How can new players establish themselves in highly institutionalized labour markets? A Belgian case study in the area of project-based work

[en] How can new players seeking to serve nonstandard worker categories (such as project-based workers) establish themselves into labour markets that are highly institutionalized? This paper explores the case of SMart, a Belgian community-based labour market intermediary that successfully developed solutions to better represent the interests of project-based workers and secure their discontinuous careers. Using an organizational legitimacy approach, we find that labour market entry and growth involve different types of boundary-crossing when addressing the needs of workers that do not fit into established categories. However, to justify boundary-crossing, the new player must complement its pragmatic work on delivering new services and tools with conceptual (cognitive) and structural (moral) legitimation work.

Research Center/Unit :

Laboratoire d'Etudes sur les Nouvelles Technologies de l'Information, la Communication, l'Innovation et le Changement - LENTIC
CES - Centre d'Économie Sociale - ULiège

Disciplines :

General management, entrepreneurship & organizational theory

Author, co-author :

Xhauflair, Virginie ; Université de Liège - ULiège > HEC Liège : UER > Social Investment and Philanthropy

Huybrechts, Benjamin ; Université de Liège - ULiège > HEC Liège : UER > Management en économie sociale

Pichault, François ; Université de Liège - ULiège > HEC Liège : UER > Gestion des ressources humaines

Language :

English

Title :

How can new players establish themselves in highly institutionalized labour markets? A Belgian case study in the area of project-based work

Publication date :

2018

Journal title :

British Journal of Industrial Relations

ISSN :

0007-1080

eISSN :

1467-8543

Publisher :

Blackwell Publishing

Volume :

Issue :

Pages :

370-394

Peer reviewed :

Peer Reviewed verified by ORBi

Name of the research project :

ARC-Understanding flexicurity

Available on ORBi :

since 06 October 2017

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