Organisation, technological change and skills use over time: A longitudinal study on linked employee surveys

• Published date: 01 November 2022
• Author: Steven Dhondt,Karolus O. Kraan,Michiel Bal
• Date: 01 November 2022
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/ntwe.12227

Received: 1 January 2021

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Accepted: 13 December 2021

DOI: 10.1111/ntwe.12227

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Organisation, technological change and skills

use over time: A longitudinal study on linked

employee surveys

Steven Dhondt

1,2

|Karolus O. Kraan

1

|Michiel Bal

2

1

Sustainable Productivity and

Employability, TNO, Netherlands

Organisation for Applied Scientific

Research, Leiden, The Netherlands

2

Centre for Sociological Research,

Catholic University of Leuven, Leuven,

Belgium

Correspondence

Steven Dhondt, Sustainable Productivity

and Employability, TNO, Netherlands

Organisation for Applied Scientific

Research, PO Box 3005, 2301 DA Leiden,

The Netherlands.

Email: steven.dhondt@tno.nl and

karolus.kraan@tno.nl

Funding information

Horizon 2020 Framework Programme,

Grant/Award Number: 822296; Fonds

Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek,

Grant/Award Number: S006018N

Abstract

The impact of technological change on the content of

jobs and accompanying skills is a central topic across

disciplines. To date, ample research has directly linked

the technological change to shifts in skills use; how-

ever, organisational change is rarely considered as an

influencing factor. Based on a panel survey, this paper

uses a Luhmannian approach to understand the re-

lationship between technological change and organi-

sational context. This theory is tested quantitatively

and shows the importance of considering the working

environment's nature when studying skills changes.

The results show small effects by the technological

change on changing skills use but larger effects by

changes in the working environment. Recommenda-

tions for future research and practical implications are

discussed.

KEYWORDS

automation, division of labour, longitudinal study, organisational

change, skills, skills use, technological change, technology,

working environment

New Technol Work Employ. 2022;37:343–362. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/ntwe

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This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and

reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

© 2021 The Authors. New Technology, Work and Employment published by Brian Towers (BRITOW) and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

INTRODUCTION

Debating the digitalisation of work, the relationship between technological change and future

skills use comes to the fore once more. The expectations about future skills use are quite

extensive, with a large number of observers insisting on a change towards more generic skills,

and at the same time more specialised, technical knowledge. The highly anticipated 21st‐

century or digital skills are said to require a general need for workforce reskilling (Felstead

et al., 2002; World Economic Forum, 2018).

Although skills use of the workforce claims to have large societal and economic effects for

individuals, employers, regions and national economies, there is no consensus among social

scientists or policy‐makers about the meaning of the skill concept (Green, 2013). Following

Green's advice to conceptually overarch economics, psychology and sociology, we distinguish

three key features. First, skills have productive features: using skills at work helps workers be

productive. Second, skills are expandable and training and development can enhance them.

Third, skills are socially determined (Green, 2013). While the first two features gained much

research attention (Goos et al., 2014), the last did not.

Consequently, the expectations about the future of work and skills use are underpinned

with a lot of survey material, focusing on skills' economic and psychological features. Schlogl

et al. (2021) discuss this policy‐focused and grey literature and see a dominant narrative

focused on placing the responsibility to deal with the future of work in the form of ‘upskilling’.

The analysis of the survey material itself used in this narrative needs to be considered too. An

organisational sociological interpretation of the existing survey material used in this narrative

unmasks the presence of a social framework, that is, the working environment's nature.

Consequently, it teases the importance of the latter for skills use.

Elaborating on a longstanding tradition of skills use research, we focus in this article on the

following question: ‘What is the impact of technological change, a changing working en-

vironment and the interaction between technological change and the changing working en-

vironment over time on skills use?’.

This article contributes with an analysis of the influence over time of the change in the

working environment on skills use: The skills use of people who have remained in their

working environment is compared with that of people whose working environment has

changed. For this analysis, a first alternative interpretation of skills from survey material is

used. This alternative interpretation is framed in the systems thinking approach on organisa-

tions developed by Luhmann (2000). This article focuses on the transversal analysis of items

from a linked panel data set from two data sources: the Netherlands Skills Survey (NSS) and the

Lifelong Learning (LLL) Questionnaire (Akçomak et al., 2011; Kleruj, 2017; Oudejans, 2012;

Ter Weel, 2014; Van den Berg et al., 2018).

In the next parts, this article first deals with the relationship between technological change

and skills use. In line with Felstead et al. (2019), in this article, ‘skills use’refers to the level of

skills required of workers to carry out their jobs, the extent to which workers use the skills and

abilities they possess and the extent to which workers receive training that develops job‐related

skills. Second, this article substantiates the working environment's role and the change in this

environment for skills use. Working environments are classified as Tayloristic (incomplete) or

complete working environments. Third, it critically dwells on the operationalisation of skills

concepts, comparing the methodology of the British Skills and Employment Survey (SES), the

Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies survey (PIAAC) and the

Netherlands Skill Survey (NSS). Fourth, our analyses on the linked panel data set show small

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