Job Preferences: the Changing Attitudes to Work of British Employees 19922006

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Job Preferences the Changing Attitudes to Work
of British Employees 1992-2006

• Duncan Gallie, Alan Felstead
• and Francis Green
• Fourth ESRC WAM-Net Seminar
• 15th October, 2008, University of Cardiff

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Why is knowledge about job preferences important?

• Objectives of increasing the employment rate for
  women and older workers
• Need for intrinsically motivated employees in
  higher skilled, more quality-orientated economies

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Long-term trends

• Growing instrumentalism?
• Rising aspirations for skill development and
  self-realization in work?

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Instrumentalism?

• Affluent Worker Studies (Goldthorpe et al)
• Higher living standards and collapse of
  traditional occupational community life
  encouraged life projects based on the nuclear
  family
• Work increasingly seen as a means to achieving
  non-work goals (ie growing importance of
  extrinsic job preferences)

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Doubts 1

• Rising divorce rates may make family-based
  projects hazardous and encourage stronger
  personal identification with work roles
• Education tends to be associated with stronger
  intrinsic preferences and levels of education
  rising

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Doubts 2

• Job preferences may be partly determined by
  experience of work. Experience of higher quality
  work may strengthen intrinsic orientations
  experience of deskilled and repetitive work may
  lead to alienated instrumentalism
• Given general tendency to higher levels of skill
  (Felstead et al.2007), could expect stronger
  intrinsic orientations

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Doubts 3

• Some psychological theories suggest intrinsic
  preferences likely to stay at least as important
  or to become more important
• - Jahoda latent functions of employment
  difficult to replace out of work ie opportunities
  of participation in collective purpose and
  identity
• - Maslow and neo-Maslowian needs hierarchy
  theories greater prosperity leads to more
  adequate satisfaction of basic material and
  security needs, allowing shift of focus to higher
  order needs of self-realization

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Doubts 4

• Implications of increased female labour market
  participation
• - weaker intrinsic job preferences because
  family is the central life interest?
• - stronger intrinsic job preferences because
  women under less pressure to contribute to
  household finances and freer to chose in terms
  of intrinsic quality of jobs?

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Evidence to date

• Early studies largely single time point case
  studies. At best looked to critical cases of
  types of employees that were thought likely to be
  prototypes of the future workforce.
• But empirically difficult to predict trends say
  in work technologies and work quality

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• Crompton and Lyonette (2007), British Social
  Attitudes 23rd Report Are we all working too
  hard? Women, men and changing attitudes to
  employment compare BSA data from 1989, 1997 and
  2005
• Decline in extrinsic preferences increased
  intrinsic preferences for men but unstable
  pattern for women
• Non-conventional and non-tested intrinsic scales,
  with emphasis on autonomy rather than skills
  and initiative.
• Small sample numbers
• No analysis of determinants of trends

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Skills Survey Series Data

• Employment in Britain Survey 1992
• - sample 3855 (3678 employees 20-60), response
  rate 72
• 2006 Skills Survey
• - sample 4800 (4038 employees 20-60), response
  rate 62

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Job Preference Items

• I am going to read out a list of some of
  the things people may look for in a job and I
  would like you to tell me how important you feel
  each is for you, choosing your answer from the
  card (items rotated). Essential, very important,
  fairly imp, not v. important
• Good promotion prospects
• Good pay
• Good relations with your supervisor or manager
• A secure job
• A job where you can use your initiative
• Work you like doing
• Convenient hours of work
• Choice in your hours of work
• The opportunity to use your abilities
• Good fringe benefits
• An easy work load
• Good training provision
• Good physical working conditions
• A lot of variety in the type of work
• Friendly people to work with

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Factor Analysis (with varimax rotation) of job
preference items
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Factor DimensionsExtrinsic
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Factor DimensionsIntrinsic
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Factor DimensionsWork-Life Balance
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Factor DimensionsSocial
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Change in Job Preference Scores Extrinsic
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Change in Job Preference ScoresIntrinsic
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Change in Job Preference Scores Work-Life Balance
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Change in Job Preference Scores Social
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Change in Job Preference Orientations 1992-2006
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Determinants of Intrinsic Job Preferences
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Early Socialization

• Parental interest in schooling When you were at
  school how much interest would you say your
  parents took in how you were getting on there? A
  lot 1992 (40), 2006 (47)
• Highest Level of Educational Qualification (none,
  poor lower secondary, lower secondary, upper
  secondary, tertiary). Tertiary 1992 (26) 2006
  (37).
• Age as proxy of culture in formative years
• Gender. Women with partners and dependent
  children.

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Early socialization and family effects
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Work Quality 1 Skills and Skill Development

• Occupational Class (Soc 2000)
• Qualifications required for person applying for
  your job today
• Length of training for type of work since
  full-time education
• Time after taking job to do it well
• Whether job requires keeps learning new things
• All measures point to rising skill requirements
  of jobs 1992-2006

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Work Quality 2Managerial Involvement Policies

• - Consultative meetings about organizational
  developments
• - Quality Circles
• - Suggestion schemes
• Small increase in consultative meetings, but
  10 point increases in quality circles and
  suggestion schemes
• Work quality model includes early
  socialization factors as controls for selection
  effects

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Work Quality effects
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Income and Job Security effects
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Changes in Year Coefficients with Different Sets
of Controls
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Conclusions

• Not increased instrumentalism, but increased
  intrinsic orientation to job combined with
  growing importance of work-life balance
• Each of the major theoretical positions on the
  determinants of intrinsic job preferences early
  socialization, work quality, material conditions
  of employment get some support.
• Early socialization in particular education -
  and material employment conditions have
  strongest effect in accounting for change over
  time.