Ponderación de los Criterios Seleccionados

As noted in 3.3.3 above, both Spenner and Form agree that complexity is a central unifying theme in the various attempts they document to measure the content of skill across

occupations and time. Some kind of complexity is a key element for designating one skill as “more” (difficult, advanced, sophisticated, demanding, knowledge-intensive) than another, i.e. a key dimension of qualitative variation. In this sense a job involving many tasks of different types exercised in coordination, or else a small number of task types that are less straightforward to carry out, is generally regarded as more skilful than one that comprehends only a few simple tasks.

Spenner’s definition of substantive complexity has three components, level, scope and integration. They can be conceptualised for working purposes as follows:

• Level refers to the element of difficulty involved in carrying out a task. This could include such things as knowledge content, required aptitudes, need for prior

experience, responsibility and unpredictability. A job that simply requires

performance of a large number of different tasks is not necessarily complex in this sense if each of them is very straightforward and requires little knowledge, thought or dexterity to get right. Given two jobs that involve the same number and range of tasks, the one in which it is harder to do the individual tasks effectively will rate as the more complex on this criterion.

• Scope refers not just to the number of different tasks to be done, but to the range of qualitative variation among them. A job that involves carrying out a great many separate tasks of the same kind (e.g. using a highly automated machine on a speeded-up assembly line, or handling heavy traffic in a call centre where the inquiries are routine and the interactions rigidly scripted) may be intensive or demanding simply because of the volume of work to be done in the time, but does not necessarily pass the test of complexity by this definition.

• Integration is the need and capacity to carry out tasks of different kinds, each requiring its own distinctive knowledge and having its own distinctive success criteria, in a coordinated fashion so that they work synergistically towards a given end. Complexity thus implies not just doing many things, or doing many things of different kinds, but doing them together to produce an outcome or output which is broader or sometimes different in scope from any one of them.

The element of integration distinguishes this definition of complexity from the model of competency-based training (CBT) and certification which has dominated Australian VET policy since the 1980s. The CBT approach implies that a person who has demonstrated

exercise an occupation or complex skill of which those competencies are elements. A view of complexity based on integration suggests that the skill lies in the coordination rather than in the individual elements. Nelson and Winter, developing an argument originally put forward by Michael Polanyi, define skill as:

A capability for a smooth sequence of coordinated behavior that is ordinarily effective relative to its objectives, given the context in which it normally occurs.

(1982: 73)

They go on to describe three interdependent characteristics of skill: it involves a sequence of steps; a performer is not normally aware of the details of his performance; and the options at each stage are selected automatically and without awareness that a choice is being made. They compare skill first to organisational routines, and then to computer programs in that their “execution is ordinarily a highly complex performance relative to the actions required to initiate the performance” (1982: 75). This concept of skill bears more resemblance to the models of advanced skill outlined in 3.2, e.g. Attewell’s concept of virtuosity, than to Spenner’s more generic model, but sheds a useful light on the implications and significance of the complexity dimension in the latter.

Defined in this way, substantive complexity is conceptually distinct from simple work- intensification. Consider for example an organisation where most of the lower-skilled support positions have been eliminated in the interests of economy, as occurred in most Commonwealth agencies in the last decade of the 20th century following the merger of the Third and Fourth Divisions into a single clerical-administrative stream. This change left non-managerial professional employees with many of the tasks previously handled by clerical support staff, alongside their continuing substantive responsibilities. Their jobs might be said in a colloquial sense to have become more complex as a result (indeed, the process was sometimes characterised as multiskilling), but equally commonsense usage might suggest that they had been partly deskilled. Under Spenner’s definition of

complexity this contradiction no longer applies. Firstly, the average “level” (i.e. difficulty or knowledge requirement) of their tasks fell even as their number and diversity (“scope”) increased. Secondly, the clerical support functions were often not closely integrated with their professional work but rather a separate set of tasks fulfilling a different function and competing with the professional work for the available time. Consequently, substantive complexity can be said to have declined even where the jobs became more technically diverse and more demanding in terms of output per hour worked.

Precisely because of the stringent test involved, i.e. the need for evidence on all three sub- dimensions, substantive complexity poses measurement problems which might not initially be evident. If integration of tasks is an essential criterion, then simple counting of the distinct tasks involved in a job provides only part of the answer; it is also necessary to measure integration, and it is difficult to think of even a theoretical basis on which a uniform objective metric could be developed for integration in the sense of task synergy or complementarity . Introducing task difficulty into the equation, under the heading of “level”, effectively begs the very question which the model sets out to resolve, since it means finding a neutral metric to rank tasks on their difficulty across the full range of technical specialisations. These complications effectively throw the researcher back into the domain of subjective judgements and rankings.

The UK Skills Surveys, as already noted, take a triangulation approach to this dilemma. The main element is still simple enumeration of job components, but with generic activities or capabilities abstracted from the job-specific tasks at a level of generality that makes ranking them by “level”, at least potentially, a more intuitive and consensual exercise. Even so, they complement these data with others on learning time and typically required qualifications which provide some kind of proxy for the knowledge and coordination elements of complexity.

One of the more compelling proxies for both level and integration is the time it takes to learn to do a job properly. This includes not only the amount of formal education and training, which captures an important aspect of the difficulty element, but just as

importantly the amount of informal learning on the job and simple practice, which probably comes closest of any proxy to indicating the level of integration required. Unfortunately few data exist on the latter, except where they have been intentionally collected by purpose- designed surveys, so that attempts to quantify learning time risk over-weighting the formal element and privileging those jobs which incorporate high levels of codified knowledge or rely heavily on structured pre-employment training. Similarly, the knowledge requirement of a job represents a credible proxy or even indicator of its difficulty, but because a high proportion of the knowledge required to do any job is tacit, and no valid means has yet been found of measuring tacit knowledge directly, there is little hope of finding a metric that captures both elements accurately.

A further distinction needs to be made between learning time (i.e. prior learning which is necessary before a job can be done well) and learning requirement (the need to continue learning new things in order to keep up with the evolving requirements of the job). The latter is treated here as an element of skill-intensity, and will be discussed below under that heading.

Another common set of proxies for complexity involves predictability, routinisation and repetitiveness at one end of the scale and variety, adaptiveness and initiative at the other. It makes intuitive sense to suppose that a job where nothing is given, one needs to think on one’s feet and the range of challenges is unpredictable is more complicated and harder to get right than one where all the roles, tasks and responsibilities are mapped out beforehand in strict protocols, few surprises can be expected, and those which do occur must be left to someone further up the line to sort out.

Initiative is the element where substantive complexity and task discretion most obviously intersect, and will be treated under the latter heading. Unpredictability has equally obvious links to skill-intensity, in that it is one of the common ways a job can “stretch” those who work in it. At this point in the argument it is most appropriate to focus on the aspects of routine, repetitiveness and variety which belong most clearly in the complexity dimension. It is common to view routine/repetitiveness and variety as lying at opposite ends of the same spectrum. Yet in many jobs which are acknowledged to be highly skilled, the skill lies precisely in being able to repeat the same set of tasks over and over again with great precision and a minimum of variation. An example is the specialist cataract surgeon who has learned to carry out the same operation dozens of times a day, every week, for years on end, with no room for mistakes and only a limited range of known circumstances requiring a change of approach. And when the retiring Chief Justice of the High Court of Australia

can say “There is much that is repetitive about what I do in the law”3, it is clear that not all jobs requiring repetition can be low-skilled. This need for accurate repetition would seem to be most relevant in heavily regulated occupations such as law and accountancy where individual responsibility is high, due or correct process is a key element in satisfying the customer’s or the public interest, individual cases must be handled without discrimination and “creativity” is colloquially seen as a vice. As in the cases of both the judge and the surgeon, the level of skill needed to repeat a complex standard operation with total accuracy is typically reflected in very extended learning times.

The opposition can also be criticised in the light of organisational learning theory. Routines are now generally viewed as one of the most powerful tools by which an organisation can harness its collective knowledge to solve complex problems (Cohen, Burkhart, Dosi, Egidi, Marengo, Warglien and Winter 1996). The skill required to follow a routine can be considerable in types of work organisation where highly complex tasks are handled by subdividing them into routines where each member of a team has a prescribed function to fulfil and the success of the overall operation depends on each member of the team working precisely as expected and in precise coordination with the others. Such routines, being at least partly tacit, are often very difficult for a newcomer to learn. As seen above, Nelson and Winter see skills as performing the same function for an

individual as routines do for an organisation, suggesting that the two concepts have much in common. Indeed, the model of skill derived from Polanyi and elaborated by Nelson and Winter sees routinisation as an inevitable consequence of fully developed skill:

Skills are deep channels in which behavior normally runs smoothly and

effectively… suppression of choice is certainly associated with, and is probably a condition for, the smoothness and effectiveness that skilled behavior confers.

(Nelson and Winter 1982: 84-5, emphasis in original) At the other end of the presumed scale, task variety is a direct indicator of the scope sub- dimension and connected to integration: in principle, the more disparate the set of competencies that need to be exercised synergistically, the more difficult the integration task. In this sense it is probably the closest thing available in most circumstances to a direct indicator of integration. However, such variety can coexist with complex routines, in that the routine represents the only way such a diverse task set can be coordinated. To confuse the matter further, many of the most difficult jobs in society (e.g. policing) require a judicious interplay of creative sensitivity to the circumstances of the individual case and a commitment to impartiality and due process. In such cases the coexistence of

repetitiveness and novelty is what determines the difficulty of the integration task. An additional complication is that a job which requires the practitioner to make many choices under conditions of uncertainty may well be taken as objectively complex, but for those who follow in the tradition of Polanyi and in that of the ethnomethodologists,

awareness of these choices is evidence of an imperfectly skilled practitioner. In Attewell’s words, “All events are unique cases; human skills consist of effortlessly translating each unique instance into an example of routine… Skill inheres in the ability to do this without recognizing it, in acquired or trained ‘blindness’ to uncertainty and uniqueness” (Attewell

3

1990: 433). This paradox has implications for what constitutes good evidence: in this context at least, self-report could be seen as unreliable because it would tend to understate the skilfulness of the most skilled individuals, and of the jobs in which they work.

The picture that emerges from these considerations is profoundly ambiguous. The best that can be concluded is that routine, repetition and variety are all relevant to the substantive complexity dimension, but none of them is a uniform, unequivocal or monotonic indicator of complexity. Their significance will vary according to the circumstances and the other characteristics of the job, and hence their implications need to be analysed case by case4. In any event, it seems preferable to see the three sub-dimensions as conceptually distinct rather than as opposite points of the one scale.