MEADOW: Guidelines for a European survey of organisations Nathalie Greenan CEE and TEPP-CNRS Exploring possibilities for the development of European data infrastructures for research in social sciences London, June

Policy focus of MEADOW (1)  Organisations and employees are experiencing major challenges from → globalisation → technological change → demographic changes : ageing and migrations  Their responses generate processes of adaptation and selection among them, with implications on economic performance, employment behaviour and employee outcomes  The economic downturn has made these issues even more pressing and long-term recovery and growth will depend on the capacity of employees and organisations to learn and develop new knowledge and competences in order to make the economy more innovative and competitive.  We need to know how organisations, both public and private, can be designed to meet the combined goals of performance and good quality jobs.

Policy focus of MEADOW (2)  The Lisbon strategy has set priorities for combined economic and social goals, in particular, it called for → a positive management of change → the promotion of innovative and adaptable forms of work organisation, with a view to improving quality and productivity at work  Need for renewing combined economic and social goals in setting the priorities for the EU-2020 Strategy  Lack of harmonised survey instruments → for improving the empirical basis of research and policy at the European level on the relations between organisational structures/changes and key economic and social indicators in the knowledge-based economy.  Need for better data in order to map organisations and work across Europe and to identify and foster the exchange of best practices.

 MEADOW is a three years coordination action funded by the European Commission in the sixth RTD framework program (FP6), March 2007 – February 2010  MEADOW sets out Guidelines for collecting and interpreting harmonised data at the European level on organisational structures and changes and their economic and social impacts in both the public and private sectors  14 partners in 9 EU member nations: Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden, United Kingdom  Teams from an academic background with survey design experience and from different disciplines: economics, sociology, industrial relations, socio-psychology The MEADOW project

Basic measurement framework

Main lines of the general survey framework  A survey linking interviews directed to an employer with interviews directed to his/her employees and representative both at the employer and employee levels  Measures of states and changes of the organisation through retrospective questions and a panel survey structure  Interview with a general manager at the workplace level and of samples employees representative of all employees at the workplace  Coverage of the private and public sectors  A flexible approach to questionnaire design and data collection to master costs while securing harmonisation

A model survey framework covering the timeline ER wave 1ER wave Retrospective information EE Wave 1 EE wave 2 EE wave 2 ER wave 3 EE wave 1 EE wave 2 EE wave 1 Retrospective information Employee survey (EE) SSU Employer survey (ER) PSU

The research relevance of linked data  Structured research communities of users for linked data  Employer and employee-level information are complementary in the measurement of organisational change and innovation  information from one level enriches information from the other one  the most informed respondent can be chosen for each topic  easier to reflect on the collective nature of an organisation  A richer set of information allows deepen the analysis by opening the black box of organisations  fewer characteristics remain unobserved, better estimates  analysis with one level related to the other one can be conducted  new sets of instruments for assessing causal relationships  Securing access at reasonable cost to the micro data is crucial

The policy relevance of harmonised linked data  Provides hard facts from different stakeholders perspective  Gives analytical insights that set hard facts into context  evaluation of private and public employers’ policies  analysis of interactions between different policy areas of organisations  monitor the impact of labour market or industrial government intervention  International comparisons of employers’ policies and practices allow the identification of how national institutions generate some heterogeneity in their outcomes for both employers and for employees, which is a prerequisite to engaging with policy supported practice transfers across firms and countries.  Quality of the data at both levels is crucial

EU Policy and the Open Method of Coordination (OMC)  MEADOW could contribute to EU policy in the context of the OMC by providing reliable data and indicators on organisational structures and changes and their economic and social impacts of transversal relevance to:  Employment policy  Innovation policy  ICT policy  VET policy  MEADOW could be the EU instrument for developing harmonised measures of adaptable and sustainable forms of work organisation, able to promote learning, innovation, quality of work and competitiveness

Testing the Meadow questionnaires: validation methods  Testing among MEADOW participants and through the translation process of the core master English questionnaires into 7 European languages: Danish, Dutch, French, German, Hungarian, Italian and Swedish  Cognitive testing through 247 interviews in 11 countries: Denmark, Finland, France, Hungary, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Sweden, Ukraine, UK, and US: → Employer questionnaire:118 interviews → Employee questionnaire:129 interviews  Pilot survey has not be conducted by MEADOW, but some national level initiatives are in the field in 2010: → in Sweden: 900 employers have been interviewed → in Denmark: linked employer employee survey in preparation  Next step: a pilot survey in Europe

Complementarities with other EU survey instruments  Community Innovation Survey  Further information on organisational innovation  Information on workplace skills for innovation  Continuing Vocational Training Survey  Further information on informal learning at the workplace  ICT Surveys  Information on organisational framework conditions  Further information on e-skills and competences  EU-SILC  Further information on work environments and work-life balance  European Working Conditions Survey  Further information on work organisation and changes in the work environment  Information on business practices and restructuring