ILPC 2026

During the classic “Swedish model”-era wages and wage-increases were to a large extent defined in central national collective agreements and coordinated tariffs, under the general principle of “equal pay for equal work”. During the last three decades wage setting has been decentralized and the local space for individual differentiation through performance pay has gained ground – particularly in the public sector and for white collar workers. Performance pay systems define what is valued in work by the employer, but to what extent do the (e)valuative criteria used match the employees’ notions of what should be valued in work? This paper contributes to that question by analysing what dimensions of worth that public sector employees in Sweden believe individually differentiated pay ought to be based on. The empirical data analysed in the paper is from surveys with employees in big public sector organisations. Theoretically the paper is influenced by the sociology of valuation studies, the “orders of worth” theory developed by Boltanski and Thévenot, and the psychological strand of organizational justice theories. The results show the existence of a set of underlying dimensions defining the value of work to different degrees and in somewhat different combinations according to different categories of employees. The main dimensions found in these normative valuations of work are: the employee’s performance and development of tasks; the employee’s attitude to the organisation; the employee’s market value; the employee’s experience and education; the overall organizational performance, and the complexity and responsibility of the tasks performed.