'Scarred Work Histories: the Discounting of Temporary Work Experience in Careers' Leadership, Organisations, Behaviour and Reputation Research Seminar

Professor George's research interests include non-standard work arrangements and how they affect individuals and organisations, as well as how dissimilarity in a team affects both the team and the organisation. More recently, she has been exploring the longer terms implications of both nonstandard work and dissimilarity for individual and organisational effectiveness. Her work has appeared in academic journals like the Academy of Management Journal, the Academy of Management Review, Administrative Science Quarterly, Organization Science and the Journal of Applied Psychology.

Having previously been the Editor-in-Chief of the Academy of Management Annals, Professor George also served as Editor of Organizational Psychology Review, Associate Editor of the Academy of Management Annals and Organizational Psychology Review, Area Editor of the Australian Journal of Management and Senior Editor of Organization Studies. She is a member of the editorial boards of the Academy of Management Journal, the Academy of Management Discovery, the Academy of Management Review, the Australian Journal of Management, the Journal of Organizational Behavior, Human Relations and Vikalpa. Professor George has also worked as a consultant at the Tata Management Training Centre and Price Waterhouse.

The topic of this presentation is 'Scarred Work Histories: the Discounting of Temporary Work Experience in Careers'. This seminar will explore how research on temporary employment has provided ambiguous evidence of its effect on workers' mobility. Are temporary contracts stepping-stones to permanent contracts, or do they lead to more temporary contracts?

Using a dynamic temporal lens, Professor George has examined young workers' careers over a 10-year period involving different forms of work contracts. Her research distinguishes between two types of temporary contracts, transactional versus developmental contracts based on the developmental opportunities they provide, and compare them with standard permanent contracts.

Professor George's proposal is that variation in the discounting of temporary work histories by recruiters combines with variation in the opportunities for developing skills in temporary jobs to explain the differential career paths of these workers. This discounting mechanism, reinforced by limited opportunities to develop marketable skills on the job, sets temporary workers on a path wherein they are likely to be stuck in a sequence of transactional contracts rather than switching to standard contracts.

Developmental contracts, although also time-limited, should not show these negative effects because they are intended to develop verifiable skills and thus are discounted less by recruiters. Furthermore, evidence suggests that time spent in both types of temporary employment is associated with lower salary and career satisfaction after 10 years. Exploring the argument that opportunities to gain skills in each job may exacerbate or mitigate the discounting of temporary jobs, these outcomes are examined using data from a longitudinal survey of 10,904 French labour market entrants and two experiments testing the proposed mechanisms.

After the seminar has concluded, Professor George will lead an expert session workshop, titled 'Inside the Academy of Management Journals: Editor Perspective on Publishing Success'. This workshop is targeted at prospective Academy of Management authors.

The seminar is for an internal audience and will be held on 27 March 2026, 1:00pm, in room LG01 of the Henley Business School building, Whiteknights campus. For those unable to attend in person there is also the option to dial in remotely via Microsoft Teams. If you are interested in joining, please contact Alex Baker on a.j.baker@henley.ac.uk

Members of LOBR faculty may also request to book a one to one meeting with Professor George. Each appointment will last 30 minutes, between 10:30am to 12:00pm. Slots are limited and will be allocated on a first-come, first-served basis. To arrange an appointment, please contact Alex Baker on a.j.baker@henley.ac.uk

LOBR research seminars are co-ordinated by Professor Bernd Vogel and Dr Anastasiya Saraeva.