Engineering and ethics approaches to work

1
Engineering and ethics approaches to work

• Labour supply/ working time
• Opportunity cost of work time (Austrians,
  neoclassicals)
• Leisure preference independent of work quality
  (Austrians)
• Pay
• Long-run wage set by supply/demand, like other
  prices (neoclassicals)
• Wage incentive to effort (Smith, efficiency
  wages)
• Reputation effects guard against employer
  opportunism (Williamson)

• Limited by pain cost of labour (Jevons)
• Freedom to work (Mill, Fourier)
• Cost of unemployment (Marshall)
• Employers control duration of work time (Marx)
• Reverse theory of compensating differentials
  (Mill)
• Reward for socially necessary labour time only
  (Marx)

2
Engineering and ethics approaches to work

• Job design/ skill
• Efficiency of detailed division of labour (Smith)
• Skill-bias of technical change (Marshall)

• Physical and psychological costs of work (Smith,
  Utopians, Marx)
• A means for passional fulfillment (Fourier),
  self-realisation (Utopians, Marx, Commons)
• Deskilling tendencies (Marx, Braverman)

3
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, Akerlofs gift exchange, social utility
  functions in game theory

4
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)

5
Further questions

• Who does what type of work?
• Labour market segmentation approach
• Do job characteristics match worker attributes?
  (eg undervaluation of womens 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)