soc pol-2011-fagan-269-99

COLETTE FAGAN AND PIERRE WALTHERY

Individual Working-timeAdjustments between Full-timeand Part-time Working inEuropean Firms

Abstract

We draw on Sen’s capabilities approach to advance the debateabout choice and constraint in relation to part-time work. Weargue that it is important to go beyond a state-level comparisonand focus on the policy implemented by employers at the organiza-tional level. We use a European survey to identify which employerspermit their employees to make individual-level adjustmentsbetween full-time and part-time working, and the firm-level char-acteristics associated with operating such a policy. The analysisreveals that employer policy varies markedly across countries andwithin countries and we argue that this is an important social con-version factor which shapes the capability which an individualemployee has to adjust their hours between full time and part timeat their place of work. State policy clearly matters, but firm-levelcharacteristics and other situational features also impact on thesocial conversion factors which shape an individual’s working-time capability. The sector, establishment size, presence of a tradeunion, gender and skill composition of the workforce all had a

Summer 2011 Pages 269–299 doi:10.1093/sp/jxr011# The Author 2011. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions,please e-mail: [email protected]

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significant influence on whether employers permitted individual-level working-time adjustments. The firm’s organizationalworking-time practices and culture toward safeguarding work–lifebalance had an additional and independent effect, as did broaderaspects of working-time scheduling in place.

Introduction

The expansion of part-time work has been one of the keyworking-time developments in many European labor markets. Inthis article, we aim to advance the theoretical debate and policyagenda concerning part-time work by drawing on Sen’s (1999) capa-bilities approach, which Lee and McCann (2006) have applied intheir discussion of “working time capability.” We focus our analysisat the level of the organization and use a European survey to identifywhich employers have a policy which permits employees to makeindividual-level adjustments between full-time and part-timeworking, and what firm-level characteristics are associated withoperating such a policy.

Part-time employment is still largely a preserve of women, and inthe next section of this paper we argue that the “working-time capa-bility” framework provides a useful means of advancing the debateabout choice and constraint played out in women’s working-timearrangements. We argue that it is important to go further than astate-level comparison and focus on the policy implemented at theorganizational level by employers. The research questions andEuropean survey data set are explained in “Research Questions andData.” In “European Employers’ Policies on IndividualWorking-time Adjustments,” the employers’ policies on individualworking-time adjustments in the European countries in the study aredescribed, and “Which Type of Individual Working-timeAdjustment Policy Is Operated by Which Employers?” develops theanalysis to explore which type of adjustment policy is operated byemployers in which types of firms. The last section concludes.

Part-time Work in European Countries

The majority of part-time workers are women, and this stemsfrom gender inequalities in family roles. Part-time employment pro-vides one means of reconciling employment with the time-demandsof care responsibilities. The rate of part-time working for men hasbeen rising but the pattern of engagement remains gendered: malepart-time employment is concentrated among students and older

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workers approaching retirement, and is rare during the “core”working years.

One of the points of debate in the vast literature on part-timework is whether its expansion is a positive or negative developmentfor women. In the individualized choice camp are those who con-sider the gendered pattern of part-time employment to be largelyunproblematic. Here are the neo-classical economists who contendthat the decision to work part-time is a labor market choice whichtakes into account individual human capital and time-use preferen-ces, often within a household decision-making process where thegendered division of labor is presented as a rational and efficientform of specialization (Becker 1981). In support of this interpreta-tion, attention is drawn to the regular empirical finding that propor-tionately fewer women than men report that their part-time work isinvoluntary due to being unable to secure a full-time job. A similarexplanatory emphasis on individual choice is made in Hakim’s(2000) sociological preference theory: in modern liberal societieswomen are able to choose between a family-oriented or career-oriented lifestyle and if family-oriented, they are more likely tochoose part-time employment or labor market exits rather than afull-time continuous employment trajectory.

The constrained choice camp develops a more structural accountof why women engage in part-time employment, influenced interalia by feminist perspectives on gender relations and labor marketsegmentation theory (see for example, Duncan 2006; McRae 2003;O’Reilly and Fagan 1998; Perrons et al. 2006). Within this approachthere is more emphasis on the constrained nature of women’schoices and the poor quality of many of the part-time jobs on offer:part-time work is chosen in a context where work–family reconcilia-tion options are limited by gender inequalities within the family andshortfalls in public care services. Furthermore, questions aboutworking-time preferences reveal a more nuanced picture than identi-fying voluntary and involuntary part-timers: in industrialized coun-tries sizable proportions of women employed part-time want towork longer part-time hours or to switch to full-time arrangements(Fagan 2004).

There is less contention about the quality of part-time jobs thanthe reasons why women work part-time. Part-time jobs are dispro-portionately concentrated in the lower-skilled, low-paid parts of theeconomy. Where part-time employment exists in higher status jobs itis concentrated in the lower career grades of feminized professions(Birchell et al. 2007; Blossfeld and Hakim 1997; O’Reilly and Fagan1998). Thus, in its current form, part-time employment for womentends to fuel gender segregated employment patterns and the gender

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wage gap (Plantenga and Remery 2010; Rubery 2005; Smith 2005).Women who work part-time rather than full-time are frequentlypenalized for making this decision: some in terms of downwardmobility into a poorer quality job with lower rates of pay and othersby becoming stuck at lower career grades because full-time workingis expected at higher grades (e.g., Crompton and Birkelund 2000).This penalty is more severe in some countries than others. Forexample in the UK, the average hourly pay of part-timers is substan-tially lower than that for full-timers, but this is not the case in theNetherlands. Furthermore, in the UK a period of part-time work hasa negative impact on the subsequent trajectory of employment andearnings progression—a so-called scarring effect—even for thosewho have subsequently moved into full-time employment(Francesconi and Gosling 2005).

Both strands of the debate are reflected in the EuropeanCommission’s employment policy initiated by the Lisbon Summit.Part-time work is promoted as a work–family reconciliationmeasure and means of integrating more women into employment tomeet the female employment rate target while also being an inputfor innovation in work organization and production systems (CEC2003, European Commission 2004). Yet in resonance with the con-strained choice perspective there is also mention of the need toimprove the quality of part-time work by diversifying the range ofjobs in which it is available, increasing childcare in order to widenreconciliation options and integrating part-time work into socialprotection arrangements via the policy focus on promoting “flexi-curity” (CEC 2006, 2007). This policy approach to part-timeemployment is retained in the recently launched and refocused“Europe 2020” employment strategy and associated guidelines(Council of the European Union 2010; European Commission2010). This is in tune with the growing awareness of the need for alife course perspective in policy design and employment analysis sothat the organization of employment and social protection systemsrecognizes and supports transitions between nonemployment, part-time and full-time working at different stages across the working lifeto accommodate caring responsibilities, periods of further educationand training as part of the promotion of the “lifelong learningagenda,” and a more gradual and later transition to retirement inorder to contribute to a reformed financing of pension systems(Anxo et al. 2007a, 2007b; O’Reilly et al. 2000; Schmid 2008).

A working-time capability framework (Lee and McCann 2006)helps advance the debate about choice and constraint because itfocuses on analyzing the feasible options from which an individualcan select when determining their working-time arrangements: what


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is genuinely possible rather than what may be possible in principlein the abstract concept of individual free choice. Lee and McCanndraw on Sen’s (1999) concept of capability which expresses this interms of the substantive freedom of an individual to choose betweenfeasible alternative functionings—or ways of doing things; in otherwords the real options open to them—which are shaped by thesocial conversion factors of institutions and social norms. Hence inthe capabilities framework, a mother who works part-time becausethis is the only way in which she can earn a living and raise her chil-dren is in a different position from a mother who has selected part-time employment from a range of feasible working-time and child-care arrangements. As Lee and McCann (2006, 67–68) note, thecapability framework differs from mainstream economics and prefer-ence theory in two important ways. Whereas mainstream economicsand preference theory concentrate on the labor supply outcome as a“choice,” the capabilities approach foregrounds the options fromwhich this choice was selected. It is concerned with “ . . . the oppor-tunities given to workers to choose and change their working timeso as to improve the quality of their lives” (Lee and McCann 2006,67). Secondly, the capability framework does not assume that thelabor market adjusts effectively to ensure a correspondence isreached between actual and preferred hours of work. Instead, thefocus on conversion factors suggests that the individual capacity setfor many people is much smaller than that assumed in the utility-maximizing language of mainstream economics. Thirdly, thecapability framework is a means for embedding the life course per-spective into employment and social policy debates discussed abovebecause of the focus it brings to the social conversion factors—thesocial institutions and norms—which enable individuals to movebetween different working-time arrangements as circumstances andpreferences change.

At a fundamental level, an individual’s capability to secure part-time employment will be affected by whether this form of employ-ment is already a widespread practice in the labor market. Theamount and quality of part-time employment varies across countriesand has emerged historically due to the interplay of state policy inrelation to employment and welfare systems, the actions and nego-tiations of employers and unions, and cultural differences in theorganization of family life and gender roles or the “gender regime”(O’Reilly and Fagan 1998). Thus in some countries part-timeemployment is a common undertaking for women, particularlythose with care responsibilities, while in others full-time employmentis the norm. A key issue from a capability perspective is whetherthere are social conversion factors in place which create options for


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employees to make an individual adjustment between full-time andpart-time hours while remaining with their employer in the same orsimilar job, and if there is scope to reverse this adjustment at a laterstage (Anxo et al. 2007c; Fagan 1999).

Such options for employees to negotiate an individual adjustmentto their working hours can enhance their capabilities to balance careresponsibilities with employment without having to switch to a dif-ferent job via a labor market search, thus providing some protectionagainst occupational downgrading. It also has the potential to widenthe range and quality of jobs in which part-time working can besecured. This is of particular relevance for women’s capabilitiesgiven that to date it is mainly mothers who take on the lion’s shareof providing childcare; however, such policies also increase men’scapabilities to make adjustments as a means of becoming moreinvolved in care responsibilities. For example, the introduction ofthe legal “right to request” reduced or flexible hours in the UK hasresulted in fathers using this new social right to negotiate suchadjustments with their employers, even if the proportion of fatherswho make use of this right is lower than the take-up by mothers andfew fathers request part-time arrangements in contrast to mothers(Fagan et al. 2006). Policies which enhance the capability for indi-viduals to make smooth transitions between full-time to part-timehours are also likely to become of growing importance as part of thepolicy agenda for prolonging the working life of older workers andfor helping to create more stable pathways into full-time employ-ment for young people who enter the labor market via a part-timeposition.

Individual capabilities to adjust working hours are shaped atvarious levels of society: the state, the workplace and the household.The state’s regulatory framework plays a key role in shapingnational working-time arrangements, particularly the number ofhours worked by full-timers but also the development and organiza-tion of part-time employment (Bosch et al. 1994; Messenger 2004;Rubery et al. 1998). Statutory provisions for individual-level adjust-ments to working hours vary. In quite a few European countries thestatutory parental leave scheme provides parents with the right toswitch to reduced or part-time hours for a finite period until thechild reaches a given age (typically between three to six years old)and to revert to full-time hours at the end of the leave period. In afew countries there is a more general employee right to request anindividual adjustment to working hours (see Fagan and Walthery2007; Kamerman and Moss 2009; Plantenga and Remery 2010).The detail, efficacy, and usage of these provisions vary across coun-tries in important ways; here we highlight some key examples. In


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Sweden the parental leave scheme offers options for part-timeemployment and parents have a right to reduce their working hoursuntil their child starts school. The Dutch legislation provides allemployees with the right to request a switch to part-time or full-timehours, thus permitting individuals to move from full time to parttime and back to full time at a later stage, or what is termed “fullreversibility.” Variations on this right to request which give aweaker entitlement and are narrower in scope exist in Germany andthe UK. In Germany, the employee right to request is only for areduction from full-time to part-time working hours; while in theUK the right to request is for part-time or flexible working hours, isrestricted to employees with dependent children or adult careresponsibilities, and the legal redress is much weaker than in theDutch system (Fagan et al. 2006). A different approach is taken inthe Belgian statutory time credit and career break scheme which pro-vides some employees with opportunities to switch to part-timehours.

Within the national framework the policy and practices devised atthe organizational (employer) level are pivotal for shaping individu-als’ capabilities to adjust their working hours. Some employers maynot comply fully in implementing statutory requirements; othersmay operate a policy which enhances employees’ statutory rights.Sector and firm-level cross-national studies show that the working-time practices of a firm are shaped both by the “country” effect ofnational policies and the “sector” effect of operating requirements,market conditions, and collective agreements (e.g., Anxo et al2007c; Bosch and Lehndorff 2005; Rubery et al. 1998). There arethree main reasons why employers create part-time jobs: a “secon-dary workers,” “optimal staffing,” or “accommodation” strategy(Allart and Bellmann 2005; O’Reilly and Fagan 1998). The first twoare when part-time jobs are created mainly for operational reasonsof flexibility; either to obtain cheap and flexible labor (a segmentedsecondary workers strategy) or to provide a more efficient way ofcovering extended operating hours or workload variations across theday or week (optimal staffing strategy). The third accommodationstrategy is where part-time employment is part of a recruitment andretention strategy of promoting work–life balance in response to thepreferences or availability of employees (e.g., parents, older workers,student labor). Policies which give employees rights to make adjust-ments to their working hours can be expected to nurture an accom-modation emphasis in a firms’ policy toward part-time working, butadjustments may also be feasible under the other two strategies.

Hence the organizational working-time culture created by regula-tions, policy, norms, and habitual practice is the setting in which an


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individual’s working-time capability is formed in articulation withthe individual’s household-level circumstances (material resources,norms and values, personal relationships and negotiations, etc.). Agrowing body of qualitative case study research has explored themeaning and role of organizational culture for employees’ working-time, including decisions to request reduced or part-time arrange-ments (see Crompton 2006; den Dulk and Spenkelink 2009; denDulk et al. 2011; Lewis 1997, 2003). Here we use a Europeansurvey of companies to explore which types of firms permit individ-ual employees to make adjustments between full-time and part-timeworking, including proxy measures for some aspects of organiza-tional culture. We explore this from the perspective of the employerbecause the policy in place at the organizational level is one of theimportant social conversion factors which sets the environmentshaping whether employees feel able to request an adjustment, thetype of negotiation that occurs between the employee and their linemanager (and co-workers), and the outcome.

Research Questions and Data

Given that employers’ policies at the organizational level are oneimportant social conversion factor for enhancing employees’ capabil-ities for negotiating an individual adjustment between full-time andpart-time hour we address three questions in our analysis. Firstly, inEurope what policies do employers operate with regard toindividual-level adjustments between full-time and part-timeworking? Secondly, can this variation in employer policy be attrib-uted to specific firm-level characteristics? We are particularly inter-ested in exploring the influence of the organizational culture withregard to part-time work and “work–life balance,” collective repre-sentation by a trade union or works council, and whether the firmwas increasing or contracting its workforce; the latter being a partic-ularly topical concern for debates about firms’ restructuring strat-egies in the current economic recession. Thirdly, are comparablefirms more likely to permit adjustments if they are located in coun-tries where there is national legislation or policy which givesemployees rights to request individual-level adjustments?

We use the European Establishment Survey on Working Time,which was launched in 2004–2005 by Eurofound in order toprovide the first representative European survey of companies1

(Bielenski and Riedmann 2005). This survey asked human resourcemanagers what the current practices in place were for threescenarios:


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† if a skilled full-time worker requested a transfer to part-timework;

† if a low-skilled or unskilled full-time worker requested atransfer to part-time work;

† for companies with part-timers in the workforce: if a part-time worker requested full-time work.

The response options for all three questions were:

† he or she usually gets an appropriate full-time/part-time jobquickly;

† he or she has to wait for some time;† it would be possible only exceptionally;† there is practically no chance;† does not apply/has never happened.

A couple of question design limitations should be noted. Skilledjobs were defined as jobs requiring a university degree, an appren-ticeship or any specific training. Such a wide definition potentiallyraises response issues since it encompasses a large number of hetero-geneous occupations that may be offered different adjustmentoptions in a wide variety of contexts. Secondly, while the questionspecified that the work should be an appropriate job in the sameestablishment, unfortunately it does not differentiate between thoseorganizations where the adjustment is made to the same or similarjob position and those where the adjustment entails moving to alower level position or other reduction in job quality (such asswitching to a fixed-term contract or other forms of increased inse-curity). So, as is often the case with secondary data analysis, wehave to work without these data refinements and recall them wheninterpreting results. Finally, part-time work was defined as working-time arrangements below the usual full-time level, so this captures areduction relative to the full-time norm at the workplace rather thanan absolute threshold.

European Employers’ Policies on Individual Working-timeAdjustments

The general expansion in the rate of part-time employment acrossEurope since the early 1980s means that this working arrangementis now used by many employers. In this survey of establishmentswith ten or more employees nearly one- quarter (24 percent) had atleast one-fifth of their workforce employed part-time and overalltwo-thirds (64 percent) employed at least one part-time worker. Notsurprisingly, organizations were more likely to have part-time


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employees if they were located in countries with a high overall inci-dence of part-time work in the economy, but multivariate analysisconfirmed that firm-level characteristics were also salient: part-timeworking is more common where the organizational workforce con-tains a high proportion of women, in the public sector, in serviceactivities, in large establishments, those with extended operatinghours and those which operated flexitime or working-time accounts(Anxo et al. 2007c).

Table 1 shows the type of individual working-time adjustmentpolicies in European establishments according to whether one, two,or three types of adjustments are possible: a reduction from full-timeto part-time hours for skilled staff; a similar reduction for unskilledstaff; a move from part-time to full-time work available to allworkers. Nearly one-fifth of all employers (18.3 percent) and justover a quarter of those that had some part-time staff (28.1 percent)permit full reversibility; namely the personnel manger reports that itis possible for any individual employee to request a change in theirworking hours from either full time to part time, or part time to fulltime, and to secure this adjustment either quickly or after sometime. This includes 9 percent of establishments which meet thetighter criteria of permitting such movements to be made quickly(Anxo et al. 2007a, 2007b, 2007c).2

There are other firms which do not operate a policy of full reversi-bility but permit a limited adjustment (one option) or a partial

Table 1. The Type of Reversibility Policies Operated in European

Establishments (in column percent)

Type of reversibility available immediately

or after some time

Companies with

part-time staff All companies

Limited adjustment—one option 23.7 17.8

Partial adjustment—two options 25.4 22.1

Full reversibility between full-time and

part-time hours for all employees

28.1 18.3

Total 77.2 58.2

Source: European Survey of Working-time 2005.Notes: Weighted proportion of companies allowing one or more types ofreversibility options between full-time and part-time work immediately or after sometime. Key to the adjustment options: transfer from full-time to part-time workingpermitted for skilled employees (skilled FT! PT); transfer from full-time topart-time working permitted for unskilled/low-skilled employees (low/unskilled FT! PT); transfer from part-time to full-time working permitted for all part-timeemployees (all PT! FT).


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adjustment (two options), so that overall more than three quartersof employers with part-timers, and 58 percent of all employers,operate either limited adjustment, partial adjustment, or fullreversibility policies.

Of the employers with part-time staff that offered a limitedadjustment just under half permitted all part-time employees tomove to full-time work (47 percent). This suggests a rather basicpolicy whereby employees can increase their hours when there is avacancy or other increase in labor demand. The other firms whichemployed part-timers and offered a limited adjustment were fairlyevenly divided between those which permit a move from full-time topart-time work restricted to one category of employees, eitherskilled or low-skilled employees. These different personnelapproaches may be connected to factors such as compositionaldifferences in the skill profile of their workforce or recruitment/retention problems which vary by skill level.

The most common form of partial adjustment was for employerswith part-time staff to permit all full-time employees to switch topart-time hours (46 percent). However, just over a third (35 percent)offered full reversibility for skilled employees while low-skilledemployees could only move from part-time to full-time hours. Thisimplies a personnel strategy which offers full reversibility targeted atretaining skilled staff. Conversely, nearly one-fifth (19 percent)offered full reversibility to their low-skilled employees but only per-mitted their skilled employees to move from part-time to full-timearrangements. This latter personnel policy may reflect skill short-ages, so that while full reversibility is possible for low-skilledemployees, part-time employment is discouraged among skilledemployees.

Despite a general expansion across Europe part-time employmentremains more common in some countries than others (Anxo et al.2007c; Plantenga and Remery 2010). These national labor marketdifferences are built from different patterns of usage of part-timersin firms, which is illustrated with the establishment survey data infigure 1. This shows pronounced national differences in the propor-tion of firms which have part-timers in their workforce. On theright-hand side of the graph are the countries where more than60 percent of firms employ at least one part-timer and among themthere is variation in the extent of part-time working at the firm level,indicated by the proportion of firms that have at least 20 percent oftheir workforce employed part-time. So, for example, part-timeworking is most widespread in the Netherlands where nearly90 percent of establishments employ part-timers and in more thanhalf of establishments at least one-fifth of the workforce is part time.


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Figure 1. The Prevalence of Part-time Employment across Establishments and the Proportion Which Offers Full Reversibility Optionsby Country.

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The UK ranks fourth in terms of the proportion of establishmentswhich employ part-timers but has the second highest proportion ofestablishments which have at least 20 percent of their workforceemployed part-time.

Figure 1 also shows that the proportion of firms which offers fullreversibility varies nationally. Figure 2 elaborates the picture byincluding the data for the proportion of firms which offer partial orlimited adjustments, and as in figure 1 the countries are rankedaccording to the proportion of firms which have at least one part-timer in their workforce. Taken together, these figures suggest thatin general, employers are more likely to operate policies whichpermit some adjustments between full-time and part-time workingwhere part-time work is an established, familiar practice in theeconomy. The causality may run either way: where employers havestarted to use part-time arrangements this may have stimulated thedevelopment of workplace policies to enable employees to adjustbetween full-time and part-time working; or the implementation ofsuch policies may have nurtured an expansion of part-time arrange-ments. In the examples of the UK and the Netherlands at least, thescope for individual employees to adjust between full-time and part-time working emerged in workplaces in advance of statutory provi-sion, with the Dutch legislation stimulated by widespread collectivenegotiation on this topic.

The figures illustrate the pronounced variations across Europeancountries in the adjustment policy operated by employers, bothbetween and within countries. It is particularly uncommon for employ-ers to offer reversibility or other adjustments in five countries: Portugal,Greece, Hungary, Slovenia, and Cyprus. State policy has some effect,for the countries with national policy frameworks which provideemployees with rights to request a switch to part-time hours—Sweden,the Netherlands, the UK, Germany, and Belgium as discussed in“Part-time Work in European Countries”—have more firms operatingsome form of reversibility policy than is the case for many of the othercountries shown. Thus, full reversibility is more common in firms inSweden, the UK, and Belgium then elsewhere. However, while theNetherlands has legislation which permits full reversibility, the propor-tion of employers that report this is possible is lower. Furthermore,there is variation in what is offered by firms within each nationalcontext, whether it is Greece, France, or Germany for example, whichindicates that factors other than legislation or the prevalence of part-time working in the economy are also at play.

The exploratory analysis in this section has demonstrated the var-iation in the extent and type of individual working-time adjustmentpolicies operating in firms. While some relationship with the


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Figure 2. The Proportion of Establishments Offering Different Working-time Reversibility Options by Country.

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national policy framework can be discerned it is apparent that othercharacteristics and situational conditions also shape employers’policy and behavior. This is explored next.

Which Type of Individual Working-time Adjustment PolicyIs Operated by Which Employers?

To advance our understanding of which types of organizationsoffer which options for working-time adjustments to their employeesto enhance their working-time capabilities we must bring otherorganizational characteristics into the analysis that we suspect influ-ence employers’ behavior. Firstly we identify a limited number ofdiscrete profiles which capture the most typical policies on adjust-ments between full-time and part-time working operated by firms bybuilding four variables. Three variables explained in “ResearchQuestions and Data” measure whether the employer permits (a)their skilled employees to move from full-time to part-time working,(b) their low-skilled employees to move from full-time to part-timeworking, and (c) their employees to transfer from part-time to full-time working. Each have three response categories: the move isgranted quickly or after some time, it is granted only in exceptionalsituations, or not at all. To this we add a fourth derived variable: acount of how many of these three options are offered “quickly orafter some time” by the employer.

We focus on those companies which employ part-time staff3 andwe use latent class analysis (Hagenaars and McCutcheon 1987,2002) (see Supplementary material online, Technical Annex) to sum-marize and reduce the permutations to a limited number of typicalpolicies. Table 2 shows the relationship—conditional probabilities—between the five latent classes and the observed variables. These arethe most common patterns of association between the type andnumber of reversibility options available in our sample of companiesand confirmed that the LCA model selected the most typical catego-ries of reversibility identified in the discussion of table 1.

The no reversibility and full reversibility classes represent justover half of the sample (and as would be expected, are of a similarmagnitude to the profile presented earlier in table 1). The no reversi-bility class encompasses 25 percent of the observations, and com-prises organizations where individual working-time adjustments arenot generally available (a probability equal to 0 of granting any typeof reversibility immediately or after some time and a probabilityequal to 1 of granting no such options). Only in exceptional casesare individual-level adjustments permitted, and the most probablyexceptional case would be a move for a skilled employee from full-


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http://sp.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/jxr011/DC1



time to part-time hours. The full reversibility class accounts for27 percent of the observations and comprises organizations whichallow adjustments between full-time and part-time working in eitherdirection “quickly or after sometime” for both skilled and low-skilled employees (probability equal to 1 for each variable).

Just over one-fifth of employers with part-time staff are in thesome reversibility class. They generally allow their employees toreduce their working time from full time to part time (always in thecase of their unskilled workforce; often in the case of skilledemployees). There is some scope for part-time employees to switchto full-time arrangements but the probability of this being availableon an unrestricted basis is much lower than in the other classes(0.25). This predominance of the full-time to part-time adjustmentfor this class echoes the earlier descriptive results shown in table 2.

Table 2. Conditional Probabilities of the Five-class LCA Model

No

reversibility

Full

reversibility

Some

reversibility

Skilled

full

reversibility

Part

time

to full

time

Class size (percent

of all

companies with

part-time staff)

24.5 27.4 22.2 15.2 10.7

Observed variable 1: move from part time to full time

Unrestricted — 1.00 0.25 0.62 1.00

Exceptionally 0.36 — 0.34 0.15 —

No chance 0.64 — 0.41 0.24 —

Observed variable 2: move from full time to part time (skilled)

Unrestricted — 1.00 0.56 1.00 —

Exceptionally 0.50 — 0.29 — 0.61

No chance 0.50 — 0.15 — 0.39

Observed variable 3: move from full time to part time (unskilled)

Unrestricted — 1.00 1.00 — —

Exceptionally 0.36 — — 0.19 0.42

No chance 0.64 — — 0.81 0.58

Observed variable 4: number of moves allowed immediately or after some time

0: Nil 1.00 — — — —

1: Limited — — 0.26 0.43 1.00

2: Partial — — 0.74 0.57 —

3: Full — 1.00 — — —

Note: “Unrestricted” means “quickly” or “after some time.”


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Employers in the skilled full reversibility class—about 15 percentof the sample—only permit a reduction from full-time to part-timehours for their skilled employees. The majority of these companiesalso permit a move from part-time to full-time working for allemployees (p ¼ 0.62). Overall, employers in this class are slightlyless likely to allow partial reversibility (p ¼ 0.57) than employers inthe “some reversibility” class (p ¼ 0.74).

The part-time to full-time class is the smallest (11 percent of thecases). These employers allow their employees to increase theirworking time from part-time to full-time hours. In exceptional cir-cumstances a move from full time to part time may be allowed; andthis is more likely for skilled staff (the probability is equal to 0.61against 0.41 for low-skilled staff). This confirms our results dis-cussed above which identified this type of reversibility as the mostcommon among companies offering only one option (see EuropeanEmployers’ Policies on Individual Working-time Adjustments).

Now that four typical patterns of reversibility have beenunearthed—five when the no reversibility class is taken intoaccount—we can analyze the extent to which these are associatedwith the variables of interest.

Our key concern is whether the type of adjustment option madeavailable to employees was associated with other features of employ-ers’ working-time policy that can be considered “conversion factors”by creating a supportive workplace environment which enhance thecapability of individual employees to improve their work–lifebalance. Four indicators were available to capture this aspect of theorganization’s working-time arrangements: “management agrees thatsupporting work–life balance is a duty of the company” (measuredby an attitude question), the main reason part-time working wasintroduced was to meet employee needs rather than employer needsfor more flexible operating practices, part-time schedules are flexiblerather than fixed to daily/weekly schedules and flexitime or othertime banking accounts exist as another means of creating an environ-ment which enables individuals to vary their working hours. Wejudge these indicators provide a reasonable handle on whether mana-gerial attitudes and policies promote a “work life balance culture”which supports individual-level adjustments, although ideally thesurvey would have probed in more depth on other dimensions such asthe key role of line managers as “gate keepers” in the implementationof organizational policy (see, for example, Crompton 2006; den Dulkand Spenkelink 2009; Lewis 2003).

The extent and form of adjustment options might be affected bythe firm’s operating requirements for staffing in its production proc-esses. We included a measure of complexity and predictability of


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workflow rhythm (over the day, week, and year) to see whether thiswas conducive to the firm offering some types of adjustment ratherthan others. Similarly, a measure of staffing level trends wasincluded with the expectation that if the company had contracted orgrown its staff in recent years then this would also impact on thetypes of adjustment options in place; for example movement frompart-time to full-time hours is likely to be easier during periods ofgrowth rather than contraction.

The firms’ working-time practices and culture—including anypolicy position concerning work–life balance responsibilities—islikely to be shaped by the gender and skill composition of the work-force and whether employees have collective representation by aunion or works council. Given the majority of part-time employeesare women with family care responsibilities for children and elders,it is likely that firms with a sizable proportion of women in theiremploy may face more demands for working-time adjustmentsbetween full-time and part-time hours. The skill profile may also beimportant; for the recruitment and retention of skilled workers canbe a catalyst for the development of flexible working-time optionsand this may extend to offering reversibility adjustments. Collectiverepresentation may advance reversibility options at the firm level.

A control variable was introduced for sector, differentiatingbetween the public sector, private service sector, and other industry(manufacturing, extraction, construction, and transport). We alsocontrolled for establishment size, since larger establishments are oftenassumed to have more leeway to allow for flexible working-timearrangements. Finally, we introduced dummy variables for thosecountries discussed in “Part-time Work in European Countries”where national law or policy makes some provision to enable individ-uals to request an adjustment to their working hours: Belgium,Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, and the UK. We did this toexplore whether the effect of state policy could still be discerned oncethe firms’ characteristics and policies were taken into account. Othervariables were left out of the model for operational reasons: in ordernot to overload the model with too many parameters or because theirexplanatory power was limited in relation to the reversibility issueand because their effect can hide other interesting associations.

Table 3 presents the results of the multinomial logit model whichmeasures the odds for companies to belong to one of the reversibilityrather than no reversibility latent class given each independentvariable.4

The first point to note is that the type of individual-level adjustmentsdeemed feasible by the manager was influenced by two structuralfactors: the sector the organization operated in and to a lesser extent


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Table 3. Multinomial Logistic Regression Odd Ratio Coefficients of the

Reversibility Latent Class Model

Fullreversibility

Skilledfullreversibility

Somereversibility

Parttimeto fulltime

Sample-size-adjusted BIC 72,269.120Class size (percent of all

respondents; noreversibility ¼ 24.5 percent)

27.4 15.2 22.2 10.7

Management agrees thatsupporting “Work–LifeBalance” is a duty of thecompany

1.46*** 1.32* 1.23þ 1.08

Neither agrees nor disagree(base: management disagrees)

1.40** 0.92 1.28* 1.22

Reason the firm introduced part time workEmployees’ WLB needs 4.14*** 3.01*** 1.46** 2.89***Needs of both employer andemployee

2.22*** 1.98*** 1.23 1.37*

Don’t know (base:employers’ operating needs)

0.62* 0.83 0.65* 0.96

Flexitime or other time bankingarrangements

1.31** 1.05 1.32** 0.90

Part-time work schedules areflexible

1.33* 1.29 1.47** 1.00

Workflow rhythm isunpredictable

0.87 0.96 0.93 0.91

Workflow rhythm is complex(yearly, weekly, and dailyvariation) (base: workflowrhythm is simple, i.e.,predictable: yearly, weekly,or daily fluctuation)

1.44** 1.35þ 1.27þ 1.07

SectorPrivate sector serviceactivities

1.23þ 1.09 0.94 0.98

Public sector (base: industry,i.e., extraction,manufacturing,construction þ transport)

1.37** 1.66** 1.05 0.58**

Establishment size10–19 employees 0.14*** 0.52** 0.49*** 0.41***20–49 employees 0.20*** 0.71 0.65* 0.46**

Continued


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the establishment size. Policies for full or skilled reversibility weremore likely to exist in public sector organizations. Conversely publicsector organizations were significantly less likely to have a policy

Table 3. Continued

Fullreversibility

Skilledfullreversibility

Somereversibility

Parttimeto fulltime

50–99 employees 0.29*** 0.95 0.86 0.50**100–499 employees (base:500þ employees)

0.41*** 0.78 0.73 0.62*

Collective representation—union/works council present

1.29* 1.03 1.30* 0.85

Gender profile: between 20 and60 percent staff are female

1.64*** 1.31þ 1.73*** 1.03

More than 60 percent staff arefemale (base: less than 20percent)

2.44*** 2.20*** 2.58*** 1.04

Skill profile of workforce100 percent skilled 0.52*** 3.51*** 0.38*** 1.05Between 60 and 99 percentare skilled

0.89 1.62** 0.77* 0.96

Between 20 and 59 percentare skilled (base: less than 20percent skilled)

0.96 1.19 0.71* 1.01

Staffing level trendsDecreased recently 0.59*** 0.93 1.07 0.70*

Staffing level has been stable(base: staffing level hasincreased recently)

0.64*** 0.92 0.80* 0.58***

Countries with working-time adjustment regulations1. Belgium 1.95*** 2.53*** 1.90** 1.162. Germany 0.54*** 1.59** 1.03 0.63**3. Netherlands 0.64* 2.38*** 0.91 0.884. Sweden 2.29*** 2.66*** 2.05*** 1.235. UK 1.38* 1.63** 1.06 0.87

Notes: Weighted multinomial logistic regression: relative risks ratios of theprobabilities to be classified in the respective latent classes. Base categories: “Noreversibility” latent class. Significant þ at 0.1; * at 0.05; ** at 0.01; and *** at0.001. Values which are significant at 0.1 are highlighted in itallics; those significantat 0.05 or 0.01 are highlighted in bold. Unweighted sample: 12,314 establishmentsin the EU-21 with at least ten employees and employing part-time staff.


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which only permitted part-time to full-time adjustment. Private sectorservice companies were also 1.23 times more likely to offer full reversi-bility than other private sector companies operating in manufacturing,extraction, construction, or transport, and the size of the effect is notmuch lower than that for public sector—although this only holds atthe 0.1 significance level. These results indicate that in the EuropeanUnion as a whole, the service sector—primarily the public sector—isleading developments in individual-level working-time adjustments.This may be due to a combination of contextual factors; for example inmost countries the public sector may be more sheltered from marketpressures that the private sector and has been more directly exposed togovernment-led initiatives to promote work–life balance policies aspart of wider equal opportunities action plans.

Large establishments (500-plus employees) have a higher proba-bility of offering full reversibility or permitting part-time employeesto switch to full-time hours than medium- or small-size ones.Conversely, small establishments (under twenty employees) weremuch less likely to offer any type of reversibility than medium orlarge establishments. Part of the explanation for a size effect may bethat a larger workforce provides more opportunities to accommo-date individual-level adjustments as part of general personnel poli-cies to manage turnover and other fluctuations in staffing levelsthrough internal and external recruitment.

The presence of a trade union (or works council) effects work-place policy: unionized establishments are 1.3 times more likely tohave a policy of full or some reversibility, but their presence doesnot influence whether the employer operates a policy of skilled fullreversibility. In the case of the part-time to full-time class, althoughnot significant, the coefficient is negative, which hints at the possibil-ity that collective organization may encourage employers to adopt adifferent reversibility policy to this one.

The gender and skill profile of the workforce are salient. Giventhat part-time working is still largely a preserve of women and thatadjustment policies are most likely to be taken up by women and setup with them in mind it is not very surprising to find that firms witha high proportion of women in their workforce are more than twiceas likely to offer full, some, or skilled reversibility. The skill level ofthe firms’ employees exerts a weaker effect than gender overall. Apolicy of full reversibility restricted to skilled employees (skilled fullreversibility) is more probable in firms if they have a high proportionof employees who are skilled: they are 1.6–3 times more likely com-pared to firms where less than 20 percent of the workforce is skilled.Conversely, a policy of full or some reversibility is less probable ifthe firm has a large proportion of skilled employees. We did not find


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any evidence of a specific interaction between the skills and genderprofile of the workforce, for when the latter was introduced into themodel the coefficients were not affected. Neither the gender nor theskills profile of the firm’s workforce influences the probability that afirm only offers a part-time to full-time adjustment.

The analysis confirms the key question addressed in this paper: thefirm’s organizational working-time practices and culture toward safe-guarding work–life balance has a significant influence on the avail-ability of individual-level working-time adjustments, over and abovethe other firm and workforce characteristics controlled in the model.All four types of adjustment analyzed here were more likely in firmswhere the managers stated that the reason part-time work was intro-duced was mainly to meet the needs of their employees; and full orskilled full reversibility options were also more likely where therationale was to meet a combination of employer and employeeneeds. In particular, employers were three to four times more likely tooperate full or skilled reversibility where employee needs was therationale compared to those establishments where part-time workhad been introduced to meet the needs of management. Managementattitude had an additional independent effect: if management agreedthat it was their duty to support the work–life balance of theiremployees they were more likely to report that a policy of full reversi-bility was in operation. Even where managerial attitude was ambiva-lent about it being their duty they were more likely to offer fullreversibility than managers who disagreed. A supportive managerialattitude also had a weaker but still significant effect on the probabilitythat employers offered some or skilled reversibility.

The broader context of work scheduling in the workplace alsoinfluenced the type of adjustments that were deemed feasible byemployers. Establishments which operated flexitime or other timebanking schemeswere more likely to belong to the class whichoffered full or some reversibility. Similarly, they had an increasedprobability of offering these types of adjustments where part-timework was managed flexibly rather than via fixed schedules, wherefixed schedules might indicate company- rather than employee-driven working-time flexibility policies. Full reversibility, and to alesser extent “skilled” or “some” reversibility, was more likely inworkplaces where the workflow rhythm is complex (weekly, daily,and seasonal variations). Workflow rhythm did not have a signifi-cant influence on the probability of an employer offering only themarginal move from part-time to full-time working.

Trends in staffing levels also impacted on the type of policy beingoperated. Employers were less likely to offer full reversibility or theoption to move from part-time to full-time working if their


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workforce was contracting or stable. Having a stable workforce alsoreduced the likelihood that the employer operated some reversibilityor full-time to part-time adjustments. This could indicate the exis-tence of leaner working-time arrangements which makes it difficultfor line supervisors to accommodate individual requests forworking-time adjustments. Interestingly, the probability that anemployer operated a full reversibility policies restricted to skilledemployees was not affected by trends in staffing levels.

Turning now to the country effects, we can see that establish-ments in Sweden and Belgium are markedly more likely to offer full,skilled full, or some reversibility than similar firms in the otherEuropean countries in the analysis. This also applies to a lesserextent for firms in the UK with regard to full and skilled full reversi-bility. Firms in the Netherlands and Germany are more likely tooffer full reversibility to skilled employees than comparable firmselsewhere but are actually less likely to grant full reversibility to thewhole of their workforce. The German legal framework alsoappears to make firms less likely to operate the limited part-time tofull-time adjustment. As already discussed in “Part-time Work inEuropean Countries,” these five countries have legislation ornational policies which grant employees some rights to request indi-vidual adjustments to their working hours but there are importantdifferences in the detail of the provisions. These results suggest thatthese state-level policies have an important regulatory effect on thetype of policy developed and implemented by employers which isapparent even when relevant establishment-level characteristics aretaken into account. Conversely, that establishment-level characteris-tics remain significant indicates that the implementation of state-level provision is shaped in important ways at the organizationallevel of the workplace.

Reversibility Profiles

Leaving aside the effect of national-level policy on firm practiceswhich we have just discussed, we can now summarize the mainestablishment-level findings and draw a more precise picture of whattype of organization operates which reversibility option to enhancethe working-time capability of their employees in comparison withorganizations that employ part-timers but offer no reversibility.

Full reversibility organizations. These organizations have a work-force containing high proportions of women and low-skilledemployees which are likely to be unionized. They tend to be largepublic sector or private service establishments where the workflowtends to be complex. Part-time work was introduced at least partly


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with the employee needs in mind; there are other policies in placewhich enhance the capability of individual employees to improvetheir work–life balance, such as flexitime; together with a manage-rial sense of duty toward promoting work–life balance. Full reversi-bility is less likely if staffing levels are stable or falling than rising.

Some reversibility organizations. These organizations generallyallow adjustments from full-time to part-time working with somescope for moves from part-time to full-time arrangements.

The workforce profile is similar to that for full reversibility organiza-tions: high proportions of women and low-skilled employees whichare likely to be unionized. There are also similarities in work–lifebalance policies: part-time work was introduced at least partly withthe employee needs in mind and there are other policies in placewhich enhance the capability of individual employees to improvetheir work–life balance, such as flexitime. There is a managerialsense of duty toward promoting work–life balance, although the sig-nificance of managerial attitudes is weaker than for the full reversi-bility policy.

Again, like the organizations offering full reversibility, some rever-sibility organizations are likely to have a complex workflow rhythm.Yet the probability of this type of policy being operated is notaffected by whether they are located in the public sector, privateservices, or other industry sectors. Small and medium-sized establish-ments (less than fifty employees) are less likely to make this kind ofarrangement than larger ones.

A policy of some reversibility is less likely where staffing levelshave been stable. Recall that the most feasible adjustment under thispolicy is a move from full-time to part-time hours (table 2). It maybe that in a situation of expansion and recruitment, or the turbu-lence of downsizing, there is more scope for staff to make someadjustments than in a situation of stability.

Skilled full reversibility organizations. These organizations operate apolicy of full reversibility for skilled employees while other employ-ees can generally only move from part-time to full-timearrangements.

These organizations are also likely to have a higher proportion ofwomen in their workforce, but unlike the full reversibility and somereversibility organizations, the workforce is likely to be highlyskilled. Collective representation does not increase the probabilitythat an organization adopts this type of policy, presumably becauseunion bargaining agendas focus on extending full or some


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reversibility to all employees rather than a focus on benefits forskilled employees. These organizations are more likely to be publicsector organizations and to have a complex workflow rhythm.Establishment size is not a discerning feature except that very smallones (less than twenty employees) are significantly less likely tooperate this type of policy.

Like the full reversibility model, this type of organization intro-duced part-time work with the needs of employees in mind andthere is a managerial sense of duty toward promoting work–lifebalance. However, there is no association between this type ofpolicy and the availability of flexitime or other time bankingarrangements to enable individuals to vary their working-time;although there is a significant positive association with part-timework schedules being flexible rather than fixed.

Trends in staffing levels have no impact on the probability that anorganization operates a policy of skilled reversibility. This suggeststhat in these organizations the retention of their skilled staff is at thecore of their business model, justifying any additional costs incurredin operating this policy regardless of any change in staffing levels(and where any changes in staffing levels may be focused on thesmall proportion of low/unskilled employees in their employment).

Part-time to full-time organizations. This is the smallest class oforganizations, accounting for 11 percent of organizations with part-timers in their workforce and it is the narrowest form of adjustmentpolicy considered in the analysis. Only in exceptional circumstancescan part-timers move to full-time arrangements.

In sharp contrast to the other three types, the probability that anorganization operates this type of policy is unrelated to the gender,skill level or collective representation of their workforce. The organi-zations are likely to be very large establishments (500 or moreemployees) in the private sector; the odds are similar for privateservices and the rest of the private sector (extraction, manufacturing,construction, and transport), and the complexity of the workflowrhythm is not relevant either. Organizations are more likely to haveadopted this policy if part-time work was introduced to meet theneeds of employees, but the managerial attitude toward work–lifebalance duties is not influential. Whether or not the organizationoffers flexitime or time banking is also irrelevant.

Taken together, this suggests that this narrow type of adjustmentpolicy emerges as a pragmatic response, whereby part-timers canmove into full-time arrangements when such vacancies arise throughturnover or expansion. This is congruent with the finding that


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organizations are more likely to offer this form of reversibility ratherthan no reversibility if staff levels have been rising.

Conclusions

Following Sen’s capability framework, we have argued thatorganizations’ workplace policies are one of the key social conver-sion factors which shape the capability set and functionings of indi-vidual employees. In this paper, we have explored organizations’policies toward employees making individual adjustments betweenfull-time and part-time hours. We have shown that across Europethere is marked variation in whether employers operate a policy offull reversibility, skilled full reversibility, some reversibility,part-time-to-full-time adjustments, or no reversibility to theiremployees. One-quarter of firms do not have part-timers in theirworkforce, which suggests that such adjustments are not commonpractice in these workplaces. Among firms which employ part-timersone-quarter do not permit adjustments. Yet around a quarter offirms with part-timers permits full reversibility, another fifth permitssome reversibility and a smaller proportion permits skilled full rever-sibility or part-time-to-full-time adjustments. These results suggestthat the capability which an individual employee has to adjust theirhours can be expected to vary according to their workplace setting.

State policy clearly matters, for firms are more likely to permitsuch adjustments where they are legal requirements or other nationalpolicy tools in place. For example, in this analysis, once firm-levelcharacteristics are taken into account we find that full reversibility ismore likely to be found in Sweden and Belgium, and to a lesserextent the UK, than in the other European countries in this survey.Yet firm-level characteristics and other situational features alsoimpact on the social conversion factors which shape an individual’sworking-time capability. This underscores that the implementationof state-level provision is shaped in important ways at the organiza-tional level of the workplace. The sector, establishment size, pres-ence of a trade union, gender, and skill composition of theworkforce all had a significant influence on whether employers per-mitted individual-level working-time adjustments. The firm’s organi-zational working-time practices and culture toward safeguardingwork–life balance had an additional and independent effect, as didbroader aspects of working-time scheduling in place.

Finally, if the workforce was contracting in size or was stable,employers were less likely to offer full reversibility or options tomove from part-time to full-time working. The significant negativeeffect of staffing reductions in most cases does not bode well for the


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current period of economic recession and restructuring. If firms areshedding jobs, then while it may be possible to secure reductionsfrom full-time to part-time hours in some settings, curtailment ofreversibility policies can be expected in practice.

The focus in our analysis has been on the accounts of employersabout their policies. This is clearly an important part of the picturefor researching individuals’ capabilities, but of course the employeevoice has not been captured in this analysis. Some reassurance canbe taken from the fact that in companies where trade union repre-sentatives were present their account was similar to the employers’account, although it tended to be more conservative about what wasoffered by the employer. It is entirely feasible that an employerreports that something is possible and part of company policy whiletheir employees remain ignorant of the policy, or reluctant to use itbecause they foresee obstacles or penalties, such as line managerresistance or being sidelined for promotion. We should also remem-ber that employees in the same workplace covered by the samepolicy will still have different capabilities; for example, it may bemore socially acceptable for women than for men to reduce theirhours to manage care responsibilities. Whether and how employeesmake use of a policy will also depend on other contextual factors,including other aspects of the working-time policy at the work-place—how long full-time hours are, whether flexitime and otherways of adjusting working-time arrangements are in place—andresources and infrastructure that can be accessed beyond the work-place including the availability of affordable and good quality child-care alternatives. So employer policy is only one part of the picture,but it is one of the important social conversion factor shaping theindividual’s capability set, and the individual’s capability to makeworking-time adjustments is likely to be enhanced in firms whichoperate policies which permit such adjustments than in those firmswhich offer more limited or no such adjustments.

Supplementary Material

Supplementary Material is available at SOCPOL online.

NOTES

We are grateful to Dr Nick Shryane of the University of Manchester forhis technical advice on the development of the latent class analysis in thispaper, and to participants in the RECWOWE Network of Excellence fortheir comments on earlier versions of this paper presented in workshops atthe annual RECWOWE conference.


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Colette Fagan is Professor of Sociology at the University of Manchester,UK. Her research focuses on employment and public policy with particu-lar interests in working conditions, the work–family interface, genderinequalities and gender mainstreaming, time-use, and international com-parisons. School of Social Science, Arthur Lewis Building, Universityof Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL, UK. E-mail:[email protected].

Pierre Walthery is a sociologist, currently completing his PhD at theUniversity of Manchester. In his current research he uses statistical model-ling to analyze regional differences in the employment patterns of mothersof young children in the UK and Germany. His other research focus ongender/economic inequality, working conditions, and quantitative methods,in particular longitudinal analysis and latent variable modelling.

1. It is a stratified random sample survey clustered in a number of coun-tries carried out in 2004–2005 in the EU-25 member states minus Malta,Estonia, Lithuania, and Slovakia. The reference population is about 2.7million companies employing more than nine employees in the EU-21 coun-tries, covering all economic sectors except agriculture, fishing and hunting,extraterritorial organizations, and private households (NACE classifica-tion). As a result, while the survey is representative of this population, it isnot of economic sectors, since small companies are unevenly spread amongthem. The sample comprises 21,031 establishments across the public andprivate sector. For each establishment, one interview was carried out withthe personnel manager, and one with a formal employee representativefrom the same establishment (union shop stewards, works councils) wheresuch representation existed. In total, an employee representative was inter-viewed for 5232 of the establishments (Bielenski and Riedmann 2005). Inthis paper we use only the sample of personnel managers.

2. We use a wider measure here to include adjustments which were permit-ted either “quickly” or “after some time” to capture the diversity of situationsin which requests for adjustments may arise, such as smaller companies wherefor operational reasons a move cannot be granted immediately, irrespective ofhow supportive of work–life balance issues the employer might be.

3. This decision was taken for three reasons: exploratory analysis showedthat companies whose manager declared that they did not have any part-timeemployees would have to be recoded as “Never” in the variable measuringthe presence of moves from part-time to full-time. This would inflate theweight of the “No reversibility” latent class (cf. below) at the cost of moredetailed and precise analysis of reversibility classes. Furthermore, keepingvariables measuring the reasons for introducing part-time work or the way itis managed within the company would have proven difficult—and droppingthem would have significantly weakened part of our analytical framework.

4. The value of the sample/size-adjusted BIC parameter is the lowestobserved among all models tested stepwise, which indicates the best relativefit, in any case a very significant improvement over the empty model.Entropy remains close to the value observed in the empty model: 0.996.Similarly, the p-value of the modified likelihood ratio test was not alteredby the introduction of independent variables.


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