Measuring the Dynamics of Organisations and Work in Private and Public sectors Nathalie Greenan Centre d’Etudes de l’Emploi NESTI meeting, OECD, 17 June 2008

Global Challenges for Organisations and Employees  Organisations and Employees experience high pressure for change from → globalisation → technological change → demographic changes : aging and migrations  Their responses to the transformation pressure generates processes of adaptation and selection among them with some implications on → innovation → economic performance → employment behaviour → employee outcomes

Policy focus (1) It is important to understand the responses of organisations and employees to the transforming pressure in order to identify:  whether and how their behaviour can be influenced via regulations, taxes, incentives  the supply side factors that facilitate flexibility and adaptability of organisations and employees: education, science policy, lifelong learning, employment relations  management strategies that promote organisational change and competence building while simultaneously fostering sustainable social equality in terms of access to jobs, careers and influence at the workplace

Policy focus (2)  Lack of survey instruments  for improving the empirical basis of research and policy at the European level  on the relation between organisational change and key economic and social indicators in the knowledge-based economy.  Exceptions are → questions on firms’ organisational innovations in CIS → existing survey instruments at the national level

The MEADOW project  MEADOW is a three years coordination action funded by the European Commission in the sixth RTD framework program (FP6), March 2007 – February 2010  It aims at setting out Guidelines for collecting and interpreting harmonised data at the European level on organisational changes and work restructuring and their economic and social impacts.  14 partners in 9 EU member nations: Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweeden, United Kingdom

Some features of MEADOW  3 Internal objectives:  Integrate existing knowledge on the dynamics of organisations and work  Describe and discuss the main methodological issues identified in existing survey instruments  Identify complementarities with existing Eurostat/OECD manuals and concepts  A preliminary consensus:  Cover the private and the public sectors  Design a linked employer/employee survey  Consider economic as well as social impacts

Organisational changes are changes in  …the structure of the organisation  …Its ownership structure  … the management techniques and practices used by the organisation (including ICTs)  …the work system  This definition allows to cover a large array of changes in the private and in the public sectors, in manufacturing in the service sectors  Measurement strategies have to capture states as well as changes

The private sector  Businesses change in response to external drivers and in particular market pressures, which increase with globalisation  Since the mid-1990s, external and internal boundaries of organisations opened up, resulting in the retructuring of value chains. The shape of networks relating business partners becomes the crucial element in organisation design  The implementation of new management techniques (including ICTs) is an indicator of organisational change  Some theories tell us that some bundles of management techniques aim at reaching a high level of economic performance (HPWS)  Other theories help us to identify the management techniques and practices and the components of the work system that form the building block of a learning organisation, that is an organisation able to adapt and innovate with a low adjustement cost.  Existing studies based on linked employer/employee data show some strong relationships between forms of organisations, economic performance and employee outcomes. Identifying moments of change in business allow a better identification of relationships.

The public sector  Public organisations also experience high transformation pressure:  similar to the ones experienced in the private sector: ICT diffusion, aging of the workforce, changing needs of citizens  specific to the public sector: regulatory control, changing standards of service provision, accountability, public service modernisation agenda and budget constraints  Organisational responses to the transformation pressure can be expressed  in similar terms in the public and in the private sector as far as the use of management techniques and practices and the description of the work system are concerned  specificities are to be taken into account as far as the organisational structure, the employment relations system and the employees’ attitudes are concerned, with probably some important hetoerogeneity across Europe  A comparative public/private analysis  can be conducted as far as processes of selection and adaptation of the workforce in the context of changes and employee outcomes are concerned  raises further methodological problems for performance issues

Organisation change in French Hospitals COI-H  Centre d’Etudes de l’Emploi directed scientifically a linked employer/employee survey on organisational change and computerisation in French hospital (COI-H) for the French Ministry of social affairs (DREES).  800 establishments 20 employees and more and 2000 employees were interviewed in with a unique questionnaire in public, non profit and for profit organisations.  First results of the employer questionnaire:  95% of establishment belong to a network or are involved in a partnership  70% of establishment recourse to ambulatory medicine  80 % of establishment have developped transversal activities like protocols for pain relief or palliative care  90% of establishments declare that the implementation of activity based costing has generated strong or very strong difficulties  86% of establishment are engaged into quality certification Recent changes in internal organisation, information system (ICT supported) and external partnerships have been rapid

Bringing stakeholders into the MEADOW project  10 Institutional observers are invited to follow the project from its very start and contribute to building up connections with stakeholders  International organisations: EUROSTAT, OECD and EFILWC are represented on the Advisory Board  National statistical services: ISTAT (Italy), HCSO (Hungary) and DARES (France)  Organisations from developing countries and EU new member states: Poland, Slovak Republic, China, India, Korea  Two important dates for discussing the MEADOW Guidelines:  Meeting with stakeholders European Statistical System : February 2009 in Aalborg (Denmark)  Meeting with stakeholders from the from the policy, business, trade union and scientific communities : December 2009 in Brussels  Website: