Ethics and engineering approaches to work

							   Engineering and ethics approaches to work

Labour supply/ working time
• Opportunity cost of work time       •   Limited by ‘pain cost’ of labour
   (Austrians, neoclassicals)             (Jevons)
• Leisure preference independent of   •   Freedom to work (Mill, Fourier)
   work quality (Austrians)           •   Cost of unemployment (Marshall)
                                      •   Employers control duration of
                                          work time (Marx)
Pay
• Long-run wage set by                •   Reverse theory of compensating
   supply/demand, like other prices       differentials (Mill)
   (neoclassicals)                    •   Reward for socially necessary
• Wage incentive to effort (Smith,        labour time only (Marx)
   efficiency wages)
• Reputation effects guard against
   employer opportunism
   (Williamson)
   Engineering and ethics approaches to work

Job design/ skill
• Efficiency of detailed division of   •   Physical and psychological costs
   labour (Smith)                          of work (Smith, Utopians, Marx)
• Skill-bias of technical change       •   A means for ‘passional fulfillment’
   (Marshall)                              (Fourier), self-realisation
                                           (Utopians, Marx, Commons)
                                       •   Deskilling tendencies (Marx,
                                           Braverman)
Problems in extending the reach of mainstream
      economists’ engineering toolbox
• Methodological individualism
    – Inhibits understanding of collective action problems within
      institutional/organisational structures
    – Eg internal politics, power relations


• Static allocation of resources
    – Unable to incorporate learning, innovation
    – Actions/ decisions responsive to more than simply price incentives


• 1-sided integration of ethics issues
    – Economics of happiness
    – Risk asymmetries in personnel economics
    – Also, Akerlof’s gift exchange, social utility functions in game theory
                       Further questions
• How to theorise the employment relationship?
   – Industrial relations focus on control/consent, but inadequate treatment
     of labour market dynamics
   – Transaction costs approach to ‘HRM architecture’, but underestimates
     value of firm activities which do not respond to market signals (eg
     learning, cooperative activity – Teece)


• Role of demand in structuring work?
   – Keynes absent from book, but general model with unemployment
     reconnects welfare with work
   – Linkages with corporate governance


• System versus societal effects?
   – Comparative research valuable in illuminating alternative forms of job
     design (Marsden), production systems (Boyer)
                        Further questions

• Who does what type of work?
    – Labour market segmentation approach
    – Do job characteristics match worker attributes? (eg undervaluation of
      women’s work)
    – Power of certain groups to craft jobs (Appelbaum)


• Will higher quality jobs be paid more?
    – Pay and productivity as equal exchange or contested terrain? (Nolan)
    – Multiple functions of pay (allocative, status, managerial, etc)