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Why Has Work Effort Become More Intense?
Open accessAbstract
It is hypothesized that technological and organizational changes are an important source of work intensification, and supportive evidence is found using establishment data for Britain in the 1990s. Work intensification has also been stimulated by the use of high‐commitment human resources policies. A reduction in union power and a rise in the use of temporary agency workers and contractors were positively associated with work intensification; however, their impact during the 1990s was modest.
Overview
CoChat Summary
TL;DR
Using British establishment data from WERS98, Green argues that work intensification in the 1990s was driven mainly by effort-biased technological and organizational change, with high-commitment HR policies also contributing. Declining union power and greater use of non-standard workers had only modest effects.
Key findings
- Technological and organizational change was the most important identified source of intensification: 46% of managers reported new technology/techniques/procedures and work organization changes, while only 11% reported none. Within-sample predictions show that with no technological change, the probability that effort “gone up a lot” falls from 40% to 23% in small establishments and from 44% to 26% in large establishments; if technological change were universal, it rises to 51% in both.
- High-commitment policies also mattered: removing employee involvement and performance-related pay lowers the predicted probability of effort “gone up a lot” from 40% to 32% in small establishments and from 44% to 43% in large establishments.
- Declining union power and non-standard labor had weaker effects: collective bargaining decline was confined to 5% of establishments (10% of employees), and union decline made virtually no difference in predictions; temporary agency workers and contractors were significantly associated with intensification, but fixed-term and part-time workers were not.
- Public-sector intensification was greater: managers reporting effort “gone up a lot” were 49.0% in the public sector versus 36.3% in the private sector; worker representatives reported 66.6% versus 50.8%. Table 1 shows private-sector strong agreement that the job requires working very hard rose from 31.5% in 1992 to 38.2% in 1997, while public-sector agreement rose from 31.9% to 44.3%, with no significant change after 1997.
Methods
- Uses the cross-section component of the 1998 Workplace Employee Relations Survey (WERS98), a random sample of British establishments with at least 10 workers; 2,191 management interviews were completed (80% response rate) and 947 worker representative interviews (82% response rate), with usable effort responses for 1,934 establishments.
- The dependent variable is managers’ 5-point report of change over the previous five years in how hard people work; estimation is by ordered probit of a first-difference equation including technological change, high-commitment policies, union decline, and changes in non-standard labor use.
- Robustness checks use worker representatives’ effort reports and external consistency checks; the industry-level correlation between WERS98 intensification and independent 1992–1997 effort-change measures is 0.681.
Limitations
- The paper states that the effort-intensification data are subjective, findings should not be regarded as definitive, and they await confirmation from other data sets with other effort measures; it also notes possible omitted variables, recall error, and that supply-side shifts are not empirically evaluated.
- The paper states that future returns to current effort are hard to estimate from contemporary earnings functions, limiting assessment of wage–effort links.
- Evident from the text: the cross-sectional first-difference design cannot establish causality; the analysis is limited to Britain in the 1990s; manager and worker representative perceptions differ (Spearman correlation 0.101); and the union-decline measure is rare and refers to collective bargaining over pay rather than effort directly.
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Claims the paper makes
0 Valid · 2 Not valid · 8 Not checked · 118 Own results and interpretations
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In the paper
“but not in small service sector establishments.”
§ WHY HAS WORK EFFORT BECOME MORE INTENSE? > a) Main Findings
plain- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
A result the paper reports from its own data — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“I find support for the proposition that effort intensification is associated with technological change.”
§ WHY HAS WORK EFFORT BECOME MORE INTENSE? > WHY HAS WORK EFFORT BECOME MORE INTENSE? 1. Introduction
plainstates an association- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
- Rests on an assumption not shown here.
A result the paper reports from its own data — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“The use of contractors has an association with work intensification in larger establishments and in small production sector establishments,”
§ WHY HAS WORK EFFORT BECOME MORE INTENSE? > a) Main Findings
plainstates an association- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
A result the paper reports from its own data — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“The proportions in the private sector strongly agreeing rose from 32 percent in 1992 to 38 percent in 1997, while in the public sector the proportions rose even more, from 32 percent to 44 percent.”
§ WHY HAS WORK EFFORT BECOME MORE INTENSE? > WHY HAS WORK EFFORT BECOME MORE INTENSE? 1. Introduction
plain- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
In the paper
“Third, the decline in the importance of collective bargaining is found to raise effort, consistent with findings comparing countries across the European Union (Green and McIntosh, 2001), but the magnitude of the effect is small for the period under investigation here (1993 to 1998).”
§ WHY HAS WORK EFFORT BECOME MORE INTENSE? > 5. Conclusion
What the sources say
- Not checked yetcites Green and McIntosh, 2001 source
plainstates a cause- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
- Rests on 2 assumptions not shown here.
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Rated minor: it would not touch a result — a value no result rests on, a p-value that stays on the same side of the significance level, or a conflict that is clerical, resolved elsewhere in the paper, or outside its own findings.
In the paper
§ WHY HAS WORK EFFORT BECOME MORE INTENSE? > 5. Conclusion
“for roughly twothirds of non-manual employees”
§ WHY HAS WORK EFFORT BECOME MORE INTENSE? > 5. Conclusion
“for virtually all non-manual employees”
Rated minor: it would not touch a result — a value no result rests on, a p-value that stays on the same side of the significance level, or a conflict that is clerical, resolved elsewhere in the paper, or outside its own findings.
In the paper
§ WHY HAS WORK EFFORT BECOME MORE INTENSE? > a) Main Findings
“In the sectoral analyses (columns (4) to ( 8)) the point estimates remain positive but are insignificantly different from zero.”
§ WHY HAS WORK EFFORT BECOME MORE INTENSE? > 5. Conclusion
“Less 0.247* 0.222 0.211* 0.194* 0.190 0.266 0.272 0.195 bargaining”
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Metadata
- Authors
- Green, F.
- Affiliations
- University of Kent (GB)
- Corresponding author
- Green, Francis
- ORCID
- Green, Francis
- Venue
- Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 2004-09-08
- Volume
- 43
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 709-741
- ISSN
- 0019-8676 (ISSN-L)
- 1468-232X
- OpenAlex
- W1571053481
- Cited by
- 408
- References
- 60
- Citations by year
- 2026: 19 · 2025: 12 · 2024: 32 · 2023: 17 · 2022: 26 · 2021: 18 · 2020: 15 · 2019: 21 · 2018: 21 · 2017: 17 · 2016: 17 · 2015: 21 · 2014: 17 · 2013: 23 · 2012: 22
- FWCI
- 38.73
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- hdl.handle.net
- Locations
- Industrial Relations A Journal of Economy and Society (publishedVersion)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- Econstor (Econstor) (submittedVersion)
- SSRN Electronic Journal (submittedVersion)
- Studies in Economics (submittedVersion)
- UCL Discovery (University College London) (submittedVersion)
- Kent Academic Repository (University of Kent) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- Aarhus Universitet
- Leverhulme Trust
- University of Oxford
- Economic and Social Research Council
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Industrial relations › Employment, Labor, and Gender Studies
- Social Sciences › Economics, Econometrics and Finance › Economics and Econometrics › Labor market dynamics and wage inequality
- Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Industrial relations › Labor Movements and Unions
- Keywords
- work intensification, work effort, technological change, organizational change, union power, temporary agency workers, contractors
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