Table Of ContentAligning Perspectives on Health, Safety and Well-Being
Jukka Vuori
Roland Blonk
Richard H. Price Editors
Sustainable
Working Lives
Managing Work Transitions and
Health throughout the Life Course
A ligning Perspectives on Health,
Safety and Well-Being
S eries editors
S tavroula L eka, N ottingham, U nited Kingdom
A ditya J ain, N ottingham, U nited Kingdom
G erard Z wetsloot, T NO Innovation for Life University of Nottingham, H oofddorp,
N oord-Holland, T he Netherlands
Raising awareness of the interdisciplinary and complementary relationship of
different research perspectives on health, safety and well-being is the main aim of
the book series Aligning Perspectives on Health, Safety and Well-being. Combined
research approaches on health, safety and well-being are becoming more and more
popular in several research disciplines across and between the social, behavioural
and medical sciences. Therefore, Aligning Perspectives on Health, Safety and Well-
being stimulates the publication of interdisciplinary approaches to the promotion of
health, safety and well-being. Recognizing a need within societies and workplaces
for more integrated approaches to problem solving, the series caters to the notion
that most innovation stems from combining knowledge and research results from
related but so far separated areas. Volumes will be edited by expert authors and
editors and will contain contributions from different disciplines. All authors, and
especially volume editors are encouraged to engage in developing more robust
theoretical models that can be applied in actual practice and lead to policy
development. Editorial Board: Professor Johannes Siegrist, University of Dusseldorf,
Germany Professor Peter Chen, University of South Australia Professor Katherine
Lippel, University of Ottawa, Canada Professor Nicholas Ashford, MIT, USA,
Dr Steve Sauter, NIOSH, USA, Dr Peter Hasle, Aalborg University, Denmark
M ore information about this series at h ttp://www.springer.com/series/10757
J ukka V uori • R oland B lonk • R ichard H . P rice
E ditors
S ustainable Working Lives
M anaging Work Transitions and Health
throughout the Life Course
E ditors
J ukka V uori R oland B lonk
D evelopment of Work and Organizations S ustainable Productivity
Finnish Institute of Occupational Health and Employability, TNO
H elsinki, F inland L eiden, T he Netherlands
U niversity of Utrecht
R ichard H . P rice
U trecht, T he Netherlands
D epartment of Psychology,
Organizational Studies
I nstitute for Social Research
University of Michigan
A nn Arbor, M I, U SA
I SSN 2213-0497 ISSN 2213-0470 (electronic)
A ligning Perspectives on Health, Safety and Well-Being
I SBN 978-94-017-9797-9 ISBN 978-94-017-9798-6 (eBook)
D OI 10.1007/978-94-017-9798-6
L ibrary of Congress Control Number: 2015936451
S pringer Dordrecht Heidelberg New York London
© Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2 015
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P refac e
The purpose of this volume is to describe the impact of current changing labour
markets on individual work life trajectories and health. We focus on the most critical
career transitions during life course: the school to work transition, job loss and re-
employment and retirement, especially early retirement due to disabilities.
T he starting idea for this book dates back to September 2011, during the Fourth
International Conference on Unemployment, Job Insecurity and Health in Espoo,
Finland. The ICOH (International Commission on Occupational Health) Scientifi c
Committee that organized the conference decided to invite additional key scientists
in addition to the keynote speakers of the conference to become chapter authors for
this volume. Since the main theme of the conference focused on work and career
related interventions, it also became a main focus of this book.
M any chapters in the volume offer concrete examples of ways to promote sus-
tainable work careers. The interventions described by authors in this volume are
examples of strategies for implementing support in schooling, improvements in
employment contracts, increasing preparedness of individual employees with pub-
lic education programs or developing work arrangements and support systems in
work organizations and other service organizations.
The introductory section of the book illustrates three very distinct viewpoints on
the dilemmas of current working life and its health consequences. In the fi rst chap-
ter, Richard Price presents a perspective on the employment challenges prevailing
in developed economies by showing how they infl uence changing life trajectories.
The second chapter by Simo Mannila describes the work-life challenges from the
contrasting viewpoint of developing countries. Together these two features of the
global economy have induced constant migration and greatly increased the numbers
of low skilled workers in the developed world. These issues will also be addressed
The work on this book was made possible by a grant to the fi rst editor from the Finnish Work
Environment Fund (TSR; Grant # 112008)
v
vi Preface
later in the book together with the challenges related to job loss and unemployment.
The third chapter in the introduction by Guy Ahonen offers still another different
economic perspective on work careers and health. In both developed economies as
well as in less developed countries, individual work careers can be seen as valuable
economic resources and preventive activities in the workplace can be seen as profi t-
able economic investments.
The second part of the book deals with young workers starting their work careers
and contains three chapters. The chapter by Katariina Salmela-Aro and Jukka Vuori
describes students’ preparation for working life and effects of a career intervention
on their career and health. The chapter by Jos Akkermans and his colleagues dis-
cusses antecedents and consequences of the transition from school to work and how
these are translated into effective interventions that facilitate this transition. The last
chapter in this section by Bettina Wiese and Michaela Knecht deals with young
workers’ socialization into organizations and the challenge of balancing work with
family life.
The topic of the third part of the book is job insecurity and consists of three
chapters. Hans de Witte and his colleagues describe comprehensively earlier
research in the area of job insecurity, health and well-being including recommenda-
tions for interventions. In a more theoretically oriented chapter, Kate Sweeny and
Arezou Ghane offer principles for effective coping in uncertain work-related situa-
tions. Tomas Berglund concludes this section of the book by describing experiences
with the so-called fl exicurity model, which is a policy intervention with the aim of
combining fl exibility and security in the labor market.
J ob loss and unemployment are central themes for the fourth section of the book.
Amiram Vinokur and Richard Price have longstanding experience of intervention
research and they describe a variety of ways to promote reemployment and mental
health among the unemployed. The next chapter by Sanders and his colleagues also
has a strong focus on preventive interventions, this time among the low-educated
workers with the aim of increasing employability and with examples from the
Netherlands. Alex Burdorf and Merel Schuring end this section with their chapter
on poor health and disabilities as both causes and consequences of prolonged unem-
ployment illustrating the complexity of the relationship between changes in health
status and changes in work trajectories.
T he last section of the book deals with early retirement and job retention. An
intervention oriented chapter by Jukka Vuori and Salla Toppinen-Tanner demon-
strates ways to enhance career management preparedness, job retention and mental
health among senior employees. Next, yet another intervention oriented chapter by
Mikko Härmä describes how older workers’ job retention can be promoted by man-
aging patterns of working hours. The last chapter by Gwenith Fisher and her col-
leagues survey the research on prolonged working years produced by increasing life
expectancies, describes the consequences for health and well-being and suggests
directions for interventions.
Preface vii
The contributors to this volume provide many promising recommendations for
policies, practice and research that have the potential to greatly improve the health
and life trajectories of workers in both the developed and the developing world. In
a concluding chapter, we bring these suggestions together in the hope that they will
be helpful to policy makers, practitioners and researchers in the fi eld.
H elsinki, F inland J ukka V uori
L eiden, T he Netherlands R oland B lonk
A nn Arbor, M I, U SA R ichard H . P rice
C ontents
P art I Work Life Transitions and Health
1 C hanging Life Trajectories, Employment Challenges
and Worker Health in Global Perspective ............................................ 3
R ichard H . P rice
2 I nformal Employment and Vulnerability
in Less Developed Markets ..................................................................... 1 7
S imo M annila
3 T he Economy of Sustainable Careers During
the Work Life Course: A Case from Finland ........................................ 3 5
G uy A honen
P art II Starting Sustainable Work Careers
4 S chool Engagement and Burnout Among
Students: Preparing for Work Life ........................................................ 5 1
K atariina S almela-Aro and J ukka V uori
5 P ractice Makes Perfect? Antecedents and Consequences
of an Adaptive School-to-Work Transition ........................................... 6 5
J os A kkermans, M ikko N ykänen, and J ukka V uori
6 S ocialization into Organizations
and Balancing Work and Family ........................................................... 8 7
B ettina S . W iese and M ichaela K necht
P art III Job Insecurity
7 J ob Insecurity, Health and Well-Being.................................................. 1 09
H ans D e Witte, T inne V ander E lst, and N ele D e Cuyper
ix
