Contingent Work: a Conceptual Framework

The paper deals with the category of “contingent work’, mainly used in the US labour market analysis and improperly equated with the more familiar notion of “flexible work”. It is maintained that the two notions are not synonymous, in so far as whereas the idea of atypical work alludes to a variety of flexible arrangements within the employment contract; the idea of contingent work rather indicates a series of developments beyond the employment contract. In particular, the idea of contingent work allows to better catch the essence of a labour market reality in which the adjective “flexible” should be referred not only to work but also to the company and to its organizational structure. In fact, it is precisely within the processes of firms’ vertical disintegration that the category of contingent work could be better identified, by including in it workers who - irrespective of their employment contract being a flexible or a standard one - are not part of the organizational and productive “core” of the disintegrated firm