Descripción de la Alternativa

Spenner (1983, 1988, 1990), reviewing an already considerable body of literature,

suggested that there were two dimensions of skill that could be regarded as “fundamental and underlying” (1985: 135):

• substantive complexity: the level, scope and integration of mental, manipulative and interpersonal tasks in a job;

• autonomy/control: the discretion or leeway available in a job to control the content, manner and speed with which tasks are done (1985: 135; 1990: 402-3).

Spenner himself derives this dimensionalisation from several earlier simplified models, notably that of Field (1980: 153) which divided skill in four components: span of job (number of discrete tasks); difficulty of each task (time required to become proficient); expected standard of proficiency; and the extent to which the job requires judgements and actions in response to changing environmental conditions (Spenner 1983: 829). Another acknowledged precedent was the model developed by Kohn and Schooler and their followers which was based on three “organising dimensions” of personality – intellectual flexibility, self-directedness and sense of well-being or distress – and four corresponding “structural imperatives” of jobs: occupational self-direction (including substantive complexity, closeness of supervision and routinisation), job pressures, extrinsic risks and rewards (including personal accountability) and position in the organisational structure (Spenner 1988: 72-3).

While not suggesting that this pair of dimensions captures all the significant variation, Spenner notes that they have the advantage of being “two primary dimensions of skill that have applicability across all jobs in the economy” (1985: 136) and recommends that “multidimensional conceptualisations of skill should at least include dimensions for subjective complexity and autonomy-control” (1990: 403, emphasis in original). Although he puts this simplified classification forward only as “hypothesis and a pragmatic

approach” (1990: 402), it has since been found to be a convenient basis for a metric for new research where it is possible to construct relevant indicators from scratch, most notably in the design of the UK Skills Surveys where the autonomy-control dimension is referred to as task discretion (Felstead et al 2002: 67).

The exact relation between the two dimensions remains controversial. Spenner describes them as “conceptually distinct but empirically correlated” (1985: 135), but the extent and nature of that correlation is somewhat uncertain. His 1990 article suggests that various empirical studies in the literature had produced correlation coefficients in the range of .5 to .7 (1990: 403), but the only detailed account of this research appears to be in an

unpublished paper (1986, cited by Form 1987: 31) which the present author has been unable to locate. His earlier writing shows a more complicated picture, with his 1985 article actually suggesting “the possibility of divergent trends” (1985: 141), specifically a slow increase in complexity alongside a slow decrease in autonomy/control within an overall stability when averaged out across all industries and occupations. He himself suggests that comparison may be difficult because most of the quantitative research focuses on complexity while the research on autonomy/control at the time he was writing consisted mainly of case studies, which makes the reported statistical correlation even more puzzling. The UK Skills Surveys, as explained in section 5.2 below, suggest that the correlation, insofar as it exists, is quite unstable, varying widely over time and across occupations. Similarly, the analysis undertaken for this thesis, detailed in Chapter 7, indicates that the correlation between task discretion and a different type of skill indicator is generally strongest at lower levels in the occupational hierarchy.

The inclusion of autonomy/control as a dimension of skill is partly historical. The loss of individual workers’ control over their work was seen by Marx as central to his theory of alienation, and remained at the centre of Marxist-oriented research into the effects of industrialisation and technological change over the next century and a half (Form 1987: 30). At the time when Spenner was writing, this debate had been revived by the deskilling controversy, summarised in 5.1 below, and much of the research which he was reviewing was undertaken in the context of that debate. Different authors’ positions on the relation between autonomy/control and skill tended to be determined by where each author stood on the overall deskilling issue. Thus, Form (1987: 30), in an article generally sceptical about deskilling, describes autonomy/control as one of four conceptions that “obscure the centrality of job complexity” and later as a “pitfall”, suggesting that any observed correlation between the two dimensions is simply evidence that autonomy/discretion is another manifestation of complexity (1987: 32). Lowry et al explicitly follow his lead, dismissing autonomy/ discretion as “not a dimension of skill, rather… a function of the broader contextual and hierarchical dimension of jobs” (2008: 17).

Spenner’s reaction to Form suggests a certain ambiguity in his own view. While taking care to distinguish autonomy/control (within a role) from authority (a relationship between roles), he limits his response to reaffirming the analytical separability of the two constructs and ultimately concedes that it is immaterial whether autonomy/control is defined as part of skill, so long as it is treated as a relevant issue (1990: 405). This may be understandable given the different ways in which his acknowledged predecessors viewed the two dimensions; for example, Kohn and Schooler, as has been seen, treated substantive complexity as part of the self-direction imperative.

This is a question that probably needs to be resolved empirically on a case-by-case basis, as different populations may see the relationship in different terms. It is simply important, as Spenner points out, to ensure that the association, however defined, is theoretically

grounded and not simply allowed to fall out of factor analysis (Spenner 1990: 403). In practice, the success with which Spenner’s model has since been applied in the UK Skills Surveys is ample evidence of its usefulness, and provides sufficient justification for

following it in the present research, if only for the sake of being able to use the British data for comparison. There are in any case strong substantive arguments for treating

autonomy/control as a dimension or at the very least an indicator of skill; these are further discussed in 3.4.2 below.