An old model of social class? Job characteristics and the NS-SEC schema

(2017) - Mark Williams

Journal: Work, Employment and Society
Link:: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0950017016653087
DOI:: 10.1177/0950017016653087
Links::
Tags:: #paper #SocialClass #NS-SEC
Cite Key:: [@williamsOldModelSocial2017]

Abstract

This article explores the relationship between the job characteristics underlying the Goldthorpe model of social class (work monitoring difficulty and human asset specificity) and those underlying theories of technological change (routine and analytical tasks) highlighted as key drivers for growing inequality. Analysis of the 2012 British Skills and Employment Survey demonstrates monitoring difficulty and asset specificity predict National Statistics Socio-Economic Classification (NS-SEC) membership and employment relations in ways expected by the Goldthorpe model, but the role of asset specificity is partially confounded by analytical tasks. It concludes that while the Goldthorpe model continues to provide a useful descriptive tool of inequality-producing processes and employment relations in the labour market, examining underlying job characteristics directly is a promising avenue for future research in understanding over time dynamics in the evolution of occupational inequalities.

Notes

·       This article explores the relationship between the job characteristics underlying the Goldthorpe model of social class and those underlying theories of technological change highlighted as key drivers for growing inequality

·       This model places two salient job characteristic as the basis of social class: how difficult work is to monit and the level of human asset specificity required to perform the job (Goldthorpe 2007)

·       Differences in these two characteristic explain the broad differentiation in employment relations

·       This differentiation in employment relation in turn gives rise to class based patters of stratification

·       The theoretical basis of the Goldthorpe model

·       According to Goldthorpe, social classes are analytical constructs delineating differing solutions to the contractual hazard inherent in the employment relationship

·       Since information on monitoring difficulty and asset specific are really avaible in social surveys, empirically, differences in these underlying job characteristics and resultant employment relations are proxied by aggregating detailed occupational codes to broader grouping (social classes) that are supposed to share similar job characteristics and employment relations

·       Previous research has demonstrated the NS-SEC schema have strong construct validity

·       Technological change, the Goldthorpe model and growing inequality

·       As technology advances and becomes more widespread, the deamn for routine takes fall and the demand for non-routine and analytical once grows, deteriorating the earnings and working conditions for routine jobs, but upgrading them for non-routine analytical jobs

·       There are at least two reasons why they should be investigates in relation to the job characteristics emphasised by technology based explanations

·       Empirically research in both economics and sociology finds that much of the growth in wage inequality over the last few decades in Britain is attributable to growing wage differentials between occupations- whether defined in terms of takes (Goo and Manning 2017) or social classes (Williams 2013)

·       Even though technology based theories primarily provide an over time explanation, there are theoretical reasons to believe changes in job takes may have implications for the relative roles of monitoring difficulty and asset specificity in differentiating classes and employment relations

·       An old model of social class?

·       Must be stressed that job tasks do not completely confound the job characteristics emphasised by the Goldthorpe model, even in the case of analytical tasks with respect to asset specificity. Thus the NS-SEC schema still represents a useful analytical tool in describing broad occupation groups which share certain work characteristics and employment relations. It also suggests that the theoretical basis is still fairly sound

·       If class categories are to explain the dynamics of over time shifts in inequality, it is less than trivial, as we must also assume the theoretical basis is more or less constant. This is a strong assumption given developments in technology and shifts in the occupational structure