A Word of Caution to Students: Public Accountant Perceptions of Alternative Work Arrangements.

Author(s):  
Margaret E. Knight ◽  
Regina Taylor
Author(s):  
Margaret E. Knight ◽  
Regina M. Taylor

This study provides updated insights regarding attitudes and beliefs about alternative work arrangements (AWAs) in public accounting so that educators are equipped with current empirical analysis to advise students on how to successfully navigate work-life balance in public accounting. We examine current attitudes and beliefs about AWAs by surveying public accountants from firms of various sizes on different dimensions of AWA support and asking firm partners to provide advice for students.  Respondents indicated more agreement with the benefits of AWAs than they did with the perceived costs to the organization and the perceived costs to the participants’ future career.  Collectively, results suggest attitudes regarding AWAs may be more positive than in the past.  Results identify significant differences in the perceptions about AWAs between females and males, as well as AWA participants and non-participants.  Qualitative results are consistent with general support for AWAs but also provide cautionary advice to students.


2003 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 139-151 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kimberly E. Frank ◽  
D. Jordan Lowe

Employees are requesting more flexibility in their work schedules to be able to integrate work with other aspects of their family and personal lives. While alternative work arrangements are being offered at progressively more companies, it is unclear whether the work culture accepts these arrangements as a viable work alternative. Here we examine the extent to which flextime and telecommuting arrangements impact management accountants' performance evaluations, job commitment, and career progression as compared to working a traditional schedule. We also examine whether these arrangements are perceived as being less acceptable for men than for women. One-hundred sixty management accountants from 90 companies participated in our experiment. The results indicate that participation in alternative work arrangements did not impact perceptions of current task performance or job commitment. However, participation led to significantly lower perceptions of long-term career potential.


2011 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Terry R. Adler ◽  
Gabriel D. Isaacs ◽  
Robert L. Steiner

<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; margin: 0in 34.2pt 0pt 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Organizations that successfully outsource may see better value-creation in creating a sustainable competitive advantage.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The objectives of this study were threefold:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>a) provide a framework for studying the effects of perceived distrust that leads to dominance, b) analyze how opportunism parlays into the concept of dominance, and c) determine if the relationship between outsource partners varies by analyzing transaction characteristics.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Our research shows that firms should take caution to fully understand the effects that contract size has on a firm&rsquo;s resources.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"></span></span></span></span></p>


2020 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 170-195 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tito Boeri ◽  
Giulia Giupponi ◽  
Alan B. Krueger ◽  
Stephen Machin

The nature of self-employment is changing in most OECD countries. Solo self-employment is increasing relative to self-employment with dependent employees, often being associated with the development of gig economy work and alternative work arrangements. We still know little about this changing composition of jobs. Drawing on ad-hoc surveys run in the UK, US, and Italy, we document that solo self-employment is substantively different from self-employment with employees, being an intermediate status between employment and unemployment, and for some, becoming a new frontier of underemployment. Its spread originates a strong demand for social insurance which rarely meets an adequate supply given the informational asymmetries of these jobs. Enforcing minimum wage legislation on these jobs and reconsidering the preferential tax treatment offered to self-employment could discourage abuse of these positions to hide de facto dependent employment jobs. Improved measures of labor slack should be developed to acknowledge that, over and above unemployment, some of the solo self-employment and alternative work arrangements present in today’s labor market are placing downward pressure on wages.


ILR Review ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 72 (2) ◽  
pp. 382-416 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lawrence F. Katz ◽  
Alan B. Krueger

To monitor trends in alternative work arrangements, the authors conducted a version of the Contingent Worker Survey as part of the RAND American Life Panel in late 2015. Their findings point to a rise in the incidence of alternative work arrangements in the US economy from 1995 to 2015. The percentage of workers engaged in alternative work arrangements—defined as temporary help agency workers, on-call workers, contract workers, and independent contractors or freelancers—rose from 10.7% in February 2005 to possibly as high as 15.8% in late 2015. Workers who provide services through online intermediaries, such as Uber or TaskRabbit, accounted for 0.5% of all workers in 2015. Of the workers selling goods or services directly to customers, approximately twice as many reported finding customers through off-line intermediaries than through online intermediaries.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document