The Effect of Computer Use on Work Discretion and Work Intensity: Evidence from Europe
| Date | 01 December 2020 |
| Published date | 01 December 2020 |
| Author | Seetha Menon,Wouter Zwysen,Andrea Salvatori |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/bjir.12504 |
British Journal of Industrial Relations doi: 10.1111/bjir.12504
58:4 December 2020 0007–1080 pp. 1004–1038
The Effect of Computer Use on Work
Discretion and Work Intensity:
Evidence from Europe
Seetha Menon , Andrea Salvatori
and Wouter Zwysen
Abstract
This article studies changes in computer use and work discretion and intensity
in the EU-15 between 1995 and 2015. We document that while the proportion
of workers using computers has increased from 40 per cent to more than 60
per cent, there remain significant dierences between countries even within the
same occupations. Severalcountries have seen a significant increase in computer
use even in low-skilled occupations generally assumed to be less aected by
technology. Overall, the great increase in computer use between 1995 and 2015
coincided with a period of modest deterioration of job quality in the EU-15
as a whole, as work discretion declined for most occupational and educational
groups,while work intensity increased slightly for most of them. Our OLS results
exploiting variation within country-occupation cells point to a sizeable positive
eect of computer use on work discretion, but to no eect on workintensity. Our
instrumental variable estimates point to an even more benign eect of computer
use on job quality as measured by work discretion and work intensity. Hence,
the results suggest that the (moderate) deterioration in the quality of work
observed in the EU-15 between 1995 and 2015 has occurred despite the spread
of computers, rather than because of them.
1. Introduction
There is currently a lively debate both in academic and policy circles on the
eect of technology on the labour market. While the bulk of the evidence
points to no overall eect on the quantity of jobs (Autor and Salomons
2017; Calvino and Virgillito 2018; OECD 2016, 2017),1a number of studies
have shown that technology changes the types of jobs in the economy both
Seetha Menon is at the Universityof Southern Denmark. Andrea Salvatoriis at OECD and IZA.
WouterZwysen is at OECD.
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2019 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
Eect of Computer Use on Work Discretion and Intensity 1005
through compositional eects and through changes within existing jobs. The
compositional eects arise because of the varying degrees to which workers in
dierent jobs can be substituted or complemented by technology (Goos et al.
2014; Marcolin et al. 2016; Michaels et al. 2013), while changes within jobs
occur when the adoption of technology leads to changes in the organization
of work, the nature of the tasks performed and the skills required (Autor
2013; Green 2012; Green et al. 2003; Spitz-Oener 2006). A broad body of
literature has focused on the implications of these changes for wages, but
less attention has been given to their impact on non-monetary aspects of
job quality.
This article provides novel direct evidence on the impact of computer
use on two aspects of job quality, namely work discretion (i.e. the extent
to which workers have control over tasks, methods and speed at work) and
work intensity (i.e. the extent to which a job involves working at high speeds
or tight deadlines). While papers documenting overall trends typically use
broader measures of job quality, we focus on these two aspects for ease
of interpretation.2We choose work discretion and work intensity because
they have featured prominently in the debate on the eects of technology on
employment. As we detail below, this provides a useful intuitive background
to think about how they might be aected by computer use. In addition,
work discretion and work intensity are interesting outcomes per se since
the literature has already established their link to workers’ well-being. Work
discretion is strongly correlatedwith employees’ motivation (Green 2006) and
with various measures of psychological well-being (Gallie 2013; Wheatley
2017),3while work intensity can lead to negative psychological outcomes,
including stress (Green and McIntosh 2001).
We focus on computer use for both substantive and practical reasons.
The substantive reason is that computers are the most widely used form of
technology in the labour market that are already recognized in the literature
to have played a central role in changing skill demands and job tasks (Autor
et al. 2003; Elsayed et al. 2017; Green 2012; Spitz-Oener 2006). The practical
reason is that reliableindicators of actual use of other forms of technology are
not currently available.4In the concluding section, we argue that, given how
pervasive digital technologies are becoming in all aspects of life and work,
there is an urgent need to verify the eectiveness of standardsurvey questions
on computer use to measure the penetration of technology, particularly in low-
skill jobs.
Using data from the European Working Conditions Survey5(EWCS)
covering the EU-15 countries between 1995 and 2015,6we provide direct
evidence on the link between computer use and job quality, exploiting
variations within occupations over time. Similar approaches have been used
to study the link between computer adoption and changing skill requirements
(Green 2012; Spitz-Oener 2006), but most of the literature on the eects of
technology on other aspects of job quality has generally taken a more indirect
approach.7In particular, researchers have interpreted common patterns in
dierent countries as consistent with technology being a common driver8and
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2019 John Wiley& Sons Ltd.
1006 British Journal of Industrial Relations
have used the direction of aggregate changes in job quality to discriminate
between dierent theories on the impact of technology on job quality. For
example, Gallie (2013) concludes thatthe evidence of stable work discretion in
several countries in recent decades is not consistent with theories that predict
that new complex technologies raise work discretion. However, the overall
trend can be the product of dierent forces and it is therefore not necessarily
informative of the eect of technology on job quality. Indeed, the fact that
computer adoption has counteracted (rather than contributed to) a modest
negative trendin job quality is one of the main results of our analysis,to which
we return below.
Isolating the causal eect of computer use on job quality remains a dicult
task, even in models that focus on variation over time within occupations.
To mitigate concerns that endogeneity might bias our estimates from the
base model in first-dierences, we resortto an instrumental variable approach
that exploits the secular declining trend in computing cost for identification
(Acemoglu and Autor 2011; Autor and Dorn 2013; Nordhaus 2007). We
instrument the change in computer use in one country-occupation cell with
the average of the contemporaneous change in computer use in occupations
involving similar tasks in other countries. While we are not aware of other
applications to study the eect of computer use,9the approach of using
changes in other countries as instruments to exploit common exogenous
trends for identification is increasingly used in the related literature. For
example, Autor et al. (2013) use changes in Chinese imports to other high-
income countries to instrument changes in import penetration to US local
labour markets, while Acemoglu and Restrepo (2017) instrument changes in
robot penetrationin US industries with those in other advanced countries and
Dauth et al. (2017) apply the same strategy to German data.
Tomeasure these two aspects of job quality, we employ sub-components of
the indexes proposed byGreen et al. (2013) using earlier waves of the EWCS.10
Our measure of work discretion reflects the extent to which individuals have
control over (i) the order in which they perform their tasks, (ii) the methods
of work and (iii) the speed at which they work. Our measure of work intensity
combines the answers to questions on whether a job involves working (i) at
high speeds and (ii) to tight deadlines.
The eect of computer use on work discretion is aprioriambiguous. A
positive eect might arise if computers provideworkers with a higher degree of
flexibility in the organization of their workand increase the control they have
overit. In particular, researchers haveargued that the upskilling brought about
by modern technologies is closely linked to a higher degree of control over
one’s work. However, evidence for the United States indicates that the arrival
of computers has led to only a modest increase in skill requirements (Handel
2016; Osterman 2013). In addition, even in countries such as the UK where
upskilling has been stronger (Green 2012; Green et al. 2016), work discretion
has been relativelystable in recent decades suggesting, as pointed out by Gallie
(2013), that this upskilling has not necessarily translated into increased work
discretion.
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2019 John Wiley& Sons Ltd.
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