The 2012 Geary Lecture 'Skill, Job Control and the Quality of Work: the Changing Research Agenda'

Venue: ESRI, Whitaker Square, Sir John Rogerson's Quay, Dublin 2

The 2012 ESRI Geary Lecture will be delivered by Professor Duncan Gallie, Nuffield College, University of Oxford.

The lecture examines the contrasting visions of the trends in the quality of work that have dominated the sociological debate over the last fifty years. It focuses particularly on arguments about changes in skill and job control, which have been seen as crucial both for employee motivation and well-being. It shows the very substantial progress that has been made in recent decades in British research in providing empirical evidence about the changing nature of work. This has helped to resolve some of the most controversial issues in the debate, but at the same time has raised major new issues for the research agenda. Different national studies appear to reveal rather different patterns of change over time and there is evidence of significant differences between countries in work quality. It argues that future progress in the field depends on the growth of cross-national comparative research.

Professor Duncan Gallie CBE FBA is an Official Fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford and Professor of Sociology in the University of Oxford. His research has focused on comparative European studies of the quality of employment and of unemployment. He served as Foreign Secretary and Vice-President of the British Academy (2006-2011). He was a member of the EU Advisory Group on ‘Social Sciences and Humanities in the European Research Area’ for the Sixth Framework Programme.

The Geary Lecture is organised each year by the ESRI and honours Dr R. C. Geary (1896 –1983), the first Director of the Institute. Dr Geary is regarded as the most eminent Irish statistician of the twentieth century. Lectures have been given by some of the world’s foremost scholars in the fields of economics, statistics and sociology, including a number of Nobel Prize winners.

Download Subsequent Publication