Abstract
We investigate the human sustainability of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and management changes using a French linked employer-employee survey on organizational changes and computerization. We approach the human sustainability of changes through the evolutions of work intensity, skills utilization, and the subjective relationship to work. We compare in the private sector and the state civil service the impacts of ICT and management changes on the evolution of these three dimensions of work experience. We find that intense ICT and management changes are associated, in the public sector, with work intensification and knowledge increase. In the private sector, ICT and management changes increase the use of skills, but at a rate decreasing with their intensity and without favoring the accumulation of new knowledge. However, their impacts on the subjective relationship to work are much stronger, with public sector employees expressing discouragement, as well as the feeling of an increased effort-reward imbalance when private sector employees become more committed. We find that this divergence is neither explained by the self-selection of employees in the two sectors nor by implementation of performance pay. We identify two partial explanations: one is related to employee turnover in the private sector, the other to the role of trade unions. These results suggest that the human sustainability of ICT and management changes depends on their intensity and on how their implementation takes into account the institutional context of the organization.
Highlights
Referring to environmental and economic matters, the European agenda on sustainability tends to include the question of work sustainability
We present successively the results on the impacts of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and management changes on the evolution of the three dimensions of sustainable work, starting with work intensity
The coefficient reported in the first row and the first column identifies the marginal effect of the indicator of ICT changes
Summary
Referring to environmental and economic matters, the European agenda on sustainability tends to include the question of work sustainability Last decades, it has become a strategic issue for public policies and productive organizations in Europe, with the ageing of the population [1], combined with major changes since the 1980s, in public and private organizations. Volkoff and Gaudard [5] argue that sustainable work depends on physical constraints, which can become harmful for physical health in the long run, and on work organization, that may favor or alter well-being, mental health and skills’ development according to how work intensity, autonomy and workers’ cooperation are combined in the workplace. Most of this literature comes from ergonomics and it is based on case study evidence of workplaces and/or specific occupations
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