1. Autonomy & Control in the Workplace and Beyond Contemporary Data Issues in `Capital’ Dr Philip Cunliffe & Dr Lucy Barnes © University of Kent Q-Step Centre 2015

2. Autonomy in the workplace  How much independence do you have in performing your tasks at work? If you do not currently work, characterize your major work in the past.  Complete independence   … something in between   No independence at all  How well does this survey question track concepts that would be useful for a Marxist analysis? © University of Kent Q-Step Centre 2015

3. A broader survey sample  To your laptops…  Open up www.worldvaluessurvey.org in a browserwww.worldvaluessurvey.org  Left-hand menu  select Data and Documentation  Select Online Analysis  Select Wave: 2005-2009  Select `United Kingdom’ (bottom right)  Type: V246 in the box named `Variable’, and click `Show’. © University of Kent Q-Step Centre 2015

4. Workplace independence in the UK This shows the responses from a representative survey of about 1000 people in the UK for the same question you answered. In the WVS:  Complete independence: 24%   … something in between: 63%   No independence at all: 5 % © University of Kent Q-Step Centre 2015

5. Summarizing this information  What’s the average (mean) level of autonomy at work?  How precise do you think this estimate is? © University of Kent Q-Step Centre 2015

6. How precise?  We can say more exactly how precise this estimate from 1000 people is  The standard error of the mean  Imagine we took a bunch of 1000 person samples, and got the averages over and over again  We’d get slightly different answers each time  On average we’d be estimating the population mean, but there would be variability  The standard error of the mean captures that variability, based on our original sample © University of Kent Q-Step Centre 2015

7. The standard error of the mean © University of Kent Q-Step Centre 2015

8. Confidence intervals  A different way of thinking about variability  95% confidence interval is the interval within which 95% of the estimates of the mean will fall, based on our data © University of Kent Q-Step Centre 2015

9. Calculating confidence intervals © University of Kent Q-Step Centre 2015

10. Interpreting the survey information  How does the average in the survey sample compare to that in our class?  Does this relate to the kinds of jobs you/we  How do you expect autonomy to vary with level of education? have had? © University of Kent Q-Step Centre 2015

11. Back to the WVS  On your ‘results’ page, find the box called `cross by’. Scroll down and select `highest educational level attained’.  What group has the highest level of autonomy at work?  How does this compare to your expectations?  If different– does this mean that the statistics are  Wrong  Useless  Incomplete  Or something else? © University of Kent Q-Step Centre 2015

12. Broader contrasts  How do you think autonomy at work would change with the level of capitalist development? © University of Kent Q-Step Centre 2015

13. More countries  Click back to the `Select countries’ tab and also select China and India  Click again through V246, ‘Show’., and consider the shares in each country who claim to have ‘complete control’  What does this look like, across countries?  Is this surprising?  Why, or why not?  What else about the comparative information do you notice? © University of Kent Q-Step Centre 2015

14. Employer control outside the workplace  Can (should?) employers be able to control what employees say on social media?  "As more and more of our daily speech migrates online, business groups are hoping that [the regulatory agency] will make it easier for employers to control that speech": http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprude nce/2012/07/getting_fired_for_what_you_post_on_faceboo k.html © University of Kent Q-Step Centre 2015