What makes work better or worse? An analytical framework

Abstract

This article seeks to advance our thinking about better and worse work by developing a novel framework for assessing the quality of work and its implications. It does so in terms of the wider literature on job quality, while addressing the need to embrace a broader agenda and a more dynamic understanding of how to make worse work better. To this end it presents a three-dimensional framework: risk, autonomy and expressiveness. The framework assesses better and worse work and the ways in which workers navigate between these different dimensions of their lives at work. We explore implications for actor strategies and for researchers to take a better-work agenda forward.