How Can New Players Establish Themselves in Highly Institutionalized Labour Markets? A Belgian Case Study in the Area of Project†Based Work

Virginie Xhauflair, Benjamin Huybrechts and François Pichault

British Journal of Industrial Relations, 2018, vol. 56, issue 2, 370-394

Abstract: 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.

Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/bjir.12281

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:brjirl:v:56:y:2018:i:2:p:370-394

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0007-1080

Access Statistics for this article

British Journal of Industrial Relations is currently edited by Edmund Heery

More articles in British Journal of Industrial Relations from London School of Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().