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Flexible staffing arrangements have become a permanent feature of employment in many industrial societies. This article examines how employers perceive the consequences of using flexible staffing arrangements. It presents and assesses theoretically informed hypotheses on organisational situations in which negative consequences are more likely to be perceived.

This study uses data (n = 761) from a bespoke employers survey, fielded in the Netherlands in 2019. Structural equation modelling (SEM) is used to measure and explain employers' perception of downsides to flexible staffing arrangements.

Employers report distinct downsides to the use of flexible staffing arrangements in terms of performance, management and employee well-being. Model estimates show that employers using flexible staffing arrangements to acquire specific expertise or to follow other organisations in their sector perceive more downsides.

Empirical research on employers' perception of the disadvantageous consequences of using flexible staffing arrangements is scarce. This article highlights that this practice can discourage investments in human capital and lead to a sense of insecurity among young workers. It draws attention to the relevance of distinguishing between strategic motives when trying to understand organisational behaviour regarding non-standard forms of employment.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the opportunities in the labour market for young employees with intermediate-level education by studying which young employees are most likely to be retained and under what conditions managers favour retention.

Retention decisions are examined by combining a vignette experiment and a survey study. Hypothetical profiles of 252 young employees were rated on their retention desirability by 21 managers, each working in a different organisation. Information on the managers’ characteristics and their organisations were collected in a survey.

Managers are generally not inclined to suggest retention. Their decisions are highly dependent on their own characteristics and organisational factors, even when young employees perform well and display desirable work-related behaviour.

While the small scale and explorative nature of this study limit its generalisability, this paper highlights the importance of combining information on employees, the organisation and managers; when studying (early) careers and employment decisions.

This study suggests that job retention is only in part within an individual’s control, and the future efforts to combat youth unemployment need to account for organisational and managerial characteristics.

The focus on the employer’s perspective is new to research on early careers, making it a starting point for further lines of exploration. Further, this study provides a comprehensive insight into factors that influence managers’ retention decisions by combining three sets of factors in a single research design.

Focuses on how government policy regarding work‐family arrangements affects the labour market position of women and men in the European Union. Discusses the statutory provisions of three different work‐family arrangements: leave arrangements, child care and part‐time work. Finds that the development of work‐family arrangements differs between member states, although these differences can be placed in a typology of welfare state regimes. To determine whether there is more equality between men and women in countries with a more extensive government policy, uses four indicators: the gender‐related development index of the Human Development Report, female labour participation, wage differences between men and women and segregation in the labour market. Suggests from a review of the indicators that there is a positive relation between the presence of statutory work‐family arrangements and gender equality in the labour market. Notes, however, that occupational segregation is less affected by work‐family arrangements. Concludes that a relation between the use of work‐family facilities and the persistence of segregation seems plausible. Argues that if work‐family arrangements are only available to women or if men do not use the existing facilities, inequality in the labour market will be maintained rather than reduced.

Debriefs are a type of workplace meeting that often use after events and critical incidents. Debriefs are used to review performance, promote shared learning and understanding, and improve future team performance. Similarly, reflexivity refers to the extent to which team members reflect upon and openly discuss group processes, procedures, and actions to improve future team performance. In this chapter, the authors review the separate literatures and explore the relationship between debriefs and reflexivity. While the debrief literature does focus on aspects of reflection, what occurs between the aspects of reflection, planning, and action is left unexplored. The concept of reflexivity fits well with the successful use of debriefs, as reflexivity ensures that reflection results in outcomes and moves beyond just an overview or discussion during debriefing. Additionally, important constructs such as psychological safety and sensemaking are relevant to both debriefs and reflexivity such that open and honest discussion as well as developing shared understanding are necessary for effective debriefing and reflection. Using the constructs of psychological safety and sensemaking, the authors propose a model that situates both reflexivity and effective debriefs in the context of team learning. This model integrates team reflexivity with team debriefs, provides a better understanding of how teams can carry out more effective debriefs, and explains how more effective debriefing and greater team reflexivity lead to enhanced learning and improvement in team performance.

Although policymakers have put great efforts into the promotion of older workers’ labour force participation, quantitative empirical knowledge about employers’ views towards extension of working lives is limited. The purpose of this paper is to improve the understanding of employers’ attitudes and actions towards extension of working lives, by examining recruitment and retention behaviour towards older workers, employers’ views on the consequences of an ageing workforce, organisational policies, and what governments can do to extend working lives.

The authors analyse surveys administered to employers in Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, Poland, Sweden and the UK in 2009.

It is found that a minority of employers have applied measures to recruit or retain older workers, and employers rather retain than hire older workers. A considerable share of employers, albeit to different degrees per country, associate the ageing of their staff with a growing gap between labour costs and productivity. Employers expecting a larger gap do not apply more organisational measures to either increase productivity or adjust the cost‐productivity balance. Employers may think the cost‐productivity issue is partly for governments to solve; employers expecting a larger cost‐productivity gap consider wage subsidies to be an effective measure to extend working lives.

The paper addresses the employers’ perspective, one that is often neglected compared to attitudes and behaviour of older workers themselves and research on institutional arrangements. This paper is also among the first to report on employers’ policies and practices from a cross‐national perspective.

This chapter is focussed on the macro context of higher education and describes the historical developments in higher education and how these developments affect academic jobs and academic work. When we sketch the development of higher education with a few broad strokes of the pen, we see (1) a development from a small-scale elite institution to broad training (and research) institutes; (2) a struggle over control of higher education; and (3) a movement in which higher education is professionalized and increasingly assigned a societal task, with a series of consequences for education, research and impact. These developments contribute to a field of tension in which old traditions of academic behaviour must be reconciled with demands that are placed on higher education by society. This makes talent management, both on an individual and collective level, no easy task.

The purpose of this paper (overview) is to provide a brief introduction to the topic of active ageing and summarise the seven studies included in this special issue. The authors also acknowledge those who were instrumental in bringing this issue to fruition.

The International Journal of Manpower's usual double‐blind review process was used to select the seven papers included in this special issue. The papers themselves all have a cross‐national perspective using data from eight European countries. These papers represent a wide variety of designs, methodologies and analytic strategies used to study active ageing in the paid labour force as well as in civil society. The papers make use of large‐scale surveys among employers and volunteers, case studies in organisations, and vital statistics.

The findings of the studies included in this special issue provide insights into the factors and mechanisms that hamper higher participation levels of older adults in paid employment and civil society, and give suggestions on how to improve their inclusion and how to deal with an ageing workforce.

Taken as a collective, the papers in this special issue help propel forward in significant ways the study of active ageing from an international and interdisciplinary perspective.

This final chapter of this book highlights and critically discusses some specific issues concerning talent management in the context of higher education raised in the chapters of this book. It recapitulates the transition higher education is going through. This transition started decades ago but was boosted by the movements of Open Science and Recognition and Rewards. It leads to a reorientation on the conceptualization of academic performance and subsequently also on the meaning of talent and talent management in academia. It points to a shift from an exclusive and performance orientation on talent, to an inclusive, developmental approach to talent management or a hybrid form. Yet, Thunnissen and Boselie state that there is a talent crisis in academia, and this crisis urges the need for more innovative ways of developing and implementing talent management practices. This chapter ends with some recommendations for further talent management research and practice.