
primary concern of industrial relations was trade union and management negotiations
over the terms and conditions of employment, employee voice and pay, and with vari-
ation in these negotiations depending on whether they occur at workplace, enterprise,
sector and national levels (Bamber et al. 2016). Industrial relations became synonymous
with collective action but also associated with confrontation, strikes and disrup-
tion (Bray et al. 2009; Kochan 1998). Hence, within the shift to neo-​liberalism came
the undermining of trade unions and collectivism and the assertion of management’s
right to manage. By the 2010s, with state-​led dismantling of industrial relations, the
labour problem had been fixed many governments believed, at least in the liberal market
economies.
In these economies, human resource management (HRM) has emerged, displacing
industrial relations. Within the enterprise-​ level focus on HRM, collectivism is

2
Emphasis in the original.
4    chris warhurst, chris mathieu and rachel e. dwyer

replaced with individualism, and the concern is to align organizations’ needs with
the needs of individual employees or, in its harder US version, the ‘auditing’ of
human resources to better match organizational supply and demand (Legge 1995).
The dismantling of industrial relations might have enabled broader concerns with
job quality to re-​emerge. However, it is telling that in the displacement of industrial
relations by HRM there has again been little interest in job quality (Boxall and Purcell
in the chapter titled ‘Human Resource Management and Job Quality’ in this volume).
Nonetheless, Boxall and Purcell argue that more recent HRM research is increasingly
focused on what they call the ‘double agenda’ of organizational performance and em-
ployee well-​being. Significantly, employee well-​being is often argued to be the function
of job quality (e.g. Muñoz de Bustillo and colleagues in the chapter on ‘Quantitative
Approaches to Assessing Jobs’ in this volume). The outcome of this recent HRM re-
search is a focus on helping policymakers and managers understand the factors that
contribute to more productive and more fulfilling employment relationships. It is this
outcome that makes Boxall and Purcell hopeful that job quality will come to sit at the
heart of HRM research.
What these debates highlight is that both alternatives to job quality—​skills and in-
dustrial relations/​HRM—​maintain their importance as fields of research and practice
but debate in both is now being peeled back to reveal the underlying importance of job
quality. There is a logic to this development given that skills and employee voice are often
argued to be aspects of job quality as various contributions to this volume highlight. But
it is also an outcome of the recognition that single-​factor solutions to social, economic
and political challenges have limited efficacy and that ‘bundles’ of workplace practices
are needed to meet those challenges, as research on High Performance Work Systems
illustrates (Combs et al. 2006). In this context, job quality,-especially when understood
as a multi-​dimensional concept, is an obvious and useful focal point for both research
and policy.

What is Job Quality?

Conceptualization of job quality extends into another prominent issue in the volume—​
questions about the measurement of job quality. Research and policy formulation of
job quality rely upon defining it and specifying its components in order to measure it.
Despite emerging consensus that job quality is best understood as a multi-​dimensional
concept, what is striking about past and current foci on job quality is a lack of common
agreement about those dimensions and therefore lack of agreement on what constitutes
job quality. As a term, job quality has high recognition but, as this Handbook illustrates,
little consensus about what it comprises. Muñoz de Bustillo et al. (2011: 4) refer to job
quality as ‘elusive’ because ‘it is one of those concepts . . . which everyone understands
yet it is difficult to define precisely’. Tellingly, in 2015 the Group of 20 (G20) declared a
 JOB QUALITY MATTERS    5

commitment to improving job quality but without defining it or advancing a means of

measuring improvements to it.3
Reflecting the conceptual heterogeneity, numerous lists exist of what is said to com-
prise job quality (Wright 2015). Some of these lists’ contents overlap, some are dis-
tinct, some extend beyond the job to include labour market conditions. Whilst these
conditions are important and deserve attention, for example the use of child labour and
the persistence of gender inequality (see ILO 1999; Ghai 2003), they do not directly con-
stitute the ‘properties’ of the job.
This variety of indicators and the lack of conceptual consensus is vividly reflected in
this Handbook, and intentionally so if the field is to be represented. Some chapters high-
light one particular dimension of job quality, other chapters offer novel combinations
of multiple dimensions, some chapters draw on broad and others a narrow combin-
ation, and some include subjective, others objective measures. Despite Albin and
colleagues in the chapter titled ‘The Cornerstone of Job Quality: Occupational Safety
and Health’ in this volume arguing that physical and mental health are foundational
to other dimensions of job quality, contributions to the Handbook typically focus on
indicators related to work and employment, and sometimes both. The distinction be-
tween work and employment is important in discussing job quality, despite the use
of the term ‘work’ as a shorthand for ‘jobs’ in much US research (Warhurst and Knox
2022). In terms of ‘work’, Sauer and colleagues in the chapter titled ‘Neoliberalism’s
Impact on Public Sector Job Quality: The US and Germany Compared’, for example,
analyze work intensification and enhanced managerial control in the analysis of chan-
ging job quality amongst white-​collar office workers. Job control is also used as a marker
in Gallie’s discussion in the chapter on ‘Inequality in Job Quality: Class, Gender, and
Contract Type, along with opportunities for skill development and earning levels.
The high rate of employee disposability—​in other words, the existence of high levels
of job insecurity—​features strongly in Gatta’s discussion in this volume of ‘Job Quality
in High Touch Services’ and reflects the concern with ‘employment’ as a key marker
of job quality, in this case the use and impact of certain labour contracts. Building on
pluralist industrial relations theory with its emphasis on the terms and conditions of
employment again, Befort and colleagues in the chapter titled ‘Using Efficiency, Equity
and Voice for Defining Job Quality, and Legal Regulation for Achieving It’ elevate three
dimensions as central to job quality—​efficiency, equity and voice—​that they posit are
mutually interdependent and need to be seen and pursued as a whole. This argument
reinforces the point made earlier that job quality is likely best conceived and researched
as an interactive bundle of practices.
Weighing in on the conceptual heterogeneity, in 2015 the United Nations’
Economic Commission for Europe issued its Handbook on Measuring Quality of
Employment: A Statistical Framework (UNECE 2015), making refinements in 2019. It
offers seven dimensions of job quality, one of which, reflecting the priorities of its ILO

3
www.dol.gov/​ilab/​media/​pdf/​2015-​G20-​Ministerial-​Declaration.pdf/​.
6    chris warhurst, chris mathieu and rachel e. dwyer

agency, is portrayed as an ethical labour market issue—​the use of child and forced la-
bour. These seven dimensions are: Safety and ethics of employment; Income and benefits
from employment; Working time and work–​life balance; Security of employment and
social protection; Social Dialogue; Skills development and training; and Employment-​
related relationships and work motivation. About the same time, the OECD developed
its Job Quality Framework (Cazes et al. 2015) highlighting three dimensions: earnings
quality, labour market insecurity, and quality of the working environment. Cazes and
colleagues’ contribution in the chapter titled ‘Job Quality in Emerging Economies
through the Lens of the OECD Job Quality Framework’ offers an application of this
framework to job quality in emerging economies and explains the framework in greater
detail.
Trying to cut through the conceptual heterogeneity, some researchers argue that job
quality can be best measured through just one dimension—​pay. Indeed, pay is an oft-​
used marker of job quality. The reason is pragmatic according to Osterman and Shulman
(2011): typically, good data exists, and that data is often longitudinal and is often compar-
able across occupations, industries and countries. Even research that extends beyond
pay, to skill for example, does so suggesting that skill can be a proxy for pay (e.g. Goos
and Manning 2007). In this volume Goos and colleagues use the same combination to
assess the nature and extent of job polarization across the US and European economies.
This continuing diversity of concepts of job quality matters. It undermines common
understanding by researchers and constrains action by government. There can be
a number of reasons why this heterogeneity exists. First, for Hurley et al. (2012), it
reflects the different disciplinary traditions that underpin research into job quality.
Second, it can reflect different methodological approaches. The chapter by Muñoz de
Bustillo and colleagues, ‘Quantitative Approaches to Assessing Jobs’ provides a re-
view of the different quantitative approaches to measuring job quality and, with it,
more than twenty proposals of indicators of job quality. Knox and Wright in the
chapter titled ‘Understanding Job Quality Using Qualitative Research’ focus on
measures within qualitative research and they point out that quantitative and quali-
tative research methods tend to be utilized for different, though often complemen-
tary, purposes. Third, what is offered as a marker of job quality can simply be a sign of
the times. In this respect, the conception of job quality during the period in Sweden
examined by Hampson and Sandberg in the chapter on ‘The Swedish Contribution
to Job Quality’ should be seen against the backdrop of struggles over control of the
firm predicated on ideas about democratization of working life current at the time. By
the standards of the early twenty-​first century, this co-​determination of production
would appear ambitious, almost off the scale in terms of what today’s advocates of
improved job quality are seeking. Similarly, following the Covid pandemic and exten-
sive working from home, opportunity for hybrid working might become an indicator
of job quality in the future. Fourth, and an extension perhaps of the last point, it might
be that context determines particular conceptualizations and measurement of job
quality. In the chapter by Hauff and Kirchner, ‘Understanding Differences and Trends
in Job Quality: Perspectives from Cross-​National Research’, they argue that job quality
 JOB QUALITY MATTERS    7

arises from and should be understood in context. Their review of cross-​national re-
search of job quality leads them to identify a conceptual incommensurability at the
heart of this research that makes it difficult to develop a common understanding of
job quality. As a consequence, job quality should be recognized and accepted as a re-
lational concept they conclude. Relatedly, Godard in his chapter on Job Quality as
the Realization of Democratic Ideals’ argues that job quality should be regarded as an
expression of how societies value and treat labour. As a consequence, he argues that it
is more fruitful to analyse job quality at the societal rather than individual or organ-
izational level regardless of methodological approach. A key challenge here will be
to include job quality for migrants as well as the role of job quality in both push and
pull factors driving emigration and immigration, issues considered by Armenta and
Gleeson in their chapter, ‘Immigration and Job Quality.’ Fifth, rather than paradigms,
politics or place, it can be pragmatism that drives the use of particular markers of
job quality. Here data availability is the key, so what gets collected gets counted. For
example, amongst European researchers of job quality a key dataset is the European
Working Conditions Survey administered by the European Commission. There are
a number of weaknesses with this dataset (Warhurst et al. 2018) but the information
collected shapes much analysis of what is construed as job quality (e.g. Holman 2013).
What information this survey does not collect is not factored into these constructs of
job quality. In other words, data availability can drive the conceptualization and sub-
sequent measurement of job quality. As we noted earlier, the key reason for Osterman
and Shulman’s (2011) advocacy of pay as the measure of job quality is that good pay
data is readily available. Sometimes the weakness of this approach is recognized and
legitimized by suggestions that the set of measures being offered are a ‘short form’ of
job quality (e.g. Felstead et al. 2019).
Highlighting this heterogeneity in understanding job quality is important but
needs to be resolved, Muñoz de Bustillo and colleagues contend in their chapter,
‘Quantitative Approaches to Assessing Jobs’, and efforts made to develop a unifying,
single set of measures. This task is discussed in this volume by Warhurst and colleagues
in the chapter titled ‘Job Quality: A Family Affair’. The authors’ premise is twofold: first,
agreeing with Muñoz de Bustillo et al. (2009: 25), that there should be a ‘purging’ of
dimensions and indicators not directly related to the job and, second, that a double con-
sensus is required: first amongst the research community, second with non-​academic
stakeholders. Existing research indicates that there are several ways in which indicators
and measures of job quality are developed. First, as we have already noted, researchers
can determine what is to be included based on data availability. Second, workers can be
asked to self-​identify aspects of jobs that cause dis/​satisfaction, with researchers then
extrapolating the main items. Third, workers can be asked what researcher-​identified
features make a ‘good job’ with items then ranked by researchers. Fourth, stakeholders,
such as trade unions, can be asked what they believe is important in jobs and these
views accepted. Fifth, periodic literature reviews can be undertaken of existing inter-
national, multidisciplinary research to identify common or recurring foci along with
new emerging emphases.
8    chris warhurst, chris mathieu and rachel e. dwyer

Building on the earlier work of other European researchers (Muñoz de Bustillo et al.
2011; Davoine et al. 2008), Warhurst and colleagues adopt this last approach in order to
generate consensus amongst the academic community. The six dimensions that emerge
from the review are: Pay and other rewards; Intrinsic characteristics of work; Terms
of employment; Health and safety; Work–​life balance; and Representation and voice.
These dimensions were later road-​tested with key stakeholders in the UK drawn from
employer, trade union and civil society organizations, plus government statisticians
and officials. One dimension, Intrinsic characteristics of work, was subsequently split
to pull out Social support and cohesion and then renamed ‘Job design and nature of
work’, resulting in seven dimensions (Measuring Job Quality Working Group 2018).
These dimensions can provide a common basis for measuring conceptual variations of
job quality (see Zemanik 2020) and also provide the basis for developing a set of min-
imum standards of job quality that might improve work and employment in the future
(Warhurst and Knox 2022).

The Future of Job Quality

As with past economic crises, the Covid pandemic badly impacted national economies
and led in some to rising unemployment. Falling back on the creation of any jobs
rather than good jobs is always a temptation for governments in such situations.
However, since the GFC of 2007–​08, evidence-​based understanding of the relation-
ship between job quality and job quantity has improved, and policy thinking shifted
accordingly. Many OECD governments now regard job quality as offering a route to
national economic growth and competitiveness, as the G20 Ankara Agreement shows.
It is also increasingly advocated for the emerging economies, as Cazes and colleagues
demonstrate in their chapter in this volume. Indeed, expressions of job quality such as
‘good work’, ‘decent work’ and ‘fair work’ (for a discussion, see the chapter by Warhurst
and his colleagues) are now mainstreamed in government policy.
In the past it was often argued that a trade-​off exists between job quantity and job
quality. Countries could not have both, particularly in times of economic crisis. This
argument resulted in a ‘jobs first’ policy over the 1980s and 1990s emphasizing job cre-
ation at the expense of job quality. However, research has exposed this trade-​off to be a
myth (see Davoine et al. 2008; Kenworthy 2008; Osterman 2012). Updating their pre-
vious analysis of Europe undertaken with their colleague Davoine, Erhel and Guergoat-​
Larivière (2016) again demonstrate that countries can have high job quality whilst also
enjoying high levels of employment. Policy can thus focus on both needs simultan-
eously and deliver on both simultaneously. Illustrating this shift in policy thinking, even
a right-​of-​centre government such as that of the UK can, for the first time, declare that
‘fair and decent work should be available to all’ and that it now ‘plac[es] equal import-
ance on quality work as well as quantity’ (HM Government 2018: 6).
 JOB QUALITY MATTERS    9

Since the GFC, the European Union (EC 2012) and OECD (2011) have both
championed policies to encourage more and better jobs amongst their member states,
and the ILO (2020) has re-​affirmed its commitment to promoting its Decent Work
Agenda globally. Moreover, the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development explicitly
includes job quality among its Sustainable Development Goals (SDG).4 It is most ex-
plicit in SDG 8—​Decent Work and Economic Growth—​that ties improved job quality to
productivity. Job quality also features in other SDGs. SDG 6—​Gender Equality includes
female employment and opportunities to move into managerial positions, a challenge
explored by Benjamin in this volume in the chapter titled ‘Job Quality for Service and
Care Occupations: A Feminist Perspective’, using a feminist lens to explore service and
care occupations. SDG 16—​Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions directly mentions the
protection of trade unionists; although as Simms shows in the chapter titled ‘Trade
Unions and Job Quality’, the actions of trade unions can have both positive and negative
impacts on workers’ job quality.
The European Union has also been active in terms of research and legislation to
improve job quality both within and beyond its borders. The Lisbon Strategy, Europe
2020 and, most recently, the European Pillar of Social Rights all underline the import-
ance of, and elaborate aspirations for, improved job quality within Europe. Specialized
agencies such as the European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training
(CEDEFOP) and the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work (EU-​OSHA) de-
velop standards and guidelines within their jurisdictions. The European Foundation for
the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (Eurofound) regularly researches
and reports on job quality (e.g. Warhurst et al. 2020), both as a concern in itself and for
its role in tackling wider social, economic and political challenges. As Eiffe writes illus-
tratively, ‘The key message of the Eurofound Sustainable Work Framework is that job
quality and working conditions are at the core of keeping people engaged and working
longer at a better health’ (2021: 81). Reaching beyond Europe’s borders, European Union
Commissioner for Justice Didier Reynders announced the introduction in 2021 of
legislation mandating corporate due diligence obligations down their supply chains
on human rights and environmental harms (RBC 2020). Such legislation intends to
secure voice and health rights for both workers and communities affected by negative
externalities of supply chain actors of firms doing business in the European Union. This
extension of reach to the global level is largely in response to and in line with the higher
ambition level in the report Study on due diligence requirements through the supply chain
(EC 2020), underscoring the job quality research-​to-​policy link.
National policy debates also engage job quality, even where there is less engage-
ment with international bodies. As part of President Joe Biden’s post-​Covid rescue plan
for the US economy, an American Jobs Plan was pursued that was intended to create
millions of good jobs. These good jobs would pay ‘prevailing’ wages in safe workplaces,

4
Department of Economic and Social Affairs, ‘Transforming our world: The 2030 Agenda for
Sustainable Development’, (un.org)/​.
10    chris warhurst, chris mathieu and rachel e. dwyer

with workers able to organize into unions and bargain with employers through those
unions, all underpinned by strong labour standards.5 In tone and emphasis, this Plan
marks an abrupt break with recent US federal policy but building on proposals long
percolating in policy advocacy for improved job quality, including the advocacy of Black
leaders and advocates who draw on the legacy of the 1963 March on Washington for
Jobs and Freedom among efforts that link equality at work to civil rights (Aja et al. 2013).
Future research on job quality should pay more attention to inequalities by race, ethni-
city and indigeneity including the important role of vulnerable populations in creating
policy and advocacy innovations. Efforts focus on pushing back against eroding worker
bargaining power in the US by changing labour law (National Employment Law
Project), while others also develop policy innovations that enhance job quality within
existing legal frameworks. Policy efforts are aided by clarity on the very issues of con-
ceptualization and operationalization of job quality that this volume addresses. The
Canadian Index of Wellbeing6 includes an index of employment quality that parallels
the OECD Job Quality Framework. The Economic Policy Institute’s data repository and
publications on employment quality have been instrumental in US policy discussions
contesting the retreat from worker rights (EPI 2021). Also influential has been the high-​
profile debate about the polarization of job quality in North America (see Kalleberg and
colleagues in their chapter).
Job quality policy must often engage the shifting terrain of developments and debates
around economic growth and restructuring. New debates and concerns have emerged
around digitalized automation, globalization, financialization and the possibilities and
perils of maintaining job quality in mature and evolving market economies (Wright and
Dwyer 2003; Dwyer 2013; Dwyer and Wright 2019). Job quality thus figures increas-
ingly on the competitiveness agenda, not just on the sustainability, welfare and nor-
mative agenda. Job quality can be a key underpinning of innovation, for example, as
the chapter in this volume by Muñoz de Bustillo and colleagues, ‘Innovation and Job
Quality’ demonstrates and, of course, such innovation can lead to firm-​and national-​
level productivity gains, though research on the link between job quality and prod-
uctivity is fragmented and patchy and in dire need of improvement (Bosworth and
Warhurst 2020). At the firm level, the operative mechanisms in High Performance Work
Systems, for example, are core job quality factors, even if rarely articulated as such—​see
Boxall and Purcell in their chapter in this volume. There are several ‘win-​win’ assertions
that link high job quality with business outcomes, be they output parameters such as
productivity, performance or innovation, or cost-​reduction parameters associated with
lower turnover and ensuing recruitment and on-​boarding costs, expanded recruitment
pools, fewer work stoppages, avoided litigation and fines, fewer sick-​days due to better
health and fewer injuries. Sceptics on improving job quality may point to technological
change or globalization as unstoppable forces that erode quality. Yet the response and

5
The White House, ‘FACT SHEET: The American Jobs Plan’.
6
University of Waterloo, ‘The Canadian Index of Wellbeing’, (uwaterloo.ca).
 JOB QUALITY MATTERS    11

implementation of change within organizations and within policy regimes can lead
to very different outcomes for job quality (Dwyer 2013). Indeed, as Eurofound (2015)
has shown for the European Union (see also the chapter by Goos et al.), job quality
trajectories vary—​there exist upgrading, downgrading and polarization by country,
despite the general trends of globalization and technological change.
Such variation affirms the importance of policy and the role of labour market and
related institutions (see Godard’s chapter in this volume). Within the UK, Scotland is
a good illustration of this point. Following the GFC, the Scottish Government adopted
and actively advocated Fair Work as a means of generating benefits for individuals,
organizations and society (Fair Work Convention 2016). “We are committed to Fair
Work. More security, decent pay and a greater voice for workers in the companies whose
wealth they help to create,’ declared the Scottish First Minister in 2018. ‘Fair Work is
good for everyone. It drives innovation and productivity. And that makes for better
businesses and higher profits.’7 Significantly, as the Covid pandemic unfolded, as with
Biden in the US, both the Scottish Government and UK Government reaffirmed their
aspirations for more Fair Work and Good Work respectively (Scottish Government
2021; HM Treasury 2021). Such pronouncements underline how embedded the desire to
create a future of good jobs has become in current government policy thinking.
Two other recent developments are likely to see job quality remain prominent in gov-
ernment policy thinking for the foreseeable future: the rise of populism and the need
for a green transformation. That populism has gained traction on the back of workers’
disaffection with job quality has not gone unnoticed on both sides of the Atlantic. In the
UK, there was a strong propensity for Brexit voters to largely have low-​skill, low-​wage
jobs, lacking prospects (Goodwin and Heath 2016). Similarly, having a poor-​quality
job has been linked to the rise of Trump and subsequent threats to democracy in the
US (Blanchflower 2019). These concerns have led the European Commission to worry
about the possible unravelling of the ‘European project’. In response it has directed
policy to drive upward convergence in working conditions in Europe, recognizing that
unity cannot come from a single currency alone but must also be reflected in better job
quality for all (Eurofound 2018).
Whether as part of economic recovery following the GFC or the Covid pandemic
or simply because of environmental concerns, advocacy of a transformation to a green
economy also references job quality (e.g. EC 2011; Martinez-​Fernandez et al. 2010; TUC
2020). For example, the ‘just transitions’ to environmentally sustainable economies and
societies championed by the ILO (2015) rests on the creation of more decent jobs. At
the national level too, promises by governments of new green jobs also claim that these
jobs will be good jobs (e.g. Johnson 2020). However, there is an as yet unresolved issue
about how to define and measure green jobs (Sofroniou and Anderson 2021), and there
is recognition elsewhere that these jobs might not all be good; that they might ‘not [be]
homogenous in terms of skill requirements, pay levels or working conditions’ in the

7
https://​news.gov.scot/​news/​fair-​work-​first-​announ​ced-​by-​fm/​.
12    chris warhurst, chris mathieu and rachel e. dwyer

measured words of the OECD/​Cedefop (2014: 20), and that policy interventions may be
needed to make them better.
A conflation of policy interests and concerns thus means that job quality looks set to
continue to feature in policy thinking and, as a result, will ensure that research into job
quality also continues strongly into the future. In the meantime, this volume represents
the state of the art in that research, with contributions from many of the world’s leading
authorities on job quality.

The Structure of the Handbook

Reflecting these issues, debates and initiatives, the Handbook comprises six sections.
Section I, ‘The Foundations of Job Quality’, could equally have been entitled ‘Job Quality
and its Others’ as it contains three chapters with different takes on the more expansive
field of the quality of jobs, work and working life. In the chapter ‘The Quality of Working
Life’, Guest addresses the nature, evaluation, impact and, eventually, the fate of the inter-
national quality of working life movement that emerged out of the UK in the post-​war
period. In ‘The Swedish Contribution to Job Quality’, Hampson and Sandberg chronicle
the once leading-​edge Swedish approach to research, experimentation and improve-
ment in job quality and wider working life as well as its international significance as
the so-​called ‘Swedish model’ of collaborative industrial relations. In ‘Job Quality—​A
Family Affair’, Warhurst, Wright and Mathieu analyse the array of leading concepts
related to job quality and the key parameters by which these concepts can be understood
and analysed. It concludes with the authors highlighting core dimensions of job quality
as the basis for future research.
Section II, ‘Understanding Job Quality’, focuses on various means of researching job
quality. In ‘Understanding Differences and Trends in Job Quality’, Hauff and Kirchner
outline the different approaches in cross-​national research on job quality. From this
analysis they highlight the difficulties in developing a common understanding inter-
nationally. Two chapters follow that reflect methodological approaches within the eco-
nomic and social sciences. In ‘Understanding Job Quality Using Qualitative Research’,
Knox and Wright show how this methodology has progressed understanding of job
quality and, they argue, it helps facilitate more precise conceptualization and more ef-
fective operationalization of job quality research. ‘Quantitative Approaches to Assessing
Jobs’ scrutinizes various approaches, with Muñoz-​de-​Bustillo, Fernández-​Macías and
Antón offering reflections on both the feasibility of measuring job quality and the ad-
equacy of existing measures. In ‘Institutions, Societies and the Quality of Employment’,
Godard argues that job quality should be assessed at the societal rather than individual
level. Elevating the assessment of job quality to the societal level enquires directly into
how it is formed by social institutions, which in turn, it is contended, are derived from or
responsive to ‘civic principles’.
 JOB QUALITY MATTERS    13

Section III, ‘Key Issues in Job Quality’, addresses central mechanisms, features and
outcomes of job quality. ‘Job Polarization’ focuses on a key debate about job quality
trends. Goos, Rademakers, Salomons and Vandeweyer provide a brief history of this de-
bate and a framework for understanding it. Polarization is not automatic, they explain,
supporting their point by reference to international empirical evidence. ‘Geographies
of Job Quality’ redresses an analytical oversight in debate about job quality—​its spa-
tiality. Weller, Barnes and Kimberley highlight five areas of geographical research
within which job quality is central. Context, they state, in this case spatial, is critical to
understanding job quality. In ‘The Cornerstone of Job Quality’, Albin, Mathieu, Takala
and Theorell make a similar point about Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) by
considering which contexts mitigate biological, ergonomic, and psycho-​social hazards
and risks in work as well as promote beneficial health effects of work. In ‘Innovation
and Job Quality’, Muñoz-​de-​Bustillo, Grande and Fernández-​Macías investigate the re-
lationship between technological and organizational innovation and job quality. After
outlining the ways that innovation and job quality can impact each other, empirical
analysis finds strong association between the two. In ‘Immigration and Job Quality’,
Armenta and Gleeson examine the job quality of immigrant labour in the US and the
factors shaping that job quality. Immigrants face reduced power and lack workplace
protections, and both highlight the intensified vulnerability of workers based on na-
tivity as well as the broader precarity of low-​wage work in the US labour market. In ‘Job
Quality for Service and Care Occupations’, Benjamin examines job quality through the
lens of feminism. Using a gender-​sensitive model she exposes the undervaluation, de-​
skilling and deprofessionalization of women’s work in service and care occupations. As
Gallie points out in the final chapter of this section, ‘Inequality in Job Quality’, inequality
in job quality has long been a central issue in debate and theory. An initial concern with
class-​based inequalities has now been complemented by recognition of the inequalities
arising from gender and contract type, and the chapter outlines the trends in these
inequalities over recent decades.
Section IV, ‘Regional Developments in Job Quality’, highlights similarities and
variations between countries in proximate geographic or developmental contexts. All
regions face significant challenges in maintaining or improving job quality. ‘Job Quality
in the United States and Canada’ demonstrates the link between flexible labour markets
and neo-​liberal regulatory frameworks in growing rates of precarious work. Kalleberg,
Fuller and Pullman highlight several differences between the US and Canada linked to
stronger unions and greater employment protections in Canada, but they also catalogue
shared challenges for job quality across these liberal market economies. In ‘The Great
Recession and Job Quality Trends in Europe’, Erhel, Guergoat-​Larivière, Leschke and
Watt examine how greater worker protections in Europe (relative to North America)
limited job quality degradation following the GFC. Nonetheless, they raise concerns
about particular dimensions of job quality including wages and for particular groups
such as youth who bear the brunt of deteriorating quality. In this section, Cazes, Falco
and Menyhért examine ‘Job Quality in Emerging Economies’ through the lens of the
14    chris warhurst, chris mathieu and rachel e. dwyer

OECD Job Quality Framework. The chapter highlights the shared challenges between
emerging economies and liberal market economies in North America and Europe.
Workers face worse job quality in emerging economies but along the same dimensions
and with similar needs, Cazes, Falco and Menyhért argue, for greater legal protections
and social insurance.
Section V, ‘Sectoral Developments in Job Quality’, dives deep in examining
trajectories of job quality within particular sectors and broadly links industrial restruc-
turing to threats to job quality. In ‘Job Quality in High Touch Services’, Gatta argues
that as demand for services with interpersonal interaction has grown, so too have
expectations that these services be available 24/​7. In the US context with low worker
bargaining power, workers must adjust to often punishing and insecure schedules in
order to stay employed. Baldry lays out similar challenges of work intensification in
the context of office work in ‘The Changing Quality of Office Work’. Charting histor-
ical trends in office work, current tensions between a drive to create fun offices of the
future and the routinization of work that reinforces proletarianism are highlighted.
Taking an international view, Rothstein argues in ‘The Steady but Uneven Decline in
Manufacturing Job Quality’, that manufacturing jobs became lower quality in places
where worker power was diminished or always highly circumscribed. Only in places
such as Germany where labour rights and unions remained stronger did manufacturing
jobs continue to provide decent job quality. In ‘Neoliberalism’s Impact on Public Sector
Job Quality’, Sauer, Valet, Roscigno and Wilson demonstrate declining job quality for
public-​sector jobs after corporate-​styled efficiency reforms. Sauer and colleagues show
that even in Germany where worker rights have remained more robust, neo-​liberalism
has made inroads. These chapters highlight distinct challenges based on the particular
work demands in different sectors but shared threats to job quality in the context of
weak worker power. The final chapter in this section, ‘Job Quality and the Small Firm’,
by Edwards and Ram addresses three issues: the paradox of job quality in small firms,
variations in job quality across small firms and the relative neglect of small firms in
policy debates about job quality. It ends with reflections from the authors about how to
better promote job quality in small firms.
The chapters in Section VI, ‘Improving Job Quality’, focus on actors, means and
approaches or avenues to support good job quality. This issue—​ maintaining or
improving job quality—​features strongly in both research and policy. Arguments for
reducing it are seldom made, even if research shows that job quality can and does de-
teriorate. ‘Human Resource Management and Job Quality’ explores human resource
management (HRM) within organizations as a lever of job quality. Boxall and Purcell
note, however, that HRM research has tended to ignore job quality but that a strong
case exists for it to now focus on it. In the chapter ‘Using Efficiency, Equity and Voice for
Defining Job Quality and Legal Regulation for Achieving It’, Befort, Borelli and Budd
argue that the basic elements to define and conceptualize job quality lie embedded in the
nature of the employment relationship: efficiency, equity and voice. Contrasting the US
with the EU, they assess to what extent existing regulatory regimes live up to the ideal of
 JOB QUALITY MATTERS    15

providing this efficiency, equity and voice. Similarly, in the final chapter in this section,
‘Trade Unions and Job Quality’, Simms’ starting position is that job quality is an outcome
of the employment relationship. Simms then reviews the links between trade unions
and debates about job quality. The chapter notes that trade union strategies can both
increase and diminish job quality, and considers the evidence of union opportunities to
promote and improve it.
This point of exit for the Handbook is deliberate. As we state, in addition to researchers
firstly discerning and secondly explaining job quality, this third issue of maintaining
or improving it now occupies the minds of policymakers. It will do so even more in
the coming years. As national economies recover from the jobs crisis that followed the
health crisis of Covid illustrates, all three issues will become important. Provided by
some of the world’s leading experts, the contents of this Handbook provide an intellec-
tual toolkit for researchers, students and policymakers who need or want to understand
and address these issues.

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 “I don’t know about that, Mac!” Dennis shook his head. “Any guy
that can plan such a finish for himself as he did don’t lack nerve,
even if he was such a cold-blooded, black-hearted devil! I’m thinking
he guessed right; it was the fear of the law, of every man’s hand
being against him, that made him put his back to the wall!”
“There’s just one more entry,” the inspector observed. “That one
was dated Thursday and this one is Friday, the twenty-fourth.”
“That’ll be yesterday, or rather last night. Let’s have it, inspector!”
“Well.—‘I have failed! This morning, alive and unharmed, McCarty
came to the Mall! I cannot hurt him, I am powerless against him, he
is the Law! But, for the man himself, I have underrated him; he is
more shrewd and clever than I thought. To-day he came to me and in
Sir Philip’s presence, with infinite tact, he let me know that he is
aware it was I who made that attempt upon his life. Seemingly he
holds no grudge; it is apparently a mere part of the game. He claims
to have detected the odor of cigar smoke which I left behind me in
his rooms, just as his associate smelled the smoke of that little blaze
generated from the physostigmine. He gave me to understand, also,
that he knew of my trick with the chloroform, and he lied most
unnecessarily about minor details, with the full knowledge that I was
aware of the truth. To-night he appeared again with utterly trivial
questions and it is all too evident now that he is indeed studying me,
making up his mind.
“‘I have a peculiar, indescribable feeling, almost a conviction, that
he will win out in this contest between us! If he does, I shall know
what to do; from this hour I shall be prepared. I am the last of my line
and for such a line there can be but one end,—annihilation! I am
possessed with an odd desire that he should read these pages and if
he wins I shall arrange to have them pass into his hands. It grows
late and I am tired. I wonder what to-morrow will bring?’—That is all,
Mac. That is the last word!”
“Well, he knows now!” McCarty drew a deep breath. “I’m glad
that’s over! It’s going to take me all my time to forget these last ten
days, I can tell you!”
 “There’s more than one thing that’s not clear to me yet,” Dennis
remarked reflectively. “For instance, Mac, you said Hughes had been
took sick sudden. I heard nothing about it.”
“You did, Denny, the same as me, only you didn’t get it. All the
other servants told of how greedy he was starting in with his dinner,
and how all of a sudden he didn’t want any more, not even the things
he was most partial to; ’twas the Calabar bean first working in him,
making him sick. He got out into the air and walked like he’d been
told, poor devil, till he dropped in his tracks! But he knew the truth in
the end! Do you mind the horror I saw in his face and how hard he
tried to speak and tell me?”
“But what really made you suspect the truth, Mac?” the inspector
asked. “Was it the toy balloon?”
“Partly. Then again, when Ching Lee called us into the
conservatory with Lucette lying there dead, it seemed to me that
Orbit was a trifle too calm and collected, for all his fine-spoken
words. He had his story down too pat and he didn’t talk in short, jerky
sentences, like a man does when he’s almost beside himself; every
word was said for effect, as if he was acting a part. He forgot it too
quick, too. Even yesterday, when Sir Philip was talking about
Lucette’s death, he was more amused with the way the Britisher was
trying to express himself, than sorrowful over the murder, and the girl
not two days cold!
“After I left him I went to a little joint to get a bite and whilst I waited
I was feeling pretty rotten because I couldn’t see my way clear like in
the old days. It came over me that I’d been getting rusty since I was
out of the game and I kind of wished I was back again, though I
remember well what a dog’s life it was in some ways. That is just the
phrase that come in my mind, ‘a dog’s life’—and then I thought of
Max!
“He was forever hovering around that coal chute as if there was
something down there he wanted—then I remembered the coal
getting put in, and the lad missing right at that hour, and the whole
thing broke over me!”
 “But you said you’d had the key to it all right in your hands from
the start!” Dennis objected.
“I had. It was this!” McCarty reached in his pocket and drew forth a
thin pamphlet bound in blue paper. “You’ve both kidded me about
reading up on this psychology stuff, to try to keep up with the boys
down at headquarters, but it was getting to me and I wanted
everything I could lay my hands on that seemed to have any bearing
on it. The first night, when we came here to let Orbit know his valet
was dead, I found this behind some other books downstairs in the
library and I—borrowed it. It turned out to be nothing at all but the
history of a family, like a kind of a sermon on heredity, and I saw it
had been published in London. I began to read it, wondering why
Orbit would be interested in it, and I never heard the like of such a
crew! From sheep-stealing to assassinating crowned heads, there
was nothing they didn’t go in for, and I’d say that not one in ten
generations died in their beds! They were a rare old family, the
Jessups!”
“‘Jessups!’” the inspector repeated. “Why, they’re the family I
spoke about this morning, though I couldn’t recall the name!—the
ones that are contrasted with the grand record of the Parsons.”
“Sure, they are!” McCarty grinned. Then his face sobered. “I knew
it then, for I’d put in good time in the library on Thursday looking
them both up, but I didn’t mention it because Orbit himself is the last
of the Jessups.”
“Orbit—!”
“His grandmother on his mother’s side was the daughter of old
Gideon Jessups who was hung down South for highway robbery and
murder; another of his daughters died insane and two of his sons
were convicts—but there’s no use going into it all. You’ll mind you
said the male members of the line died out long ago, but it happens
that no record was kept of the female side of the house except this
little book here. I’m going to tell Parsons in the morning, for he’ll not
spread such a thing, and there’s something I want to know. If there’s
any sense at all to this heredity notion, it don’t look as if Henry Orbit
stood much of a chance!”
 “I can scarcely believe it yet, gentlemen!” Benjamin Parsons
exclaimed. “The news that Henry Orbit had committed suicide in
some mysterious manner, leaving a written confession, came like a
thunderclap but now that you tell me the blood of the Jessups flows
in his veins it explains many things!”
“Did you ever meet Orbit, Mr. Parsons?” McCarty asked. “Ever talk
to him?”
“Once. It was two years ago but the experience, though trivial in
itself, was so curiously unpleasant that it has never passed
completely from my mind.” He paused, glancing toward the window
through which the sunshine was pouring and listening to the not-far-
distant chiming of church bells. “I came home very late from an
evening meeting of a charitable organization. It was raining in
torrents, I had forgotten my key to the gates and the watchman was
standing in the shelter of a doorway far down the block; I could not
attract his attention and I was drenched. All at once some one came
up behind me, said: ‘Allow me, Mr. Parsons!’ and opened the gate
for me. I was surprised, for the voice was unknown to me, but in the
light of the street lamp I recognized Henry Orbit.
“You are familiar with his appearance, you have heard his voice,
felt the magnetism of his personality and its dominance; did you feel
also that strange sense of antagonism that is almost physical, as
though you shrank from his touch, dreaded to breathe the same air?”
“I can’t say I have, Mr. Parsons,” the inspector replied thoughtfully.
“As though he were a reptile, something poisonous, you mean? No,
until yesterday I thought Orbit was a fine man. He had me buffaloed.”
“I mean as though he were the incarnation of all things evil!”
Parsons’ voice was very low. “I did not gain that impression at first so
strongly, but I felt a curious repugnance toward him in spite of the
charm of his manner. He walked down the block with me, taking it for
granted that his company was welcome and I responded as cordially
as I could, for he had just rendered me a service.
 “When we were opposite my own house I paused, thanking him
once more for his kindness, and started to take leave of him, when
he astounded and distressed me by asking me to come into his
house for a little while. He said that he was lonely, a saddened mood
was upon him and he would greatly appreciate it if I could spare him
half an hour.
“I could not very well refuse, but it was with a reluctance wholly out
of proportion that I accepted his invitation. His house, although
comparatively small, was beautiful beyond any palaces I have seen
abroad and filled with priceless works of art but without any tangible
reason my aversion deepened to actual horror. A tall Chinese
servant had taken my hat and Henry Orbit led me to his library,
pressing refreshments on me and talking fluently and well on a
variety of topics. I endeavored to listen, to reply pleasantly, but all the
time my uncharitable, unreasoning loathing of him increased and I
longed, as I have never longed for anything else in this world, to be
out in the storm once more—anywhere, away from that house!
“I am sure this must sound like madness to you, but I cannot
explain it even to myself. I only know that my horror deepened as the
moments passed and at last I did an unpardonable thing! I rose in
the middle of a sentence from him and without a word of explanation
or excuse I—I fled the house! I cannot yet describe the motive which
actuated me, nor could I then have found any reason for it beyond
an overmastering impulse. I have never known such a feeling
against a stranger before in all my life!”
“You went out into the storm, Mr. Parsons—without your hat?”
McCarty asked suddenly. The inspector smothered a half audible
exclamation and Dennis stared.
“I really forget—but I must have done so, of course, for I distinctly
remember the cold rain beating down upon my bare head as I
crossed the street, and being most grateful for it.”
“Then you left your hat hanging up in Orbit’s house,” McCarty
pursued. “Can you recall what it was like, Mr. Parsons? Could it have
been a soft, dark felt?”
 “Probably. I seldom wear any other.” Then Parsons started slightly.
“You don’t mean—! Could it really have been my hat, after all, that
the unfortunate valet was wearing when he fell dead!”
“It looks that way, since your initials were in it,” McCarty added:
“That was the final detail we had not cleared up.”
“But why, sir!” Dennis found his voice. “Why did you feel that way
towards Orbit? He took in everybody else in the world!”
“I’m thinking I’ve got the answer to that, though it may sound like
blarney saying it to your face, Mr. Parsons. We know who your family
are and their record. ’Tis one to be proud of!”
“It is one to be thankful for,” Mr. Parsons replied modestly. “But I
should like to hear your theory.”
“Well, we know who the Jessups were, too, and ’tis my opinion
that the good in you for which you’re not responsible, and the evil in
him which he couldn’t help, just sort of recognized each other at
once and what you call your instinct warned you to get away.”
“It may be.” Mr. Parsons eyed him wonderingly. “I think you have
grasped it, Mr. McCarty; the good and evil that men do live after
them! I know it seemed to me that satanic vapors were rising all
about me in that house and that I was in the presence of a monster!
It never even occurred to me to make excuses for my conduct or
send for my hat!”
“There’s just one thing that I’m curious about, though it has
nothing to do with the murders. Have you missed this? It was with
your papers when they came into our hands.” He produced the silver
leaf and Parsons’ face lighted up.
“Ah, that is the bookmark I slipped between the pages of my
encyclopædia! I told you that a leaf was torn from it! I am glad,
indeed, to regain this, for it is a souvenir from a dear friend, an
English army officer then stationed in South Africa—”
“It comes from Table Mountain, don’t it, off of a silver tree?”
McCarty smiled also as he rose. “Mr. Parsons, we’ll be keeping you
no longer. The trouble’s been laid for all time here in the Mall, I’m
thinking, and there’ll be no more evil come out of that house over the
way.”
“And you three have brought peace to us again in a miraculous
manner!” Mr. Parsons held out his hand. “Without you and the
providence which led you to the truth I shudder to think what further
horrors might have been visited upon us!”
“I don’t know about providence!” McCarty’s eyes twinkled. “I’m no
hand at giving advice as a general thing but if I was to offer a word of
it to you, sir, ’twould be this:—in future, be mighty careful where you
hang your hat!”

THE END
 Transcriber’s Notes
pg 11 Changed: What it it, Mac?
to: What is it, Mac?
pg 119 Changed: have nerve enought to run away
to: have nerve enough to run away
pg 125 Changed: poisoning children and servants, premiscuous-like
to: poisoning children and servants, promiscuous-like
pg 184 Changed: Dennis betrayed acute symptons of alarm.
to: Dennis betrayed acute symptoms of alarm.
pg 191 Changed: and now he was in the bathroon
to: and now he was in the bathroom
pg 196 Changed: poison gas! Flourine
to: poison gas! Fluorine
pg 271 Changed: I don’t now!
to: I don’t know!
pg 287 Changed: sprinkled enough choloroform on it
to: sprinkled enough chloroform on it
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