Employmentweb_low

eMployMent relations and health inequalities: pathways and MechanisMs
laaksonen, rahkonen, Martikainen, & lahelma, 2006). The
associations may be of a physical or chemical nature (for
example, solvents affecting the central nervous system) or may
result from the appreciation of situations as harmful (levi, 1998).
The latter possibility integrates material risk factors with the
stress process.
The study of psychosocial working conditions has yielded
enough evidence to evoke policy attention for such issues as job
redesign and worker participation (Karasek et al., 1998).
nevertheless, the dominant approach is also open to criticism.
Perhaps most important is the largely uncritical use of concepts
resulting from stress models, without referring to or, even worse,
being aware of their sociological and psychological conceptual
foundations. Moreover, to assume that the psychosocial work
environment can be reduced to a trade-off between psychological
demands and control is overly simplistic (de Jonge & Kompier,
1997; Muntaner & o'campo, 1993). additions to the basic demandcontrol
model, like the social-support concept (Johnson & hall,
1988), the eri-model (siegrist, 2002) or the various expansions of
the concept of demands (de Jonge, Mulder, & nijhuis, 1999;
soderfeldt et al., 1996), have partially dealt with these criticisms.
nevertheless, the simplicity critique stretches further. an
interesting point is the status of the concept of “control”, which is
more than just individual mastery of a specific situation. control is
also a characteristic of the social structure, related to the notion of
power, class relations and the extent of exploitation in the labour
process (Muntaner & o'campo, 1993). as a result, and despite
being highly relevant for research in social health inequalities,
there is a lack of knowledge about the relations between control
over specific (work) situations and an individual’s structural socioeconomic
position in society (Vanroelen, 2009).
in addition, the triangular relationship between perception, the
personality characteristics steering individual perception and
one’s place in the social structure is often approached too
simplistically by introducing controls for personality traits
(spector, Zapf, chen, & frese, 2000). This brings us to the
question of whether the exclusive use of self-reports in
approaches assessing the psychosocial work environment is
appropriate. individual self-reports should at least be
supplemented with more objective measurements, based on
expert assessment or on collective appreciations resulting from
qualitative participatory approaches involving the workers
(Muntaner & o'campo, 1993).
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