Towards More Sustainable Work Patterns

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Most discussions on economic and social sustainability ignore individuals as employees: any focus on work organisations tends to concentrate on the ways that those organisations interact with their external environments. However, a broader approach to sustainability raises the question of what more sustainable work lives in those settings would look like. An analysis of the working patterns that currently typify most industrialised countries highlights a number of aspects, both in the arrangement of work schedules and the intensity of work patterns, that need to be addressed to establish more sustainable long term work patterns for the twenty-first century. Drawing on research on working time patterns and work flexibility, the background influences affecting current patterns are explored. This helps to identify, among other things, the potential obstacles to reforming extant work arrangements at a more accelerated pace than is currently evident. A number of reforms to create more sustainable work arrangements are discussed, involving modifications both to the scheduling of work across the working day, week, year and lifetime, and also the nature and location of work.

Stream: Economic Sustainability

Paper: A paper has not yet been submitted.

Hold Chair in Industrial Relations and also Research Associate ESRC Centre for Business Relationships, Accountability, Sustainability and Society (BRASS) Research interests include working time, work-life balance and corporate responsibility towards employees. Conducted research in Europe, North America and Australia. Author of over fifty refereed academic articles and more than a dozen books including The Realities of Work (with M. Noon, Palgrave Macmillan, 2007); Work-Life Integration (with B. Blunson, K Reed and A Dastmalchian, Palgrave Macmillan 2006); and Reassessing the Employment Relationship, Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming)