Social networks, accessed and mobilised social capital and the employment status of older workers: A case study
Summary (3 min read)
Social Networks and Employment
- Granovetter (1973, 1995) identified the major role of social networks in job search and labour market outcomes.
- Hence, for older workers, who had long tenure in declining industries, strong ties may be more important for successful job search than weak ties (McQuaid and Lindsay 2002).
- Stoloff, et al., (1999) found that the higher the occupational status of the network contacts, the higher the occupational status the job seeker obtained.
- Lin (2001) distinguishes two modes of social capital activation - accessed social capital and mobilised social capital.
- While controlling for other socio-economic and demographic components.
Data Collection, Analysis Procedures and Measures
- The data set used in this paper has both quantitative and qualitative components and is extracted from a larger data set which was collected in 2004/5 to undertake a comparative study of the effect of social networks on the labour participation of younger and older workers (Gayen et al. 2010).
- Re-examining this unique data set, which remains relevant, gives the opportunity to expose the importance of social networks and how older people activate them and so help address gaps in the literature.
- This labour market was typified by a growing service sector business and has a buoyant economy with low levels of unemployment.
- Scotland is an appropriate choice for this study as it was one of the first nations to experience deindustrialisation and its population is at the forefront of European populations exhibiting ageing which is very likely to impact on the labour market (Brown and Danson 2003; Lisenkova et al. 2009).
- In the current study, 103 people aged between 50 and the then state retirement age were interviewed using a semi-structured questionnaire.
Socio-Economic Questions
- Those interviewed were also asked to identify their main job search strategy.
- Descriptive statistics, 𝜒2 tests and independent samples t-tests were applied to investigate the data and assess significance of differences between groups.
Social Network Questions
- Respondents (egos) were asked to name up to five friends who in some way had helped in the ego’s job search.
- These matrices were the input data to the social network analysis package UCINET-6 (Borgatti et al. 2002).
- The principal component score for each contact was then adjusted to a non-negative scale and used to represent the tie strength of the respondent using the arbitrary transformation.
- Mobilised social capital (MSC) was computed by calculating a contact’s help score (CHS) and then multiplying this by the average ASC.
- The comparative job status of the contacts was measured for each contact as -1 for lower status than the ego, 0 for similar and 1 for greater status and was summed across all the contacts.
The Sample
- Sixty-one of those interviewed had regained employment and 42 were still seeking employment.
- Voluntary early retirees and those out of work on health grounds were excluded from the sample frame.
- For the reemployed, data were collected from various workplaces including banks, the national health sector, business organisations, retailers and a university.
- Semi-skilled and manual work was slightly underrepresented as was employment in distribution, hotels and restaurants.
- The authors analysed the qualitative responses and developed six representative vignettes of respondents’ situations.
Results and Analysis
- Respondents’ Backgrounds and Descriptive Data Socio-economic conditions.
- This may point to a limitation of this comparative analysis, as those with higher human capital in terms of qualification and accumulated assets were more likely to be employed regardless of their networks.
- The reemployed had had more stable job histories with 79 per cent having been mainly in stable employment over their working lives, compared to 53 per cent of those still seeking employment (P = 0.001).
- As per job search, the common methods for those reemployed were interpersonal channels: ex-work colleagues (59%), friends and relatives (58 per cent), employers (58 per cent), associates (53%) and then local newspapers (14%); whereas unemployed job-seekers relied mostly on the media and Job Centres: Job Centres (84 per cent), local newspapers (73 per cent), and websites (54%).
- Eighty-seven per cent of them would accept a job that was less skilled, 91 per cent would accept a job with less responsibility and 70 per cent would accept a job with less pay than their previous job.
Social Network Data
- In total 276 relations to friends who in some way assisted their job search were reported.
- People seeking employment sought job related help from their social networks more than those reemployed.
- There is an indication that even in the presence of academic qualifications the accessed social capital does appear to be significant.
- Comparing figures for those who were reemployed and those seeking employment, one can observe that egos who were reemployed were mainly surrounded by people in managerial/professional positions, whereas most of those unemployed were surrounded by network members who were either also not employed or employed in manual/unskilled jobs.
Vignettes
- Here the authors give summaries of six representative case study vignettes of respondents’ typical situations.
- 2 Mary (55 years) had been visiting a centre, which helped long-term unemployed workers to find work, also known as Case.
- When examining the access to network members’ social capital, it was found that the mean accessed social capital among the reemployed group was almost double of those unemployed.
- The reemployed people had strong ties with high positioned people, whereas the unemployed were connected mainly with those who were also either unemployed or employed in low positioned jobs whose help did not facilitate the egos’ successful job searching.
Conclusions
- Two distinct objectives of this paper were to better understand job searching procedures of older people seeking to re-enter the job market and the relation of their social networks in that process.
- Their requirements were not only job information, but also direct help with applications, gaining ’rich’ advice on how to undertake job search, including employer specific information on handling interviews, and references to employers.
- The authors conclude that there is a strong association between social networks and explaining older people’s reemployment with ‘the number of contacts’, ‘proportion of contacts employed’ and the ‘employment status of the contacts’ acting as a proxy for high social capital.
- This could be carried out by market intermediates.
- There is a clear socio-economic gradient in terms of the strength of social networks; those who were poorer in society had weaker and less connected networks than the more affluent members of the society.
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Q2. What have the authors stated for future works in "Social networks, accessed and mobilised social capital and the employment status of older workers: a case study" ?
While it is difficult to alter these, agencies should consider tackling the aspect of social exclusion through encouraging work experience for older people, allowing them to extend and deepen their social networks with those who are employed. Further a methodological contribution is made to social network researcher by showing how a combined approach of quantitative and qualitative methods can be used to address research goals and how weighted sociograms of ego-centric networks can be used to visualise and compare social capital of both egos and their contacts in different networks. Besides policy recommendations, and the need to generalise the finings into other labour markets there is considerable scope for future research into how networks develop over time, especially before and after older workers change status from employed to unemployed, and how those with weak networks can be better supported to re-enter employment
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