| In recent years, the concept of employability has gained increasing attention in the employment literature, as well as in public and political debate. An important aspect of the debate is that we are moving away from a traditional career path where employees are loyal to one or a few companies throughout their work life and get in return long-term commitment from the company. Instead, employability is presented as an alternative (Kluytmans and Ott, 1999; Pruijt and Dérogée, 2010). The idea behind employability is that in the contemporary labour market, the important factor for employees is not the security of their current jobs or the prospect of a career path within their current company, but their employment security on the job market as a whole. That is, their security in terms of remaining in employment and their prospects for a career, irrespective of the company. By this rationale, management scholars have argued for employability as part of a new kind of psychological contract – rather than the promise of a stable workplace and a long-term commitment from the company in return for the employees’ efforts, the company should invest in the employees and increase their employability in the job market (Baruch, 2001; Kluytmans and Ott, 1999). Temporary contracts and reduced job security for employees are in this manner defended by arguing that employability, and not lifetime employment, is the new protection mechanism in the labour market (Forrier and Sels, 2003). In reality, employees rapidly shifting between multiple employers is not a new phenomenon (Øhren, 1997). Nonetheless, a large number of employees do experience a lack of job security, and employability is presented as an alternative (Kluytmans and Ott, 1999; Pruijt and Dérogée, 2010). Recent descriptions of “employability-based” employment contracts include short-term contracts with a focus on graduate training (Clarke, 2017) as well as students and graduates working for free in the hopes of increasing their employability (Grant-Smith and Mcdonald, 2018). The current paper contributes to this conversation by looking at two core assumptions of these arguments: First, do individuals with high employability report weaker preference for job security? Second, do individuals with lower job security experience more employer investment in their employability? Both are important aspects of understanding the employability concept in practice. The hypotheses in the current paper are derived from the assumption of the employability argument. However, as we will discuss, some of the criticism directed at the employability argument contest these assumptions. Another important contribution of the paper is therefore to discuss the consequences if the assumptions derived from the employability arguments are not supported, or if we find support for the opposite view. |
