Essays on changing nature of work and organizations : implications for the U.S. labor market

Abstract

This dissertation examines how the changing nature of work and organizations has altered the U.S. labor market to influence employment outcomes for job seekers (1) in alternative work arrangements and (2) of different genders. The first essay describes recent developments in the labor market for nonstandard workers, that is, an increase in the variety of pathways through which nonstandard workers are assigned to work. I suggest that changes in the regulatory environment, the rhetoric around competition, and technological developments have shaped inter-organizational relationships and norms in the industry to bring about a very different system of labor markets than was traditionally understood. I contend that such a multifaceted employment model with a diverse set of exchanges among multiple actors has profound implications for the future of IR research. The second essay examines the "multi-layered labor contracting" structure in which the recruitment of nonstandard workers is outsourced to an intermediating organization, who then selects workers from a group of competing suppliers. Drawing on power-dependence theories, I examine the link between these new contractual relationships and economic outcomes for lead firms and workers. Using proprietary data from employment records of nonstandard workers in Fortune 500 firms, I find that an additional contracting layer between lead firms and workers is associated with higher returns to firms and lower returns to workers. The loss from an additional contracting layer is reduced when workers gain bargaining power through pre-existing relationships with the firm. The third essay addresses how interactional processes between employers and job seekers at an initial recruitment phase online influence gender sorting of job seekers. We use unique data from a field study and (Study 1) a field experiment (Study 2) of online job postings to test two distinct interactional mechanisms: gendered language (as experienced by job seekers) and in-group preferences (as exercised by job seekers). We mostly find support for our predictions that, compared to male job seekers, female job seekers are more likely to show interest in and apply to a job when the job is described using more stereotypically feminine words or by female recruiters.