An Attempt to Evaluate the Impact of Reorganization on the Way Working Time Reduction Has Been Implemented by French Firms Since 1996

Abstract

In this paper, we assess how the fact French firms are reorganized could influence the date she chooses to implement working time reduction (WTR), as well as other variables inclucled in the WTR administrative surveys’agreements. like the WTR type ot device (offensive / defensive ) companies adopt, the number of workers she commits on to hire, if she benefits or not from incentives. We first consider as a reorganized firm, a firm vho makes use of at least two organizational production devices (among other Just In Time, Total Quality and People Involvment devices). We merge two surveys, one dealing with organizational characteristics within the firm (COI — “Changements Organisationnels et l’informatisation", 1997) and the other containing information on WTR agreements (Robien, Aubry I or II). After having presented some stylized facts about WTR variables and modeled the probability for a firm to be reorganized, we implement various matching estimators (simple nearest match, kernel and reweighting ones) to evaluate the causal effect of reorganization on the considered WTR variables. We find that WTR (Robien as Aubry I or II) may favour reorganized firms, since the latter would: i) implement earlier a WTR; ii) be more numerous to adopt an offensive clevice; iii) commit on more job creations; iv) they do not necessarily benefit more often from incentives.