The Quality of Work: Concepts and Theory

Duncan Gallie

Nuffield College, University of Oxford

CEE-Ingrid Summer School “Quality of Working Life and Vulnerabilities”, Noisy Le Grand, June 1st 2015

Central Themes

• How should we assess what is important for the quality of work?

• What are the main sociological theories of trends in the quality of work?

• What do they imply for the employment experiences of vulnerable groups – in particular the low skilled?

2

Themes

Part 1 The concept of Quality of Work

• Subjective and objective indicators

• Emerging typologies

Part 2 Theories of Quality of Work

• Universalistic Theories

• Institutional Theories

Part 3 Trends and Institutional Variation : Some Empirical Evidence

3

The Concept of the Quality of Work

4

Quality of Work and Quality of Employment

Quality of work can be seen as an aspect of ‘employment quality’ which includes quality of work and labour market quality.

• Quality of work = quality of current job

• Labour market quality=level of participation, rate of transitions between types of jobs, and ease of reemployment if unemployed

5

Subjective vs Objective Concepts of Job Quality

• Subjective : the ‘utility’ a worker derives from a job - usually measured through ‘job satisfaction’.

• Objective : job quality encompasses job features that can be shown empirically to enhance workers’ psychological and/or physical well-being.

6

Subjective Approaches

Key criterion: each individual’s subjective evaluation of a job : high quality jobs are those that lead to high personal job satisfaction.

- The problem of reference groups

- The problem of downward adaptation

- The problem of lack of knowledge

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Objective Approach

Key Criteria : Inter-Subjective Validity High quality jobs are those that correspond to: • Widely shared values ie for self-determination, development

(consistency with values essential for positive psychological well-being).

• Conditions necessary for maintaining good psychological health (work intensity, job control, job security)

• Requirements for long-term physical health (physical dangers, but also stress)

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Source : trends in job quality, eurofound 2012 9

Earnings Prospects

Intrinsic Job Quality

Working Time

Quality

Intrinsic Job Quality

Skill use and discretion

Social environment

Physical environment

Work intensity

European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (Eurofound)

Job Quality Dimensions

EU’s Employment Committee (EMCO) Indicators Group 2013

• Socio-Economic Security

• Education and Training

• Working Conditions

• Work-Life and Gender Balance

10

Socio-Economic Security

• Adequate Earnings

• Job and Career Security (type of contract, risk of job loss, prospects for career advancement)

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Education and Training

• Skills development (training and informal learning environment)

• Employability (general vs firm specific skills development)

12

Working Conditions

• Health and Safety at Work

• Work Intensity

• Autonomy

• Collective Interest Representation

13

Work-Life and Gender Balance

• Work-Life balance (working hours; parental leave; time flexibility)

• Gender balance (pay and supervisory status)

14

Similarities and Differences

Eurofound EU

Earnings Socio-Economic Security

Prospects Socio-Economic Security + Education & Training

Intrinsic Job Quality (including skill use and social environment)

Working Conditions (including collective representation)

Working Time Quality Work-Life & Gender Balance

15

Part 2 Theories of Job Quality

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Two Contrasting Types of Theory

• Universalistic theories predict growing convergence between countries

• Institutional theories predict persisting distinctiveness of different countries or types of country (regimes)

17

Universalistic Theories

Optimistic Universalistic

• Industrialism (Clark Kerr; Blauner; Piore and Sabel)

• Post-industrialism/ Informational Society (Daniel Bell; Castells)

• Knowledge-Economy (OECD; EU)

Pessimistic Universalistic

• Marxian/ labour process theory (Friedmann; Braverman)

• Flexibility Theories (Atkinson; Capelli; Kalleberg)

• Skill Polarization Theories (Autor; Goos & Manning) 18

Theory of Industrialism Core Theses

• Technology the principal driver of change

• Increased division of labour leads to skill specialization and skill upgrading

• Growing scale of organisations leads to rule-based co-ordination rather than arbitrary managerial power

• Need to retain commitment of more skilled workforce requires greater involvement of employees in decision making through negotiations between social partners

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Some Implications

• Political Structure largely viewed as super-structural – role primarily of co-ordination

• Rising levels of education across the workforce as a whole, implying greater opportunities for social mobility

• Class convergence and high welfare protection lead to progressive reduction of disadvantages of the vulnerable

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Theory of post-industrialism

• Knowledge and informational technology increasingly the major sources of productive growth, implying growing centrality of education (including universities) to production.

• Transition from manufacturing to services, involving growth of managerial, professional and technical (especially scientific, informational and communication) occupations

• Automation progressively eliminates routine and semi-skilled work.

• Trend to upward shift in overall job quality 21

Some Implications

• State depicted as relatively autonomous, but with little capacity for intervention on economic and social stratification structures. But knowledge based economy compatible with diverse types of political institutions.

• Increased centrality of knowledge and education requires meritocratic allocations of jobs.

• The low skilled will become progressively more disadvantaged.

22

Knowledge-Based Economy

• Political version of post-industrialism argument, initially developed by the OECD and then incorporated by EU in its Lisbon mission statement of 2000 (Lisbon Euroropean Council 23rd -24th March Presidential Conclusions’.

• “The European Union is confronted with a quantum shift resulting from globalisation and the challenges of a new knowledge-driven economy…..The Union has today set itself a new strategic goal for the next decade: to become the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world capable of sustainable economic growth with more and better jobs and greater social cohesion.”

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Some Implications

One best way, but active policy intervention determines speed, and social consequences for the vulnerable of the knowledge-based economy :

- Rapidly changing and rising skills require lifelong education, particularly of the low skilled

- Continuous technological innovation requires new forms of work organisation giving greater autonomy and opportunities for learning

- Adequate earnings, security, work conditions, health and safety and work life balance pre-requisites for productivity

(DG Employment : Employment and Social Developments in Europe 2014 Chapter 3) 24

Pessimistic Universalistic Neo-Marxian

Neo-Marxian post-war labour process theories of capitalist development, predicted intensifying competition between employers, leading to declining quality of work for lower and intermediate classes with:

• Deskilling

• Tighter managerial control over work performance

• Work intensification

25

Pessimistic Universalistic Flexibility Theories

• Increased international competition leads to new employer

strategies to heighten flexibility in deployment in labour – particularly through use of non-standard contracts (temporary contracts).

• Increased division between core and expanding peripheral workforce

• Structural trend to greater insecurity at work.

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Pessimistic Universalistic Skill Polarization

• Automation displaces most rapidly skills that involve explicit routines (‘routine skills’) and hence can be easily programmed.

• Such skills are primarily in the intermediate strata of the workforce – clerical and skilled manual work

• Therefore trend towards polarization with expanding high and low skilled classes, but declining middle

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Some Implications

• State seen as super-structural with limited capacity to affect underlying economic and stratification trends

• Employers not technology key actors, but then can there be choice, cultural influence etc?

• Divergent views on change in occupational structure and hence categories most affected by insecurity: flexibility theory sees growing insecurity across occupational classes, polarization theory in intermediate classes. 28

Institutional Theories

• Varieties of Capitalism/ Production Regime Theory (Soskice, Hall, Estevez-Abe)

• Power Resource /Employment Regime Theory (Korpi, Esping-Anderson, Gallie)

29

Production Regime Theory

• David Soskice, ‘Divergent Production Regimes: Coordinated and Uncoordinated Market Economies in the 1980s and 1990s’

in Continuity and Change in Contemporary Capitalism, ed. H. Kitschelt, P. Lange, G. Marks, JD Stephens, CUP 1999

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Also

• Peter Hall and David Soskice, Varieties of Capitalism. The Institutional Foundations of Comparative Advantage , OUP, 2001

• Estevez-Abe, M., Iversen, T. and Soskice, D. ‘Social Protection and the Formation of Skills : A Reinterpretation of the Welfare State’ (in Hall and Soskice)

• Estevez-Abe, M. Gender Bias in Skills and Policies: the varieties of capitalism perspective on sex segregation, Social Politics, 12 (2) 2005

• Iversen, T. and Soskice, D. An asset theory of social policy preferences. American Political Science Review 95 (4), 2001

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The Basic Argument

• Different employment dynamics between capitalist societies depending on the way they try to solve their coordination problems re industrial relations, vocational training, corporate governance, inter-firm relations and employee cooperation.

• Key distinction is between: Liberal market economies (hierarchies and competitive market arrangements) and Coordinated Market Economies (primarily non-market)

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Key Determinants

Employers as the key actors (in contrast to some strands of welfare state theory that had posited importance of organised labour and social democratic control of government)

Decisions about institutional systems of skill formation are

central proximate determinant of work quality Particularly their relative emphasis on Specific Skills vs General

Skills Note ‘specific skill’ primarily in non-Beckerian sense of initial

vocational training

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Examplars

• Coordinated : Germany, the Scandinavian countries

• Liberal : Britain, US and ? Ireland

34

Production Regimes and Skill

• Coordinated : Diversified quality production (Streeck) requires skilled and experienced employees. So strong initial vocational training, specialised skills across broad spectrum of the workforce.

• Liberal : Innovative design combined with mass production. Polarised skill structure, with highly educated elite and large semi and nonskilled workforce with general skills.

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Job Control

• Coordinated: Complex products and skilled work difficult for management to monitor or direct through rules. So devolution of decision-making responsibility to employees and new forms of team-based work organization.

• Liberal: Lower skilled employees will be subject to tight supervisory or technical forms of control.

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Industrial Relations

• Coordinated: Where employees are high skilled and work organization is team-based, consensus-based management more effective for ensuring cooperation. Therefore stronger role for workplace representatives (works councils) and unions.

• Liberal : Stronger emphasis on numerical flexibility in mass production low-skilled systems encourages unilateral management and marginalization of unions.

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Job Security

• Coordinated : System based on skill specificity and high training levels places emphasis on labour retention so as not to lose training investment. Conducive to greater job security. Also associated with strong welfare safety net to encourage training investment, therefore greater employment security.

• Liberal: Low skilled mass production systems may require rapid adjustment of numbers employed. So tendency for low employment security.

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Some Issues with Production Regime Theory

• Basically takes a version of earlier ‘optimistic theories’ as model for coordinated market economies and of ‘pessimistic theories’ as model of liberal market economies.

• Employers are depicted as autonomous actors with little constraint from state or organised labour. How accurate is this?

• Many (indeed most) countries are not located within the schema. 39

Power Resource/ Employment Regime Theory

• Originates from research into welfare state regimes (Korpi; Esping Andersen)

• Argues that employer strategies will be constrained/conditioned by the broader balance of power reflecting the nature of government policies and the strength of trade unions

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Types of Employment Regimes

• Where organized labour strong, and/or left wing governments in power for substantial periods, government policies may lead to major differences in employment systems through high employment policies, greater salience of quality of working life reform and strong union workplace controls

• Distinguishes 1) inclusive systems (Nordic) 2) dualistic (Continental) and 3) Liberal (UK, Ireland)

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Similarities and Contrasts

• Depiction of liberal regime very similar in the different institutional theories

• Neither give theoretically explicit location for the former state socialist/transition countries

• Main difference is that whereas Nordic and Continental countries placed in same category in Production Regime theory, they should be distinct in Power Resources theory given greater strength of organised labour in Nordic countries. 42

Part 3 Institutional Variation : Some Empirical

Evidence

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Data

• European Labour Force Surveys

• the ESS modules of 2004 and 2010 on work and family, with wide range of identical indicators.

• Representative samples for 19 countries for both years. Average sample size c 1000 employees per country per year.

44

Countries and Country Groups (19 countries with data for both 2004 and 2010)

Liberal Nordic Continental France Southern Transition

UK Denmark Belgium Greece Czech

Ireland Finland Germany Portugal Estonia

Norway Netherlands Spain Hungary

Sweden Poland

Slovakia

Slovenia

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Change in the Proportion of High Skilled Employees

2004 – 2010 (Professionals+Managers)

-4,0

-3,0

-2,0

-1,0

0,0

1,0

2,0

3,0

4,0

5,0

BE CZ DE DK EE ES FI FR GR HU IE NL NO PL PT SE SI SK UK All

Change 04-07 Change 07-10

Data from Labour Force Surveys 46

-3,5

-3,0

-2,5

-2,0

-1,5

-1,0

-0,5

0,0

0,5

1,0

1,5

2,0

BE CZ DE DK EE ES FI FR GR HU IE NL NO PL PT SE SI SK UK All

Change04-07 Change 07-10

Change in the Proportion of the Low Skilled

Employees 2004-2010 (Operatives+Elementary)

47

Training Trends 2004-2010

(% receiving training in previous 12 months)

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

Training Rate 2004 Training Rate 2010

Data from European Social Survey 48

Task Discretion Indicators

European Social Survey 2004-2010

• Job Control: Scale from 3 ESS questions. How

much does management allow you to:

- decide how daily work is organised.

- choose or change pace of work

- influence policy decisions about activities of the

organisation.

• Summary indicator = average of the 3 items (0-10)

49

Task Discretion

50

0,00

1,00

2,00

3,00

4,00

5,00

6,00

7,00

UK Nordic Continental France Southern EastEuropean

2004

2010

Work Intensity

• ESS Indicators - How much do you agree or

disagree :

- My job requires working very hard

- I never seem to have enough time to get

everything done in my job

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Work Intensity

52

1,00

1,50

2,00

2,50

3,00

3,50

4,00

UK Nordic Continental France Southern EastEuropean

2004

2010

Work Intensity & Job Strain

• Work intensity in itself is not necessarily a source of psychological distress

• Work intensity primarily source of psychological distress where job control is low (Karasek and Theorell)

• Indicator of ‘high strain’ jobs : above the median in work intensity, below the median in job control

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Percentage of High Strain Jobs 2004-2010

,00

,05

,10

,15

,20

,25

,30

,35

,40

,45

Liberal ** Nordic Continental France *** Southern (*) Transition ***

2004 2010

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Temporary workers as % of those reporting high levels of job insecurity (ESS 2010)

All ESS countries 31.6 %

Liberal (UK, Ireland) 20.5 %

Nordic (Den, Finland, Sweden) 35.8%

Continental (Germany, Benelux) 26.4 %

France 20.9%

Southern (Greece, Port, Spain) 32.8%

Eastern 23.0%

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% Job not at all secure

56

0,0

5,0

10,0

15,0

20,0

25,0

30,0

UK Nordic Continental France Southern EastEuropean

2004

2010

Trends

• General trend to skill upgrading (consistent with optimistic theories)

• And a general trend towards greater work intensity (consistent with pessimistic theories)

• But very varied levels and patterns of change between countries in job control, training provision and job security confirm importance of institutional differences (institutional variation theory)

57

Country Variations

Only Nordic countries distinctively better than the Liberal UK and Ireland across the range of indicators.

Differences between Nordic and Continental countries not easily explicable by the underlying theory of job quality proposed by Production Regime theory.

Rather points to the explanatory importance of differences in the institutionalised structure of power resources between European countries – both in terms of state power and the role of organised labour.

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59

% Jobs Requiring 2+ Years of Post-Compulsory Education in 2010

UK Nordic Cont France Southern E. Europe

Higher Mgrs and Profs 70.2 94.7 88.5 90.2 78.4 86.4

Lower Mgrs and Profs 72.5 91.8 79.7 79.4 76.1 85.3

Intermediate 42.0 79.2 56.4 69.0 52.1 73.9

Lower Sup & Technical 25.6 62.1 52.9 42.9 37.1 62.5

Lower sales & services 16.4 45.5 31.4 30.0 18.3 51.0

Lower Technical 54.0 67.3 45.2 38.5 16.9 55.9

Routine/ Low Skd 8.3 30.8 10.2 15.5 6.1 31.0

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