Institutional Regimes, Skills and Employees Experience of Work

1
Institutional Regimes, Skills and Employees
Experience of Work

• Duncan Gallie

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Growing Policy Salience of Quality of Work

• Lisbon European Council March 2000 declared
  Better jobs one of the strategic objectives of
  the European Union
• Stockholm Council March 2001 called for quality
  of work to be included as a general objective in
  the 2002 employment guidelines
• Quality Communication from the Commission to
  Council, June 2001 (Employment and social
  policies a framework for investing in quality)
• Laeken Council December 2001 agrees to indicators
  to measure dimensions of the quality of work.
• Country monitoring of progress in the quality of
  work introduced into the Employment Guidelines in
  2002.

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Universalistic, Societal and Regime Theories

• Optimistic universalistic theories (from
  industrialism to the knowledge-based society)
• Pessimistic universalistic theories (neo-Marxian)
• Societal theories (the Aix school)
• Regime theories (Production regime theory)

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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 (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
• Relative emphasis on Specific Skills vs
  General Skills

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Examplars

• Coordinated Germany, the Scandinavian countries
• Liberal Britain, US and ? Ireland

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Production Regimes and the Quality of Work Skill

• Coordinated Diversified quality production
  (Streeck) requires skilled and experienced
  employees. So strong initial vocational training,
  specialised skills across broad spectrum of the
  workforce with industry specific and company
  specific knowledge
• Liberal Highly innovative sector 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 will be associated with
  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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EMPIRICAL PATTERNS
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Skills and Training

• Coordinated market economies should be
  characterised by
• Jobs with a higher skill level in terms of
  required initial education and training at
  similar class levels

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Case Study Evidence

• Matched case studies by National Institute of
  Economic and Social Research underline low skill
  character of British employment
• Britain less likely than France or Germany to
  train or use workers with a craft qualification
  in manufacturing and engineering
• Also service sector workers in German hotel
  industry twice as likely to have craft-level
  qualifications than those in Britain.
• Retail. Numbers attaining qualifications each
  year as sales persons in France nine times
  greater than in Britain.

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Potential Problems

• Not clear how representative
• Alternative approaches through class and skill
  indicators (European Social Survey, 2003/5)

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Countries

• Coordinated Denmark, Finland, Germany and Sweden
• Liberal UK

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Within Class Skill Differences

• If someone was applying nowadays for the job you
  do now, would they need any education or
  vocational training beyond compulsory education?
• If yes, about how many years of education or
  compulsory schooling beyond compulsory education
  would they need?

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no post-compulsory schooling or training for
recruitment to current job 2005
Classes defined in terms of employment
relations ie forms of payment, security, fringe
benefits, control of working time, opportunities
for promotion.
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Continuing Training?

• Production regime evidence primarily in relation
  to differences in institutional framework for
  initial training. But later training may
  compensate for that (Finegold and Wagner, 1999)
• Strong initial training may be obstacle to new
  forms of work organisation and adaptation to
  technological change by leading to strong
  occupational identities (Herrigel and Sabel, 1999)

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Vocational Training Annual Participation Rate
Estimates and Quality
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Employee Influence at Work

• Tasks Discretion individual initiative in and
  control over the job task
• Team Influence collective team decision-making
• Representation and Consultative Participation
  involvement by management in discussions about
  decisions

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Task Discretion

• European Surveys on Working Conditions 1995,
  2000, 2005
• Are you able to choose or change?
• Your order of tasks
• Your methods of work
• Your speed or rate of work

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Individual Task Discretion 1995-2005Range 0low
to 3high
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Task Discretion (controls for sex, class,
industry and establishment size)
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Task Discretion by Occupational Class
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Task Discretion by Industry
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Team Influence

• Does your job involve doing all or part of your
  work in a team?
• If yes
• Do the members of the team decide by themselves
• - on the division of tasks?
• - who will be head of the team

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Teamwork and Team Autonomy
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Team Influence Score (with controls)(0None to
2Both types of decision influence)
Controls for sex, class, industry and
establishment size
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Representation and Consultation
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• Coordinated countries in practice have rather
  different systems of workplace representation
• - Scandinavian union centred
• - Germany works council based (although
  effectiveness of works councils related to union
  strength (Klikauer, 2004)

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Union Strength
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Works Councils in Germany as Substitutes for
Unions?

• Addison et al 2002, 2006
• No and coverage declined in 1980s and again after
  2000.
• At end of 1990s only 16 of eligible
  establishments had a works council only 12.3 in
  private sector.
• Strong relationship to establishment size larger
  establishments more likely to have works
  councils.
• 53 of all German employees had access to works
  council representation only 46 in the private
  sector.
• German representational system highly segmented.

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Consultative Participation

• Over the past 12 months have you or not..?
• - discussed work-related problems with your boss
• - been consulted about changes in the
  organization of work and/or your working
  conditions

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Consultative Participation
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Consultative Participation Index (with controls)
Controls for sex, class, industry and
establishment size
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Job Security
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Issues in the Measurement of Job Security

• Job tenure?
• Short-term contracts?
• Ease of dismissal?
• Perceived job security?
• Unemployment risks?

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Average Tenure (Auer and Cazes, 2003 Employment
Stability in an Age of Flexibility)
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on Fixed-Term contracts
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Ease of Dismissal

• Eurobarometer (DG Employment Modules) 1996, 2001
• How long do you think it would be before a person
  doing your sort of job would be dismissed in your
  organization
• - if they were persistently late
• - if they persistently did not work hard

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Ease of Dismissal(HiGreater Security)
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Job SecurityHiGreater Security
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Unemployment
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Work Motivation

• Employment Commitment
• Work Orientations

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Employment Commitment

• If you were to get enough money to live as
  comfortably as you would like for the rest of
  your life, would you want to work somewhere or
  would you want to remain without a job?

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Employment CommitmentWould continue in paid work
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Work Orientations

• For you personally, how important do you think
  each of the following is in choosing a job? (V
  imp to Not at all imp)
• Index of intrinsic orientation (initiative
  use of abilities) (secure job high income).

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Work Orientations (Hi Intrinsic)
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Conclusions

• Confirmation of significant differences in skill
  levels between coordinated and liberal market
  societies in terms of distribution of employees
  between skill classes and pre-entry education and
  training requirements.
• But less clear with respect to in-career
  training, where Scandinavian countries have very
  high but Germany very low provision.

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• Scandinavian countries quite distinct from
  Germany in terms of individual task discretion.
• Also Union representation much stronger in
  Scandinavian countries. Unions and works councils
  relatively weak in Germany. Reflected in
  perceived levels of employee influence.
• Also Job and Employment Security high in
  Scandinavia but lower in Germany than the UK

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• The functionalist style argument was that good
  working conditions necessary to ensure more
  skilled workforce will have the commitment to
  perform well
• But consistently with the findings on work
  quality intrinisic work motivation high in
  Scandinavian countries but relatively low in
  Germany
• Overall evidence stronger for a Scandinavian
  effect than for a coordinated market economy
  effect

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Alternative Interpretations

• Production theory as response to welfare state
  power resource theory (Korpi)
• Emphasized capacity of governments, where
  organized labour strong, to provide higher levels
  of collective welfare
• But same mechanisms may lead to major
  differences at level of employment systems
  through high employment policies, greater
  salience of quality of working life reform and
  strong union workplace controls

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• Gallie, D. ed Employment Regimes and the Quality
  of Work. Oxford University Press, 2007, 2009.

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Former West and East Germany2005
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Occupational Class and Skill Level 2003