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Does the mission of the organization matter for job quality of low-skilled workers?
Olivier Brolis, Université Catholique de Louvain-la-Neuve
Does the mission of the organization matter for job quality of low-skilled workers?: An empirical study in the Belgian
“voucher system”
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 features of this form of regulation is the
introduction of competition between for-profit organizations (FPO) and social economy organizations (SEO). One of
the specificity of SEO 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.
The quality of work is a controversial question in the empirical literature: some argue that the quality of job is worse in
SEO, other better. McMullen and Schellenberg (2003) have shown that SEO offer lower wages but a better workfamily balance. The presence of lower wages has been confirmed by Frank (1996) and Weisbrod, (1983) but not by
Leete (2000) and Ruhm & Borkoski (2003) while Mocan & Teikin (2003) have even observed higher wages. Petrella
& all (2010) have shown that risk prevention and the establishment of formal social dialogue are insufficient in the
social economy sector in France and Tortia (2008) found that Italian SEO offer higher autonomy and recognition to
their workers. Nevertheless, the literature agrees to say that workers in SEO 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 meet the intrinsic motivations of their workers and therefore constitute an
additional source of satisfaction (Frey & Goette, 1999).
The economic literature identified two main sources of differentiation between SEO and FPO which may influence job
quality:
First, the literature has shown that SEO attract the most intrinsically motivated workers who have generally very
specific motivations (Borzaga & Tortia, 2006; Meier & Stutzer, 2008; Prouteau & Wolff, 2004). Hence, SEO have
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 them, 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 SEO 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 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 SEO and FPO are quite different,
their incentive structure would not be identical. Moreover, SEO 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 SEO 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 Muñoz’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.
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. 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 and to assess their
motivations. 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.