Despite, or perhaps because of, the economic recession, job quality is again a key issue in the advanced economies. The study of job quality has a long history within the social sciences and has previously featured heavily in Human Relations. It is now timely, however, to revitalize the academic debate. The purpose of this Special Issue is to provide an intellectual space to review existing conceptual frameworks for analyzing job quality and to use this review to develop a new approach to conceptualizing job quality that is multi-disciplinary and international, and capable of driving future empirical and applied research in the area