Ubiquitous yet Ambiguous: An Integrative Review of Unpaid Work

• Published date: 01 April 2018
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/ijmr.12153
• Date: 01 April 2018
• Author: Deanna Grant‐Smith,Paula McDonald

International Journal of Management Reviews, Vol. 20, 559–578 (2018)

DOI: 10.1111/ijmr.12153

Ubiquitous yet Ambiguous: An Integrative

Review of Unpaid Work

Deanna Grant-Smith and Paula McDonald

School of Management, Queensland University of Technology, PO Box 2434, Brisbane, Qld 4001, Australia

Email: deanna.grantsmith@qut.edu.au; p.mcdonald@qut.edu.au

The expansion of participation in unpaid work such as internships, volunteering and

educationally focused work placements may constitute evidence of deleterious changes

to labour markets increasinglycharacterized by competition, precarious work and pro-

longed transitions to secure employment. Unpaid work, although under-researched, is

increasingly relevant in times of ubiquitous unpaid internships and the use of volun-

teers in roles that would have been previously paid. Yet there remains a lack of clarity

in terminology and focus across studies of unpaid work. This review article addresses

this concern through two primary aims. First,we review the available literaturearound

unpaid work setting out five themes: characterizations of unpaid work;the prevalence

and underlying driversof unpaid work; the apparent benefits of participation; the costs

of participation; and regulatory and structural responses to unpaid work. Together,

these themes set out a holistic interpretation of the accumulated state of knowledge in

this area of inquiry including the implications for organizations, employers, higher ed-

ucation institutions, policy makers and unpaid workers.The second aim is to synthesise

the current and emerging insights arising from the review as a matrix which delineates

four distinct forms of unpaid workalong two dimensions – purpose of participation and

level of participatory discretion. The review and resulting matrix provides conceptual

clarity around unpaid work practices that informs future research. It also raises prag-

matic implications for institutional and managerial decision-making which is cognisant

of the range of risks, costs, benefits and ethical issues associated with unpaid work.

Introduction

Social and economic changes over the last two

decades have been deleterious for young people seek-

ing entry to a labour market increasingly character-

ized by competition, precarious work and prolonged

transitions to secure employment. Increased partic-

ipation in unpaid work, especially the proliferation

of unpaid internships (Figiel 2013; Harthill 2014;

Holdsworth and Brewis 2014; Perlin 2011), is argued

to exemplify this shift (Gregory 1998). The term ‘in-

ternship’ originated in the field of medical education

(Frenette 2015; Hacker 2016), where it is still used to

denote a period early in the postgraduate training of

doctors when they work in hospitals for relatively low

pay (Owensand Stewart 2016). More recently, intern-

ships have become synonymous with unpaid work in

any discipline. Internships are typically characterized

by a student, graduate or job-seeker spending a period

of time in an organization, performing any combina-

tion of productive work, shadowing a more experi-

enced worker,or perfor ming low-level tasks for those

who already occupy roles in the workplace or pro-

fession (Hadjivassiliou et al. 2012; Harthill 2014).

Interns work in a wide range of occupations, indus-

tries and organization types including private sector

companies, not-for-profit organizations and govern-

ment agencies (Perlin 2011).

Despite rising academic, policy and pedagogical

interest in unpaid work, there is a concerning lack

of clarity in terminology across studies, especially

across different disciplines (e.g. law, employment re-

lations, education), perspectives (e.g. unpaid workers,

employers or universities), and national and jurisdic-

tional settings. The literature encompasses a plethora

of often contradictory and overlapping terms and

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560 D. Grant-Smith and P. McDonald

practices which are collectively referred to as unpaid

work. A central contribution of this article is to clar-

ify the terminology around the phenomenon of unpaid

work which is defined as participation in work-based

activities that does not attract remuneration. Clarify-

ing terminology has pragmatic implications because it

will allow for more consistency, accuracy and shared

understandings in discussions, decisions and prac-

tices by students, higher education institutions, or-

ganizations, researchers and policy makers around

unpaid work.

The article has two aims. The first aim is to conduct

an integrative review(Whittemore and Knafl 2005) of

unpaid work which interrogates the extant literature

on the phenomenon in order to construct a system-

atic knowledge base. The second aim is to synthesize

these insights as a typological matrix which delin-

eates four distinct forms of unpaid work along the

intersection of two dimensions – purpose of the ex-

perience and level of participatory discretion. The

matrix offers conceptual clarity around the types of

unpaid work practices discussed in the literature and a

model for decision-making and supervisory practice

where unpaid workers form part of an organization’s

workforce. The review and matrix is relevant to and

extends management literature in drawing out many

of the implications of unpaid work for managers and

organizations, including legal compliance and poten-

tial litigation risks; managerial decision-making; re-

sourcing and capacity issues; organizational benefits

and costs; and the need to safeguard the rights of paid

and unpaid workers. The article concludes by setting

a research agenda for future theorizing and empirical

enquiry on unpaid work.

Review methodology

The purpose of an integrative literature review

is to ‘review, critique, and synthesize represen-

tative literature on a topic in an integrated way

such that new frameworks and perspectives on

the topic are generated’ (Torraco 2005, p. 356).

The review was conducted in several stages. We

first searched leading electronic databases includ-

ing EBSCOHost, GoogleScholar and ABI-Inform for

peer-reviewed, English-language sources using eight

keywords: unpaid work; work-integrated learn-

ing; volunteering; traineeship; practicum placement;

welfare-based work; internship; and unpaid trial

work. The specification of keywords was iterative in

the sense that the sources identified using the initial

keyword unpaid work, provided synonyms which

were subsequently used as keywords. This method

ensured as many relevant empirical and theoretical

themes as possible were identified across this cross-

disciplinary field. The 145 cited sources were in-

cluded via an examination of the abstract. Empirical

studies had been primarily undertaken in four national

contexts: the US, UK, Canada and Australia, suggest-

ing unpaid work, as we have defined it for the review,

is a concern of the global north. Although feminist

scholars have expanded the category of work to in-

clude domestic labour and care work, these forms of

work are not the focus of this article because they are

not directly connected to employment, education or

the workplace.

Within papers cited in the review, terms were rarely

defined and often ambiguous, especially with respect

to demarcations between what conditions would and

would not constitute the kind of unpaid work being

discussed. A limited number of Tier One ‘grey’ or

non-standard citations – primarily reports published

by government agencies and international labour or-

ganizations – were included in the review (Adams

et al. 2016). These sources, identified primarily from

the reference lists of peer-reviewed sources and ac-

cessed via GoogleScholar, supplemented and com-

plemented the peer-reviewed sources by highlighting

current and emerging policy1trends and concerns in a

field where practice and issues in public debates have

emerged ahead of theory and empirical research.

Following a complete reading of each paper, based

on a staged review (i.e., an initial review of abstracts

followed by an in-depth review), the central dimen-

sions of the phenomenon of unpaid work contained

therein were identified and categorized. The review

was organized in this inductive way because the field

spans multiple disciplines and the absence of previ-

ous reviews suggests unpaid work is still emerging

as a field of scholarship in its own right. Integrative

literature reviews are particularly suited to addressing

emerging topics, such as unpaid work, which would

benefit from a holistic conceptualization and synthe-

sis of the extant literature (Torraco 2005).

Through this process of synthesizing the litera-

ture to focus on core issues, we derived five themes

1We acknowledge that the policy details outlined in this

manuscript are a reflection of the particular timeframe in

whichthe research took place and as such is subject to change.

However, we have included policy issues so that the reader

is offered a snapshot of the policy and practice landscape

relevant to unpaid work at the time of writing, and to which

many of the papers cited respond.

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