Dr Ying Zhou
Lecturer in HRM
Qualifications: BA, MPhil., DPhil.
Email: ying.zhou@surrey.ac.uk
Phone: Work: 01483 68 6344
Room no: 50 MS 03
Office hours
Thursday 2-3.30pm
Friday 2-3.30pm
Further information
Biography
Dr. Ying Zhou is a Lecturer in Human Resource Management at the University of Surrey. She received her D.Phil. in Economic Sociology from Oxford University in 2007. Her research focuses on employee skills, organizational participation, non-standard labour contracts, quality of work life and the Chinese labour markets. From 2006 to 2008 she worked on the ‘2006 Skills Survey of the Employed British Workforce’ project as a research officer in Nuffield College, Oxford. Drawing on the series of the UK Skills Surveys she examined how skills changed in the UK over the period 1986 to 2006 and how the changes affected employees’ quality of work life.
Between 2008 and 2011 she worked for Towers Watson’s employee research branch in London, continuing to focus on advanced quantitative analysis of employee engagement, empowerment, job satisfaction and organizational performance. Dr. Zhou is the author of the book British Employees’ Organizational Participation: Trends, Determinants and Impact. She has also published papers in British Journal of Industrial Relations, the International Journal of Human Resource Management, National Institute Economic Review and the Human Resource Management Review.
Research Interests
Dr. Ying Zhou's research focuses on employees’ quality of work life. Specifically she is interested in employee skills, task discretion and wider organizational participation, organizational commitment and work motivation, job insecurity and job stress. She is specialist in quantitative research methods.
Publications
Journal articles
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(2012) 'The Skills and Autonomy of Female Part-Time Work in Britain and Sweden'. Elsevier Research in Social Stratification and Mobility, 30 (2), pp. 187-201.Full text is available at: http://epubs.surrey.ac.uk/186042/
Abstract
Most OECD countries have experienced an increase of female part-time employment in the last decades. It has been argued that part-time work may give greater employment flexibility, enabling mothers to reconcile conflicting demands of family and work and thereby facilitating their integration into the wage economy. At the same time, it has been suggested that female part-time work implies segmentation of the labour force into a core and a periphery, with marginalized, low qualified jobs for part-time employees. However, little attention has been given the possible mediating effect of the institutional context on potential job quality disadvantages of part-timers. We examine this question by comparing the skills and autonomy of female part-time workers in two countries, Britain and Sweden, often considered representing quite distinct forms of institutional regime. The results show that female part-time employees in Sweden hold positions of higher skill and have more autonomy compared to their equivalents in Britain. Even so, both British and Swedish part-time employees face relative disadvantage when compared to female full-time workers. We conclude that differences in the institutional systems of Sweden and Britain do have a significant effect on the absolute skill level of part-time work. However, the relative disadvantage of part-timers persists despite Swedish policies giving greater salience to improvements in the quality of work.
- . (2011) 'The Changing Job Skills of Female Part-time Workers in Britain 1992–2006'. 21 Edition. Human Resource Management, 1, pp. 28-44.
- . (2010) 'Teamwork, Skill Development and Employee Welfare'. British Journal of Industrial Relations,
- . (2010) 'Employee involvement, the quality of training and the learning environment: an individual level analysis'. International Journal of Human Resource Management, 21 (10), pp. 1667-1688.
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(2007) 'Computers and Pay'. Sage National Institute Economic Review, 201 (1), pp. 63-75.Full text is available at: http://epubs.surrey.ac.uk/186040/
Abstract
This paper describes the diffusion of computer use among jobs in Britain, and shows that the technology is having notable effects on the labour market. By 2006 three in four jobs entailed job-holders using computers, while for two in four jobs computer use was essential. Computing skills have a significant impact on pay but, in 2006, much of this effect is interactive with what we term 'influence skilss'. The average effect of a unit increase in the Computing Skills index (which rangesfrom 0 to 4) is to raise pay by an estimated 5.3 per cent and 6.0 per cent for men and women spectively. For men there is an additional 19.2 per cent boost to pay in establishments where at least three quarters of workers are working with computers, compared to establishments where no one uses computers. These effects are greater for those people in jobs with above-average influence skills requirements. Our estimates allow for education, a large number of other generic skills and other conventional controls, which makes them more robust to the critique that they are overestimates because they might suffer from omitted skill bias. IV estimates show only small differences from the OLS estimates. We also find that the direct and interactive effects of computer skills and influence skills have risen over the decade, indicating increased scarcity.
Books
- . (2009) British Employees' Organizational Participation. Germany : VDM Verlag
Book chapters
- . (2007) 'Job Insecurity'. in Gallie D (ed.) Employment Regimes and the Quality of Work Oxford University Press
Reports
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(2007) Skills at Work, 1986-2006. Oxford : ESRC Research Centre on Skills, Knowledge and Organizational Performance Full text is available at: http://epubs.surrey.ac.uk/186045/
Teaching
Undergraduate
Managing Organizations and Human Resources
Issues in Human Resource Management
Managing People in Context
Affiliations
Associate member of Nuffield College, Oxford University
Associate member of Skills, Knowledge and Organizational Performance (SKOPE)
