Publications
Publications
- 1992
- HBS Working Paper Series
Employment versus Sub-Contracting: The Real Trade-Offs
By: Amar Bhide and Howard Stevenson
Abstract
By many accounts, sub-contracting is in the vogue while traditional employment relationships are on the outs. Ten years ago free-lancers, independent subcontractors and the like accounted for about 10 percent of the labor force; today they constitute 25 percent. Of the 23 million net new jobs generated in the U.S. since 1974, 60 percent have been for free-lancers and subcontractors. The phenomenon appears especially strong in the large publicly traded firms - while revenue growth in Fortune 500 companies has kept up with GNP, these companies have added virtually no new jobs since the early 1970s and have increasingly become what BusinessWeek calls "hollow corporations".
Keywords
Citation
Bhide, Amar, and Howard Stevenson. "Employment versus Sub-Contracting: The Real Trade-Offs." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 88-046, March 1987. (Revised March 1992.)