1. 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

2. 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

3. 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

4. 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

5. 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

6. 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

7. 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

8. 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.

9. 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

10. 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 2006-2007 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

11. 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: http://www.meadow-project.euhttp://www.meadow-project.eu