Pathways to a Good Job: Perceived Work Quality among the Machinists in North America
| Published date | 01 September 2005 |
| Author | Arne L. Kalleberg,Stephen Vaisey |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8543.2005.00363.x |
| Date | 01 September 2005 |
British Journal of Industrial Relations
43:3 September 2005 0007– 1080 pp. 431– 454
© Blackwell Publishing Ltd/London School of Economics 2005. Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd,
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Blackwell Publishing Ltd.Oxford, UKBJIRBritish Journal of Industrial Relations0007-1080Blackwell Publishing Ltd/London School of Economics 2005September 2005433431454
Symposium on the Quality of Work Life
Pathways to a Good JobBritish Journal of Industrial Relations
Both authors are at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Pathways to a Good Job: Perceived
Work Quality among the Machinists
in North America
Arne L. Kalleberg and Stephen Vaisey
Abstract
This paper examines the perceived quality of jobs held by a sample of members
of the International Association of Machinists, a large union in North America.
It is argued that useful insights can be obtained by examining the relationships
between global and specific measures of job quality. We then compare two ways
of linking them: the regression or correlational-causation approach and the
configurational approach that regards jobs as ‘bundles’ of various characteris-
tics. Our results suggest that there are various pathways by which workers may
consider jobs to be ‘good’ but that job quality among the machinists is related
especially to satisfaction with benefits, interesting work and autonomy.
1. Introduction
Studying how and why jobs differ in their quality is important for many
reasons. Extensive literature in sociology, psychology and economics have
demonstrated conclusively that the quality of a person’s work has profound
consequences for his or her social, psychological and economic well-being.
The quality of jobs is closely related to many aspects of an individual’s life,
an organization’s functioning and a society’s welfare. In addition, a variety
of theoretical debates are based on assumptions about the causes and conse-
quences of job quality including theories of motivation, social stratification
and organizational performance (e.g. Biderman and Drury 1976; Kalleberg
et al.
2000; Lowe 2000).
Social scientists approach the study of job quality in different ways. Econ-
omists tend to focus on aspects of economic compensation such as wages or
fringe benefits, especially health insurance or retirement benefits. Sociologists
generally study occupational prestige within a system of social stratification
as well as the degree of autonomy and control that workers have over their
432
British Journal of Industrial Relations
© Blackwell Publishing Ltd/London School of Economics 2005.
jobs. Psychologists more often emphasize the non-economic aspects of work
(such as intrinsically meaningful and challenging work) and assess the variety
of psychological sources of job satisfaction. Each of these perspectives
is useful but only partially so: understanding job quality requires a
multi-dimensional approach that takes into account economic as well as non-
economic sources of variation in the goodness of jobs; these components of
job quality all constitute significant foci for research.
Overall job quality is often measured in terms of job satisfaction, under-
scoring the inherently subjective nature of judgements about job ‘goodness’.
Examining how workers form overall assessments of job quality based on the
individual components of their jobs helps us to understand how workers
evaluate the different aspects of work. Assessing the links between specific
and overall job quality should recognize that job characteristics come in
bundles; they are configurations of rewards and costs that should be studied
as wholes. Moreover, people differ in their expectations and needs regarding
work as well as their preferences about the importance of various job facets
and so may differ in their conceptions of what constitutes a ‘good’ or a ‘bad’
job.
In this paper, we consider several key issues involved in conceptualizing
and measuring job quality. First, we review the two main ways that overall
job quality has been conceptualized and measured: by combining indicators
of the quality of specific dimensions of jobs and via global measures of job
satisfaction or job rankings. We then compare the insights obtained from two
approaches that link overall and specific assessments of job quality: the
regression or correlational-causation approach and the configurational
approach that facilitates the assessment of jobs as bundles of various charac-
teristics. We illustrate these issues using data from a survey of members of
the International Association of Machinists (IAM), a large union in the
United States and Canada.
2. Overall job quality
While jobs are made up of many components, there are situations when it is
useful to talk about their overall quality. Assessing trends in overall job
quality, for example, enables us to make statements about whether inequality
in job quality is increasing or decreasing. In addition, workers arguably
reduce a vector of the quality associated with different job facets to a scalar
quantity (‘this job is good or bad’) when choosing or deciding to leave a job
(assuming they have a choice to do this at all).
There are two general approaches to conceptualizing and measuring the
overall quality of jobs. One strategy evaluates the quality of jobs along a
variety of specific dimensions of work and then combines them into an overall
measure of job quality. The second derives global measures of job quality
directly from workers’ assessments of their jobs as a whole. Each of these
strategies has its advantages and limitations.
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