Trading on embeddedness: Exploiting socio-spatial relations to make the market for the temporary help services industry

This dissertation examines how the temporary help supply industry (THSI) exploits the socio-spatial dynamics of local labour markets to enable employers to develop new labour management strategies. The rapid growth in employment via temporary agencies is usually explained by demand-led or supply-led theories that neglect the important role of socio-spatial relations in shaping the labour market. This research adopts the position that the THSI should be viewed as a labour market institution that shapes both the demand for and supply of labour, and that the way in which this demand and supply are shaped is deeply influenced by the ways in which temporary agencies construct their labour markets on the ground.; The research seeks to redress the limited evidence documenting how the market for temporary workers is constructed. The research was conducted in Central Massachusetts between May 2001 and December 2002 and consists of qualitative data from interviews with managers of temporary agencies and human resources officers of manufacturing companies, as well as quantitative data from the results of a postal survey of over 200 manufacturers. The study focussed on the market for low-skilled light industrial workers.; The research found that by using agency temporaries, manufacturers gain access to a large number of workers from a socially and spatially diverse labour pool, but without incurring marginal costs for recruiting. Diminished recruiting costs allow manufacturers to pick and choose potential employees, filtering out those considered less desirable and instantly replacing them without incurring additional recruiting costs. Over time, many manufacturers have used this as a conscious labour management strategy to achieve their preferred workforce. Agencies can realise economies in recruiting because the scale of the hiring they do allows them to keep large groups of people, mobilized via socio-spatial networks, reliably available for work. In particular, agencies penetrate the social networks of under and unemployed groups who have few other points of access into the labour market---i.e., by reaching into the socio-spatial networks of the job-poor. By providing labour under these conditions, the THSI acts as a formidable labour market institution, shaping both the supply of and demand for labour.