Duncan Gallie Annual Report 2004 - 2005

Duncan Gallie (Official Fellow) worked primarily on issues relating to the quality of working life. He completed a paper on trends in task discretion which showed that, contrary to much conventional wisdom, the initiative that British employees exercise in their jobs has declined rather than risen. In recent years this trend has been particularly marked in the public sector. He also completed a paper on work intensification, showing that the trend to rising work pressure levelled off in the second half of the 1990s in most EU countries.

He was Nuffield co-ordinator for the EU’s Economic Change, Unequal Life Chances and Quality of Life (Changequal) network and took an active part in developing the successful proposal for a new EU Network of Excellence (EQUALSOC). The Network of Excellence is designed to bring together thirteen research institutions in the European Union to integrate and develop research on Economic Change, Quality of Life and Social Cohesion.

Together with Alan Felstead and Francis Green, he drew up a proposal for a new national skills survey that will provide a picture of change over time in Britain from the mid-1980s. This has been jointly funded by the ESRC and a number of government departments. The fieldwork is due to begin in Spring 2006.

He was a member of the Advisory Committees of the ESRC Research Centre on Micro-Social Change (MISOC) and of the ESRC’s Future of Work Initiative, of the Board of the European Consortium for Sociological Research (ECSR) and of the Council of the British Academy. He has also been a member of the EU’s Advisory Group on ‘Social Sciences and Humanities in the European Research Area’ which provides DG Research with advice on the themes and organisation of the Sixth Framework Programme. He has served as Vice-President of the British Academy and has been appointed Foreign Secretary of the Academy with effect from summer 2006.

Publications

(with Alan Felstead and Francis Green) ‘Changing Patterns of Task Discretion in Britain’, Work, Employment and Society, 18, 2, 243-266, 2004

(with Alan Felstead and Francis Green) ‘Skill, Task Discretion and New Technology. Trends in Britain 1986-2001’, L’année sociologique 2003, 53, 2, 4001-430, 2004.

(with Alan Felstead) ‘For Better or Worse? Non-standard Jobs and High Involvement Work Systems’, International Journal of Human Resource Management, 15, 7, 1293-1316, 2004.