A Hard Job Is Good to Find: Comparability, Contextuality and Stakeholder Involvement in European Job Quality Research

In international research projects, partners and data often both come from diverse research backgrounds and adhere to different theoretical perspectives and research paradigms. Researchers have to collaborate as effectively as possible in what is often a temporary research consortium whose composition is based on varying expertise, previous collaboration and occasional fortuitous encounters. Investigating work and its quality in a European context therefore presents a range of interesting methodological, conceptual and organisational or practical challenges that face both the levels of analysis of comparison and the research process as a whole. Are we addressing and comparing individuals and their jobs, sectors and companies, or countries? Or are we aiming to paint a complex picture that explores the interrelationships between all of these analytical levels? And in exploring this complex picture, how do we render our findings useful and relevant for policymakers, social partners, managers and activists? In navigating a research project through these questions, we encounter a number of opportunities and constraints, and also trade-offs between different aims and logics of research. These points are worth reconstructing, to gain some insight into the possibilities and insights and the specific contexts of project-oriented research into the working life of Europeans.