Publications

The book provides the first systematic assessment of trends in inequality in job quality in Britain over recent decades. It assesses the pattern of change drawing on the nationally representative Skills and Employment Surveys (SES) carried out at regular intervals from 1986 to 2012. These surveys collect data from workers themselves, thereby providing a unique…

WISERD, in partnership with the Research Institute for Applied Social Science (RIASS) and the Academy of Social Science, have today launched a new booklet showcasing the vast array of social science research taking place in Wales; titled ‘Making the Case for the Social Sciences 10 – Wales’. It includes a new study by Welsh researchers which…

In recent years there has been an increase in awareness of social justice, equality and rights issues among Chinese citizens including university teachers (Li, 2011). The higher education (HE) sector is an important example of this because of its potential for developing and disseminating new ideas about a just society, and in influencing policy-makers. An…

It is clear that graduates from Chinese higher education, like their counterparts elsewhere in the world, expect to find employment which provides a return on the investment they and their families have made in their formal education and training. They aspire also to employment appropriate to the level of education they have achieved and which…

The conventional focus on the training participation rate, rather than training volume, in official statistics and research has obscured a radical transformation in workers’ training in Britain. To obtain a picture of the trend in training volume, we synthesize a narrative through a new analysis of multiple surveys. The duration of training fell sharply with…

The creation of a learning environment at work has been seen as an essential concomitant of the growth of an advanced economy. This article explores the implications of direct participation for different types of employee learning, drawing upon the British Skills and Employment Surveys of 2006 and 2012. It confirms that direct participation is strongly…

The resource-based view (RBV) of the firm has focused attention on the importance of aligning employees’ needs with the requirements of the jobs they do. This article focuses on how these needs and requirements interact in terms of learning. It does so in two ways. First, it develops new survey instruments to capture the learning…

Executive Summary The aim of the 2013 ESF Leavers Survey is to assist in assessing the effectiveness of labour market interventions delivered under ESF. Telephone interviews were conducted with approximately 2,000 people who had left an ESF project delivered under Priorities 2 and 3 of the Convergence Programme and Priorities 1 and 2 of the…

The impact of performance-oriented work practices on the gender pay gap has been the subject of considerable conjecture but little empirical investigation. Using the 2004 and 2011 British Workplace Employment Relations Surveys, the analysis finds that whilst average earnings are significantly higher for men and women across private sector workplaces that have introduced so-called high-performance…

We study how job-related well-being (measured by Warr’s ‘Enthusiasm’ and ‘Contentment’ scales) altered through the Great Recession, and how this is related to changing job quality. Using nationally representative data for Britain, we find that job-related well-being was stable between 2001 and 2006, but then declined between 2006 and 2012. We report relevant changes in…