Work Organisation and Restructuring in the Knowledge Society

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WORKS
Work Organisation and Restructuring in the
Knowledge Society
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WORKS Core research issues

• Changes in work and NFWO from the perspective of
  global restructuring of value chains
• Changes in use of knowledge and skills
• Different ways of achieving flexibility
• Use of time
• Occupational identities
• Impact on Quality of Life
• Social dialogue and the regional institutional
  context

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WORKS steps to follow

• Research objectives proposal/ DoW
• State of the art (Theories) Oct Feb 2006
• Major research questions
• overall design approach for research on
  organisational transformations a common
  conceptual framework as starting point for
  complementarity between quantitative and
  qualitative research
• Translation into methodology (Quant. and Qualt.)
  Feb May 2006
• For Quantitative research
• feasibility and preparations
• Indicators and survey-results

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WORKS 5 KEY ISSUES

• The global restructuring of value chains
• 2. The organisational dimension
• 3. Flexibility
• 4. Skills and Qualifications
• 5. Career trajectories and Quality of life

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WORKS 5 KEY ISSUES

• Crucial issues
• STRUCTURES and CHANGES
• Descriptions and Explanations
• Employee data or organisation data
• Main problems
• What we want versus what we can
• Resources in the first place
• Comparability and availability of data
• Concepts and statistics and indicators
• Focus on value chain, business function/unit?
• How to measure change
• Reconcile breadth and depth

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WORKS Global dimension
1. The Restructuring of GVC

• Objectives
• analysing global division of work and networking
• analysing drivers of change
• Dependent and independent variable
• Descriptive level
• Explanatory level focus on changes, drivers and
  actors/motives

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WORKS Global dimension

• Value chains are getting longer and more complex
  due to globalisation, outsourcing and ICTs
• Vertical disintegration of activities
• Different Scenarios of recomposition/integration
  
• Networks, concentrations, SMEs, new TNCs
  (intermediaires), head- and-tail companies
• New balance and variations between
  bureaucracy/hiërarchies and market as
  coordination mechanisms
• Drivers
• External pressures ownership, markets,
  customers,
• Internal changes innovations, skills, costs, BPR
• Actors and motives cost cutting, access to
  markets,

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WORKS Global dimension
1. The Restructuring of GVC

• Indicators
• (changes in)
• ownership
• structure
• outsourcing
• relations to customers
• relations to suppliers
• Markets and competition
• Product and process innovations
• ICTs
• .

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WORKS The organisational dimension
2. Changes in the organisation

• Objective analysing NFWO, division of work and
  changes in workplace design
• Division of work of business functions stretches
  across boundaries of work
• Employment is managed across boundaries
• Multi-employer environment
• who is the boss, market-logics
• Customer orientation
• Lengthening of GVC implies
• centralisation, formalisation and control

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WORKS the organisational dimension

• Intensification of monitoring in view of risk
  management in value chains (legal, procedures,
  contract)
• New forms of standardisation and codification
• Another management of knowledge work?
• Internalisation of market logics
• the paradox of proximity organisational learning
  and informalities versus formalisation and
  centralisation
• Gender biased changes

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WORKS The organisational dimension
2. Changes in the organisation

• Indicators
• Lay out of production process
• Task compositions
• Forms of eWork, distant work, distributed teams
• Standardisation versus complexity
• Control, quality and performance monitoring
• Collaboration
• Decision-making
• Gendered division of work

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WORKS Flexibility and time use
3. Flexibility

• Objective analysing the use of different forms
  of flexibility
• Atkinson revised
• In the core growing pressure on the core,
  project work, employability debate,
• In the periphery outsourcing?
• what flexibility for what categories of workers
  (along the value chain)

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WORKS Flexibility and time use
3. Flexibility

• flexible work versus flexible employment
• Link with regulation (EPL/EPR)
• Link with impact on wages and financial
  flexibility

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WORKS Flexibility and time use
3. Flexibility

• Indicators
• Contractforms and flexibility
• Working time arrangements and temporal
  flexibility
• For what categories of workers (incl. gender)
• Functional flexibility
• wage systems

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WORKS skills and qualifications
4. Skills and internal labour markets

• Objectives analysing impact on internal labour
  markets, in particular skills acquisition and
  policies
• ILMs under pressure by blurring of boundaries
• Intra-firm skills development versus external
  skill provision/ acquisition
• ...

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WORKS skills and qualifications
4. Skills and internal labour markets

• Different logics of restructuring decisive?
• Access to skills opportunities for learning in
  networks?
• Soft skills accross boundaries - monitored?

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WORKS skills and qualifications
4. Skills and internal labour markets

• Indicators
• Nature of work, knowledge-intensity, complexity
• Required skills (formal, experience, seniority)
• Required skills (professional, technical,
  communication, soft)
• Recruitment
• Skill assessment
• Training (formal informal, on the job, inside,
  outside)

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WORKS the level of the individual
5. Career trajectories and the quality of life

• Objectives analysing impact on career
  trajectories and occupational identities
• Blurring of boundaries between occupations and
  work roles
• Diversification and discontinuities as key words?
• Along the career
• With private life/ in transitions
• In expectations

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WORKS the level of the individual

• Growing subjectivity in work
• Autonomy but framed
• Responsibility but monitored
• Committment required but not rewarded
• Precariousness and insecurity
• In employment
• In income
• In skill reproduction
• In work

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WORKS the level of the individual

• Changing working environment makes workers
  insecure
• Diversification of career patterns
• Occupational identities in change?

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WORKS the level of the individual

• Indicators
• Job mobility
• Transitions, work interruptions
• earnings
• Health problems (physical stress)
• Job satisfaction
• Subjective insecurity