Modelling the perception of conflict in working conditions

Unfavourable working conditions are a relevant and sensitive issue in the field of economic and social studies. The topic has been deeply investigated, especially in order to build intrinsic job quality indices. More recently, several psycho-social risks that negatively impact on workers' health and well being, such as very high work intensity and perception of conflict with personal values on the job, have become prominent matters of interest. However, little is known about the measure of value/beliefs conflict at work as an indicator of poor working conditions. We discuss a class of statistical models able to measure the experience of conflict between personal and organizational ethics in a large sample of respondents. By means of these models, our proposal enhances the different contributions of subjects' covariates in the response pattern. The starting point of the approach is a mixture model to interpret the ordered level of conflict perception as a blend of real beliefs and indecision. Those two unobserved components are immediately related to subjects' covariates. Empirical evidence is provided by the 5th European Working Conditions Survey carried out by Eurofound in 2010.