OCCUPATIONAL MOBILITY AND WORKER PERFORMANCE*
| Published date | 01 July 1971 |
| Author | F. Livesey |
| Date | 01 July 1971 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8543.1971.tb00858.x |
OCCUPATIONAL MOBILITY AND
WORKER PERFORMANCE*
F.
LIVESEYt
THIS
article examines the extent to which barriers to mobility may exist
between a number of occupations which may be broadly described as
semi-skilled.
There are several complementary approaches to the measurement
of
occupational mobility. One method would involve a statistical analysis of
a large number of job changes, designed to reveal any significant patterns
of
movement. The existence of well-defined patterns would suggest that
barriers to mobility are of some imp0rtance.l
In fact, no comprehensive statistical study of this kind has been
undertaken. Even in the study of
Labour
Mobilip
in
Great
Britain,
under-
taken by the Government Social Survey,2 the only data relating to
occupational mobility is based upon the Registrar General’s Classification
of Occupations, which is in fact a classification
of
occupational status, and
inadequate3 for the present purpose of examining barriers to mobility
within semi-skilled occupations.
The writer is currently engaged therefore, upon a development of this
method by making a statistical analysis of movement which uses a more
appropriate classification of occupations. However, it is possible that any
study of this kind, however well devised, may lead to conclusions which,
if
not misleading, may at least be incomplete.
For example, assume that the statistics showed that of the workers
leaving semi-skilled engineering occupations, a high proportion had found
employment as process workers in the chemical industry, This movement
might suggest that the barriers to mobility between engineering and
chemicals were lower than those between engineering and other industries,
whereas in practice it might reflect the fact that a recession in engineering
had coincided with an upsurge in demand for workers in chemicals.
It might, of course, be possible to discover some of the special factors
which had led to this type of bias in the results, and in addition there is
*
The author wishes to acknowledge the assistance of Mr L.
A.
Goldstone with statistical
analysis.
t
Lecturer in Management Sciences, University
of
Manchester Institute
of
Science and
Technology.
If
one were to define 20 occupations, and to consider the new jobs taken by 1,000 workers
formerly in occupation A, the two extreme situations would be reprcsented thus: Complete
mobility
(no
barriers)-50 workers would find employmcnt in each
of
the 20 occcupations;
Complete immobility (absolutr barriers)-I ,000 workrrs would find employmrnt in occupation
A. Social Survey,
Labour
AfobiliQ
in
Great
Britain,
1953-63,
H.M.S.O.,
London, 1966
At least it is inadequate when uscd in the crude form adopted in that report.
234
OCCUPATIONAL
MOBILITY
AND WORKER PERFORMANCE
235
one general test that one would wish to apply, namely to analyse the
direction of the reverse flows, i.e. in this instance to examine whether a
correspondingly high proportion
of
the workers leaving the chemical
industry had found employment within engineering.
Nevertheless, even if the statistical analysis were refined and supple-
mented in these various ways, the measurement of movement patterns
would still be an incomplete indicator
of
occupational mobility, par-
ticularly in times of strong pressure of demand in the labour market.
In such circumstances employers might be obliged to recruit workers
with a wide range of previous backgrounds, whereas with easier labour
market conditions they might have followed a more selective recruitment
policy.
This suggests that it may be necessary to approach the measurement
of occupational mobility by examining not only the movement of workers
between various occupations, but also the performance, in a given occupa-
tion, of workers with different occupational backgrounds.
THE
CASE
STUDIES
The results of studies undertaken in five companies are presented, on
the basis of which some conclusions are reached about the influence on
present performance of the previous occupational background of workers.
Company
A
The first study was carried out in a company producing a variety
of
rubber goods. The performance of workers, as calculated in the work
study department4 was examined over a period
of
four months, for the
following jobs
:
buffing, tower press operating, metal preparation and
paint dipping. In general these are jobs in which the average operator
might expect to be fully proficient after some six weeks’ experience.
In total,
43
men were found to have a long enough period of service on
a particular job to qualify for inclusion in our sample. This is,
of
course, a
small sample, but this was due to the fact that the investigation was
carried out in the early ‘build-up’ stage of this plant’s life.5
For
each department we divided the workers into high, average and
low producers. Since the spread of efficiencies differed between depart-
ments we did not utilize the same cut-off points for each department.
However, in most instances the high and low producers had average
efficiencies over a period of sixteen weeks of at least
20
per cent above or
below the average efficiency of the department.
The primary reason for measuring performance was for the purpose
of
calculating bonus
earnings. Performance was defined as output per day, output being standardized by reference to
the target hourly output for the particular operation.
We undertook the study at this early stage because we hoped that at this stage we would be
better able
to
isolate the influence
of
past experience.
As
time goes on, the influence of past
experience
is
likely to decline.
7
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