Work organisation and restructuring in the knowledge society

It is generally agreed that major changes in work are taking place in the organisation of work as corporate structures are transformed in the context of economic globalisation and rapid technological change. But how can these changes be understood? And what are the impacts on social institutions and on workers and their families? The WORKS project brought together 17 research institutes in 13 European countries to investigate these important issues through a comprehensive four year research programme.organisation of work, globalisation, technological change, Europe

Work organisation and restructuring in the knowledge society

It is generally agreed that major changes in work are taking place in the organisation of work as corporate structures are transformed in the context of economic globalisation and rapid technological change. But how can these changes be understood? And what are the impacts on social institutions and on workers and their families? The WORKS project brought together 17 research institutes in 13 European countries to investigate these important issues through a comprehensive four year research programme.WORKS European Commissio

Good employees through good jobs : a latent profile analysis of job types and employee outcomes in the Belgian electricity sector

The question of what constitutes a good job concerns employers, employees and policymakers alike. Given the multiple possible contingencies, this study applies a latent profile analysis (LPA) to employee data from the Belgian electricity sector to identify different job types based on the combinations of various job demands and resources. These job types are subsequently related to employee outcomes in terms of work engagement and innovative work behaviour, for which threshold values are computed using relative operating characteristic (ROC) analysis. The combination of both methods reveals that low-strain jobs with high resources and reasonable demands perform the best in terms of work engagement. For innovative work behaviour, they perform equally well as active jobs which combine high demands with high resources. Employees in jobs with low resources and high demands (high-strain and very high-strain jobs) are less likely to be engaged and innovative.Purpose-The purpose of this paper is to identify different job types in the Belgian electricity sector and their relations with employee outcomes such as work engagement and innovative work behaviour (IWB). Design/methodology/approach-This paper uses a combination of latent profile analysis and relative operating characteristics (ROC) analysis. Findings-Depending on the job resources and demands, five different job types are identified corresponding largely to the Karasek and Theorell (1990) job types. Their relation with the outcomes is not parallel with low-strain jobs performing best for work engagement, and active jobs for IWB. Research limitations/implications-The combination of methods used in this study increases significantly the ease of communication of the findings, yet an external benchmark for the ROC analysis would be preferable. Practical implications-To foster engagement and IWB with employees one should focus on the job content and only increase demands if they are combined with sufficient resources. Originality/value-This research is the first in its kind that relates latent job types with different employee outcomes using a combination of latent profile and ROC analysis