Does the organization mission matter for low-skilled workers integration?

Brolis, Olivier;Nyssens, Marthe
(2012) XXXIIes journées à Aix-en-Provence sur le thème « Travail, organisations et politiques publiques : quelle soutenabilité à l’heure de la mondialisation ? », — Location: Aix-en-provence (France) (13.September.2012)

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The context Quasi-market regulation is on the rise in Europe, among others in the field of personal services sector, where there are mainly low-skilled workers (Henry and al. 2009). One of the main feature of the quasi-market form of regulation is the introduction of competition between different types of providers, whether for-profit organizations or social economy organizations. One of the specificity of social economy is their social mission rather that pursuing financial return. Meanwhile, unemployment remains high in the European Union and non-standard work arrangements, precariousness tend to increase. With the Europe 2020 strategy, the EU re-opens the debate about employment. In this institutional context, the question of the links between the mission of the organization and quality of work is crucial, not only for policy objectives, but also for theory. And there is an obvious lack of fundamental research. Locating the concern within a wider literature, The quality of work is a controversial question in the empirical literature: some argue that the quality of job is worse in social economy organizations, other better. McMullen and Schellenberg (2003) have shown that non-profit-organizations in Canada offer lower wages but a better work-family balance. The presence of lower wages has been confirmed by Frank (1996), Preston (1989) and Weisbrod, (1983) but not by par Leete (2000) and Ruhm & Borkoski (2003) while Mocan & Teikin (2003) have even observed higher wages in social economy organizations. Petrella & all (2010) have shown that politics in risk prevention and the establishment of formal social dialogue are generally insufficient in the social economy sector in France and Tortia (2008) found that Italian social economy organizations offer higher autonomy and recognition to their workers. Nevertheless, the literature is agreed to say that workers in social economy organizations are generally more satisfied of their jobs, even in the presence of lower job quality. This higher satisfaction should be due to the socials values sustained by the mission of the organizations which correspond to the intrinsic motivations of their workers and therefore constitute an additional source of satisfaction for them (Frey & Goette, 1999). Analytical framework The economic literature identified two main sources of differentiation between social economy organizations and for-profit organizations (FPO) which may have an impact on job quality: First, the literature has shown that social economy organizations attract the most intrinsically motivated workers who have generally very specific motivations (Borzaga & Tortia, 2006; Meier & Stutzer, 2008; Prouteau & Wolff, 2004). Hence, social economy organizations have some interest to develop organizational practices adapted to the motivations of their workers. However, since low-skilled workers are generally in a precarious situation on the labour market and considering the nature of the tasks usually assigned to this type of worker, we may have some doubt on the capacity of these workers to be intrinsically motivated by their work. Our first contribution to the literature will be to check if social economy organizations employ low-qualified workers who are more intrinsically motivated than their counterparts in FPO. We will then be able to identify clearly the source(s) of the workers’ satisfaction. Second, the mission would have a direct impact on employment quality. In fact, the aim of the incentive structure established by any type of organization is to motivate the workers in the direction of the organization’s mission (Fehr & Falk, 2002). Since the mission of the social economy organizations and FPO are quite different, we could easily imagine that their incentive structure would not be identical. Moreover, social economy organizations would respect some principles, like the primacy of persons and work over capital in the income distribution and the process of democratic decision, which will highlights some aspects of job quality (Borzaga & Tortia, 2006). In this paper, we will contribute to the economic literature by comparing social economy organizations with FPO on the job quality in the particular case of low-skilled workers. For this study, we defined the job quality on the basis of the Munoz’s work (2009). Job quality is the combination of the following dimensions: Wages, carrier opportunities, working hours and work-family balance, job security, participation, skills development, relational aspects, autonomy, variety and creativity of the task and physical working conditions. Each of these dimensions will be captured by objective, but also subjective indicators like satisfaction. Methodology The Belgian ‘voucher system’ offers a unique field to test the impact of the mission of the organization since it is designed to foster the creation of regular salaried jobs for low-skilled persons doing housework and is open to all kinds of organizations: a variety of for-profit and not-for-profit providers compete on the market. In order to collect data, we have designed two questionnaires which will be submitted to a sample of 50 organizations during the last two months of 2011. The first one is targeted to a representative of the employer, and will be addressed in face-to-face interviews, with a view to seize job quality. The second questionnaire is targeted to a sample of workers in order to complement the information about job quality of their organization and to assess their motivations. We will also compare the socio-economic profiles of the workers between the different organizations. Finally, we will use administrative data from a database of the national Belgian office for employment that provides annual information on the contracts of all the workers involved in the service voucher system.
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Brolis, O., & Nyssens, M. (2012). Does the organization mission matter for low-skilled workers integration? XXXIIes journées à Aix-en-Provence sur le thème « Travail, organisations et politiques publiques : quelle soutenabilité à l’heure de la mondialisation ? », Aix-en-provence (France). https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/158516