Roger Penn

Skill and occupational change

In this major new book leading sociologists, economists, and social psychologists present their highly original research into changes in jobs in Britain in the 1980s. Combining large-scale sample surveys, personal life-histories, and case studies of towns, employers, and worker groups, their findings give clear and often surprising answers to questions debated by social and economic observers in all advanced countries. Does technolgoy destroy skills or rebuild them? how does skill affect the attitudes of employees and their managers towards their jobs? Are women gaining greater skill equality with men, or are they still stuck on the lower rungs of the skill and occupational ladders? The book also takes up neglected issues (what do employees really mean by a skilled job? how does skill-change link with changes in social values?) and challenges and discredits the widely held view that new technology has de-skilled the workforce. Skill and Occupational Change exploits the richest single data-set available in contemporary Europe and the authors exemplify many new techniques for researching skills at work: as an economic resource, as a motor of occupational change, and as a basis for personal careers and identity. It provides the most comprehensive, authoritative, and carefully researched set of conclusions to date on skill trends and their implications and draws the authoritative new map of skill-change in British society.

Ethnicity and career aspirations in contemporary Britain.

This article examines the career aspirations of 376 fifth‐formers in three Rochdale comprehensive schools in December 1989. The analysis demonstrates that the relationships between various types of...

Analysing partial ranks by using smoothed paired comparison methods: an investigation of value orientation in Europe

This paper introduces the paired comparison model as a suitable approach for the analysis of partially ranked data. For example, the Inglehart index, collected in international social surveys to examine shifts in post-materialistic values, generates such data on a set of attitude items. However, current analysis methods have failed to account for the complex shifts in individual item values, or to incorporate subject covariates. The paired comparison model is thus developed to allow for covariate subject effects at the individual level, and a reparameterization allows the inclusion of smooth non-linear effects of continuous covariates. The Inglehart index collected in the 1993 International Social Science Programme survey is analysed, and complex non-linear changes of item values with age, level of education and religion are identified. The model proposed provides a powerful tool for social scientists. Copyright 2002 Royal Statistical Society.

Employment patterns in contemporary retailing : gender and work in five supermarkets.

This article examines trends in patterns of employment within contemporary retailing. It focuses upon five supermarkets in the Lancaster area. In each store the proportion of part-timers had increased during the 1980s and in four cases it stood at over 70 per cent in 1990. However, there were marked differences in the proportions of female full-time and part-time employees who were married. Management reported similar perceptions of the relative advantages and disadvantages of employing married women within their stores. These belief systems coexisted with radically divergent recruitment strategies by these managements. These variations were embedded within typical recruitment strategies in each of the firms examined.

Structural Transformations in the British Class Structure: A Log Linear Analysis of Marital Endogamy in Rochdale 1856-1964:

This paper analyses data on marital endogamy by means of log-linear modelling in an attempt to specify changes in the British class structure between the mid-nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries. The evidence on intermarriage was collected in Rochdale and involves five decennial periods over the hundred year span. A seven class model was used to categorize the data and a succession of log-linear models fitted. The hypotheses examined were taken from the sociological literature. Almost all postulated certain forms of structural transformation in class structures like Britain during this hundred year period. However, the model fitted did not require the inclusion of a term which incorporated changes in class structuration over time and these hypotheses were rejected. Nevertheless, the fitted model did indicate the persistence of a class structure over the period. Examination of the odds ratios and scaled residuals associated with the model fitting suggested that the main lines of class cleavage occurred between the bourgeoisie and the unskilled manual working class and the remainder of the class categories. Conventional dichotomies associated with notions of a middle class/working class axis of class cleavage or a nonmanual/manual axis were not relevant to an explanation of the data presented and this was presented as a problem requiring further research.

Changing Attitudes to Gender Roles A Longitudinal Analysis of Ordinal Response Data from the British Household Panel Study

This article examines changes in attitudes to gender roles in contemporary Britain by using a first-order Markov process in which cumulative transition probabilities are logistic functions of a set of personal and socioeconomic characteristics of respondents. The data are taken from the British Household Panel Study (BHPS). The attitudinal responses examined take the form of ordinal responses concerning gender roles in 1991 and 2003. The likelihood function is partitioned to make possible the use of existing software for estimating model parameters. For the BHPS data, it was found that, depending on the value of the response in 1991, a variety of factors were important determinants of attitudes to gender roles by 2003.

Flexibility, skill and technical change in UK retailing.

This article examines employment patterns in British retailing during the 1980s. It focuses on two debates central to contemporary economic sociology: the flexibility thesis and theories of skill and technical change. The data derive fiom the ESRCs Social Change and Economic Life Initiative and represent a sample of 72 retailing establishments fiom six localities in Britain. The article reveals that technological change had not produced much in the way of deskilling: rather, it had enskilled the work of already qualified and trained employees. Whilst part-time employment had increased in many stores, there was little evidence of any significant growth of other kinds of peripheral labour.

Contemporary Relationships between Firms in a Classic Industrial Locality: Evidence from the Social Change and Economic Life Initiative

This paper details the historical and contemporary relationships between firms, across a wide spectrum of sectors, in Rochdale, Lancashire. This area was a classic example of an industrial district and the paper aims to examine the present forms of the sub-contracting relation between large and small firms in the light of the current interest in, and advocacy of, a norm of cooperation between firms of varying sizes within geographical areas. A typology of four possible forms of relation is outlined: satellite, active engagement, subordinate cooperation and independent cooperation, and empirical material, drawn from part of the Social Change and Economic Life Initiative of the Economic and Social Research Council, is presented to show how this typology relates to modem Rochdale. Using both case study and survey evidence the paper concludes that there was little sign of any increase in sub-contracting in Rochdale in the 1980s. It was concentrated within the machine making sector of engineering, was a traditional feature of inter-firm relations, and was used as a strategy of last resort. There was evidence that the relations between firms in this locality are becoming less integrated. There was little sign of the much discussed new forms of ties. In Rochdale any coordination of firms was overwhelmingly through external market relationships.

Theories of Skill and Class Structure

This paper notes an increased interest in issues of skill and class structure evident amongst both Marxist and non-Marxist sociologists. It examines three questions in this area. Firstly, what theories are available to sociologists? How adequate are they, particularly for an understanding of trends in manual work in Britain? Finally, what improvements can be suggested? Two dominant grand-theoretical approaches, post-industrialism and Marxism, are analysed Post-industrialist theories of ‘skilling’ are rejected as empirically implausible and Marxist versions of ‘deskilling’ rejected on theoretical and empirical grounds. None the less, a secular decline in levels of training as measured by length of apprenticeships is noted, but the question of deskilling requires further research. A model of the relationships of skilled trades unions and capitalist employers under different local labour market conditions is suggested which, despite its simplicity, incorporates marked improvements upon the Marxist models that have been popular recently. In particular, it is strongly argued that an image of an asymmetric balance of forces adds considerably to an understanding of the variable relations between capital and skilled labour in Britain.

Social exclusion and modern apprenticeships: a comparison of britain and the USA

Abstract ‘Modern’ apprenticeships have been in place in Britain since 1994. However, the social characteristics of ‘modern’ apprentices appear remarkably similar to those of traditional apprentices: 89% of the first wave of modern apprentices were male; and only 3% from ethnic minorities. As will be shown subsequently, such exclusivity is deep-set within the British apprenticeship system. It is interesting to note that most previous analyses of modern apprenticeships have described this situation in a variety of ways but failed to grasp its significance. The lack of commitment by the Conservative Government, headed by John Major, to issues of social exclusion has been well documented. This is seen clearly in the Department of Education and Employments report into the early stages of modern apprenticeships. Their discussion of social exclusion and modern apprenticeships is perfunctory and their recommendations merely boil down to exhortations to various institutions to increase the proportion of apprentic...