Commitment and the New Employment Relationship. Exploring a Forgotten Perspective: Employers Commitment**

Zusammenfassung

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In this article, we have endeavoured to integrate the concept 'employers' commitment' into the understanding of the new employment relationship. HRM scholars and practitioners assume that changes in (international) market and employee characteristics lead to a transformation of the employer-employee relationship: from a life-long, 'steady' relationship to life-time employability based on diminished job-security and enhanced employer and employee investments in training and development. We examine employees' internalisations with respect to this new relationship, or at least their identification with it. 'Employers commitment', a concept that has been neglected empirically to a large extent in management and work sciences, serves as the backbone of our argument, and refers to the commitment the employee receives from the employer. From the workers' perspective, 'employers' commitment' has everything to do with 'traditional' expectations about social aspects of the employer-employee relationship and with (individualised) employment relations. Concerning the latter, adequate 'direct participation' is the key. Since none of the employees mentioned any dimension of the so-called 'new deal' (e.g. job insecurity, training and career development, mobility) while describing their interpretation of 'employers commitment', (further) food for thought concerning the balance of the contemporary connection between employer and employee connection is presented.

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Auszug

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Commitment and the New Employment Relationship. Exploring a Forgotten Perspective: Employers Commitment**

1. Introduction: The modern commitment deal

Since the 1980s, many Human Resource Management scholars have supposed a change in the relationship between employers and employees: a so-called 'new deal'. Forced by (international) competition and increased costumer demands, companies have revised the management of all resources for purposes of revitalising competitive advantage (e.g. Huiskamp et al. 2002; Huiskamp 2003). According to Bolwijn and Kumpe (1990), survival nowadays can be ensured by a combination of efficiency, quality, flexibility, and innovation. It is assumed that this renewal of management has a dual effect on the human dimension. On the one hand, in order to stimulate creativity and guarantee product quality, employers invest more in training and career development and employees do pioneering work in delineating their career paths. On the other hand, to increase economical efficiency, employees are expected to become more manoeuvrable inside and outside the organisation (Martin et al. 1998). Internal flexibility refers to working time and functional mobility, external flexibility to the use of temporary workers and outsourcing of employees (e.g. Atkinson 1984; Schilfgaarde/Cornelissen 1988). According to the literature, modern employers should offer the following deal: opportunities for valuable training and career development as well as a better fine-tuning of work and non-work obligations through work time flexibility in exchange for less job security (e.g. Tsui/Wu, 2005). To summarize the consequences: it is believed that the key features of the employment relationship (ER) have to change.

The employment relationship can be defined as a relationship based on an (implicit) reciprocal agreement in which employees provide manual and/or mental labour in exchange for (economic and social) rewards supplied by employers (Gospel/Palmer 1993; Lewis et al. 2003). The ER encompasses several aspects: economic, legal, political, social, and psychological ones. At least in Western Europe, monetary yields (economic dimension)...

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