Converging or diverging? A comparative analysis of trends in contingent employment practice in Europe over a decade

Tregaskis lead author. This output was selected as one of the 12 ‘Papers of Excellence’ shortlisted for the Academy of Management’s inaugural 2007 IHRM Scholarly Research Award. The file attached to this record is a post-peer-review, pre-copyedit version of an article published in the Journal of International Business Studies. The definitive publisher-authenticated version Tregaskis, O. and Brewster, C. (2006) Converging or diverging? A comparative analysis of trends in contingent employment practice in Europe over a decade. Journal of International Business Studies, 37 (1), pp. 111-126. is available online at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.jibs.8400174 This paper makes a unique contribution to the HRM convergence-divergence debate by examining whether organizations operating in Europe, over the 10-year time period preceding 2000, are converging in their adoption of contingent employment practice. The susceptibility of contingent employment practice to both convergent and divergent pressures acts as a useful analytical lens. Data are drawn from organizations operating in Germany, Spain, Sweden, the Netherlands and the UK in 1991 (2918 organizations), 1995 (2048 organizations) and 2000 (1555 organizations).The results suggest that convergence is limited by the institutional embeddedness of organizations.