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UK Temporary Staffing: Industry Structure and Evolutionary Dynamics

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  • Kevin Ward

    (School of Geography, University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL, England)

Abstract

During the 1990s the UK temporary staffing industry experienced almost unbroken year-on-year growth. Alongside this quantitative expansion the type of business performed by some UK temporary staffing agencies has begun to change, as some larger agencies have attempted to move out of the clerical and light industrial segments and into higher value-added markets. Other agencies have sought to add human resource services to their more-traditional recruitment and placement functions. All in all, the UK industry—the second largest in the world after the United States—has undergone widespread restructuring in the last decade. I argue that the recent growth in the UK industry constitutes a regularisation of flexible employment, as casual and fixed-term contracts are replaced by more formal arrangements involving a third party—the temporary staffing agency. Drawing upon global and national data and forty semi-structured interviews with agency owners and managers in the United Kingdom, I analyse the multidimensional growth and restructuring of the UK temporary staffing industry. I argue that as the UK industry ‘matures’ we are witnessing a degree of deepening in relations between temporary staffing agencies and client firms. More broadly, I argue that the growth of the temporary staffing industry has conceptual implications for how economic geographers theorise ‘the firm’ and explore the globalisation of service activities.

Suggested Citation

  • Kevin Ward, 2003. "UK Temporary Staffing: Industry Structure and Evolutionary Dynamics," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 35(5), pages 889-907, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:envira:v:35:y:2003:i:5:p:889-907
    DOI: 10.1068/a34136a
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Strange,Susan, 1996. "The Retreat of the State," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521564298.
    2. Suzanne Reimer, 1999. "“Getting by” in Time and Space: Fragmented Work in Local Authorities," Economic Geography, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 75(2), pages 157-177, April.
    3. Philip F. Kelly, 2001. "The Political Economy of Local Labor Control in the Philippines," Economic Geography, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 77(1), pages 1-22, January.
    4. Strange,Susan, 1996. "The Retreat of the State," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521564403.
    5. Gary Slater, 2012. "Unemployment," Chapters, in: Ben Fine & Alfredo Saad-Filho & Marco Boffo (ed.), The Elgar Companion to Marxist Economics, chapter 57, pages 360-366, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    6. Beynon, Huw & Grimshaw, Damian & Rubery, Jill & Ward, Kevin, 2002. "Managing Employment Change: The New Realities of Work," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199248704.
    7. Jamie Peck & Nikolas Theodore, 1998. "The Business of Contingent Work: Growth and Restructuring in Chicago's Temporary Employment Industry," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 12(4), pages 655-674, December.
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    Cited by:

    1. Jill Rubery & Annamaria Simonazzi & Kevin Ward, 2010. "Exploring international migration and outsourcing through an institutional lens," BIS Papers chapters, in: Globalisation, labour markets and international adjustment - Essays in honour of Palle S Andersen, volume 50, pages 77-103, Bank for International Settlements.
    2. Linda McDowell & Adina Batnitzky & Sarah Dyer, 2008. "Internationalization and the Spaces of Temporary Labour: The Global Assembly of a Local Workforce," British Journal of Industrial Relations, London School of Economics, vol. 46(4), pages 750-770, December.

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