This paper examines the mutual expectations of employment agencies, the temporary workers who are placed by them and the client or host companies with whom they are placed. It considers the ambiguities and complexities inherent in the psychological contracts of agency temps, pointing to positive dimensions of the agency relationship with temps coupled with a tough transactional regime. In periods of uncertainty agency temping provided individuals with an illusion of freedom and control.

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This article, based on a postal survey and qualitative interview‐based research, examines the relationship between major private recruitment bureaux and their clients in the UK, with particular attention to the recruitment and selection of temporary workers. The private recruitment industry is growing and large bureaux are seeking closer partnership arrangements with clients. Contracts for labour services are being developed on a 'preferred' supplier basis – similar in type to the approach taken for the purchase or supply of goods or components. However, formal preferred supplier contracts with temporary work bureaux were used by only a minority of clients, usually larger organisations or those having projects or workplaces with high volume demand. While such bureaux seek models of relational contracting or partnering, many clients prefer less fully engaged or 'semi‐distanced' relations facilitated by the informal dimensions of inter‐organisational contacts.

Janet Druker and Geoffrey White, principal lecturer and senior lecturer respectively in the Business School at the University of Greenwich, draw on interviews and on a postal survey of personnel managers in the construction industry, to consider the role and responsibilities of personnel practitioners in construction. They point to the changing balance of employment within the construction firm and the greater involvement of personnel with non‐manual employees. They highlight the importance of various forms of sub‐contracting as a means of strengthening management control at site level. They suggest that the centrally located personnel function may well be close to strategy makers but ultimately the role was found to be advisory with a limited capacity for direct intervention.

This article explores what is often seen to be a deviant case in the development of bargaining structure in British industry, namely the electrical contracting industry, where multi-employer national bargaining is often claimed to have remained strong. The first part of the paper briefly outlines the wider context of collective bargaining trends in British industry. In the second section, the development of collective bargaining arrangements in electrical contracting is outlined. The third section then investigates recent developments and the degree to which arrangements in the industry have deviated from the rest of the private sector. In the final section explanations are offered and implications explored. The industry's bargaining arrangements are seen as having some positive outcomes in terms of the regulation of self-employment, employee benefits, and training.