Transcript Dias nummer 1 - ESRC: Economic and Social Research Council

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 23 2010
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.
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
 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
Basic measurement framework
External drivers connected with
economic and public policy context
Strategies and policies of
the organisation
Management techniques
and practices (ICT)
Organisational (re)design
Organisational
structure
Employment
relations
Work
organisation
Performance
Economic
Social
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
Employer survey (ER)
PSU
ER wave 1
2011
2010
2013
2012
Retrospective
information
ER wave 2
2015
2014
2017
2016
Retrospective
information
EE
EE
Wave wave
1
2
ER wave 3
2019
2018
2020
Retrospective
information
EE
EE
wave wave
1
2
Employee survey (EE)
SSU
EE
EE
wave wave
1
2
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