New working conditions: satisfaction or reassignment? ; Nouvelles conditions de travail : satisfaction ou résignation ?

Abstract

national audience The analysis of working conditions in relation to ways of organising work has long been the responsibility of sociologists, psychologists, ergonomists and managers more than labour economists. Apart from the leading classic authors, economists have looked more recently than researchers in other disciplines on working conditions issues, but this is not because economic science does not offer the relevant analytical tools. The search for efficient ways of allocating and mobilising resources necessarily requires an analysis of the way in which the work is organised, carried out, valued or suffered. But it is true that labour economists have long been more interested in external markets than in internal labour markets (Doeringer and Piore, 1971). Developments in the theory of non-cooperative games and the analysis of information asymmetries and incentives have shifted the economy from work to the 'human resource economy', as it has shifted the industrial economy to 'industrial organisation'. The analysis of working conditions in relation to ways of organising work has long been carried out by sociologists, psychologists, ergonomists and managers more than labour economists. Apart from the leading classic authors, economists have looked more recently than researchers in other disciplines on working conditions issues, but this is not because economic science does not offer the relevant analytical tools. The search for efficient ways of allocating and mobilising resources necessarily requires an analysis of the way in which the work is organised, carried out, valued or suffered. But it is true that labour economists have long been more interested in external markets than in internal labour markets (Doeringer and Piore, 1971). Developments in the theory of non-cooperative games and the analysis of information asymmetries and incentives have shifted the labour economy to the 'human resource economy', as it has shifted the industrial economy to 'industrial organisation' (Malgrange, Rulliere and Villeval, ...