Precarity, Labor Governance, and Career Adaptability in Decent Work Studies

This systematic mapping review examines how Decent Work (DW) has been studied through three complementary lenses: Precarity/Uncertainty, Labor Governance, and Career Adaptability. A search covering 2017–2023 across SAGE Journals, Wiley, Taylor & Francis, and ScienceDirect produced a final corpus of thirty-two peer-reviewed studies published between 2018 and 2023. Eligible studies used DW as a substantive construct, framework, outcome, or analytical lens; each study was assigned to one primary thematic domain for descriptive counting. The largest cluster concerned Precarity/Uncertainty (fifteen studies; 46.9%), followed by Career Adaptability (eleven studies; 34.4%) and Labor Governance (six studies; 18.8%). Precarity research foregrounded the structural production and lived experience of insecurity. Labor Governance research examined institutional rules, supply-chain power, worker participation, corporate governance, and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) assessment. Career Adaptability research concentrated on individual resources and outcomes within unequal opportunity structures. The journal distribution suggests partial clustering across publication communities, although the review did not conduct formal discipline-level coding. The review proposes a non-causal macro–meso–micro analytical framework and an illustrative measurement schema linking objective employment conditions, perceived DW, governance mechanisms, and worker resources and outcomes. The findings support cross-level research designs while underscoring that adaptive resources cannot substitute for rights, social protection, worker voice, or enforcement.