In 2008, Adecco began sponsorship of a Ph.D. research fellow at Manchester University’s School of Environment and Development. The research project seeks to explore the role of temporary staffing agencies within the wider landscape of public and private sector labour intermediaries, and how and why this differs from country to country.
Central to all our research is the contention that staffing agencies are active labour market intermediaries with considerable power to shape labour markets at various spatial scales, through both their everyday activities of placing workers across a wide range of job types and industries, and their collective lobbying activities. As such, their growth has had economy-wide implications.