PE Corporate Survey 1979-1989
South Africa, 1979 - 1989
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PE Corporate Survey 1979-1989
PECS 1979-1989
| Name | Country code |
|---|---|
| South Africa | zaf |
Enterprise/Establishment Survey
The PE Corporate Survey is a salary survey produced by survey unit of international management consultants, Urwick International. The survey is based on the Paterson job evaluation system that was primarily concerned with the description of jobs and their subsequent grading. Job evaluation systems such as these were used in South Africa on the basis for determining a company's wage structure. They provided the means by which jobs could be ranked in an "equitable" manner so that "relative worth" of the job could be determined and provide a means by which "career paths" could be determined. These systems allowed companies to participate in salary surveys and relate their pay scales to market norms.
The survey consisted of a large number of companies contributing information concerning their own pay scales for each position in their company. The collected information was processed and analysed by the management consultants conducting the survey, who published the results annually. These results were made available only to the companies that participated in the survey. The survey collected the following information on each position:job types; average pay; benefits and incentives; as well as comparison of salaries between different racial groups, and comparison over time periods.
Survey data
Establishments
Version
v1: Edited, anonymised data for public distribution
2025
Scope
The scope of the PE Corporate survey includes information about job levels; specific job classification using bands and job type; aggregated information about salaries, bonuses and incentives, subsidies and allowances. The Paterson system bases the grading of jobs purely on the level of decision-making which the job entails. The system includes six levels of decision-making (bands), and these bands are correlated with six levels of organisation. These levels are:
Band F - policy making decisions (top management)
Band E - programming decisions (senior management)
Band D - interpretative decisions (middle management)
Band C - routine decisions (skilled workers)
Band B - automatic decisions (semi-skilled workers)
Band A - defined decisions (unskilled workers)
There is a further sub-division within the bands. Each band is divided into two grades (except for Band A) for a total of eleven grades. The upper grade is a supervisory grade and co-ordinates the work of the employees in the lower grade of the band, except for Band A whose supervisors are in Band B. There are also a number of sub-grades in the lower grade, to give a total of five sub-grades in each Band, except for the lowest Band A which only has one grade, divided into three sub-grades. This then gives a grand total of 28 grades.
Producers and sponsors
| Name |
|---|
| Urwick International |
survey_instrument
The personnel department in each firm collected information on jobs using a job description form. DataFirst has not been able to locate the form used.
Data Collection
| Start | End |
|---|---|
| 1979 | 1989 |
- Face-to-face
| Name |
|---|
| Personnel departments of each company |
The collection procedure was relatively simple. The personnel department would identify the different jobs and decide on the number of job writers to be trained to write up the job descriptions. The Paterson system requires written job descriptions that should be read and signed by job-holders. The number of job writers can vary, from a single writer to a writer for each job. These writers could be employees of the organizations. or alternatively outsiders, although it was more common for them to be employees. Job descriptions were written up, identifying the tasks, conditions and responsibilities of a job, and the skills and qualifications necessary for the job. Standard procedure was for the position holder to describe the job, and then their' immediate supervisor would be asked to verify the description. The job descriptions are then assessed by an evaluation (grading) committee which proceeds to grade the jobs. Firstly, a job is located in a Band, depending on which level of decision-making it falls into. It is then graded, high or low depending on whether it is supervisory or not, and finally sub-graded. A final final grade would be, for example B3.
Data processing
R software was used to create the following variables from variables in the data files:
A JOBCODE variable was created by combining the CODE and JOB variables. This resulted in a coherent unique identifier for each job category.
A GEN (gender) variable was created from the STAFF M and STAFF F variables. Initially, these two variables carried duplicate information, thus the need to create a unique variable.
The R code used to generate these variables is shared with the data and document files.
Data appraisal
The data collected on "Coloureds" in 1981 contains data points that have insufficient information on the job level, points, job band and category. These data points have been left as is. Statistical tests were done to investigate whether each of BON%, MED.AID%, CAR%, ACCOM%, ENT%, OTHER% variables represent the proportion of the average salary of the job category, AV.SAL. With p value is less than 2,2e-16, this is not the case. These variables represent something else besides the proportion of AV.SAL. All numeric variables are in South African Rands, and have not been adjusted for inflation.
Data Access
| Name | Affiliation | URL | |
|---|---|---|---|
| DataFirst | University of Cape Town | support.data1st.org | support@data1st.org |
Public access data for use under a Creative Commons CC-BY (Attribution-only) License
Urwick International. PE Corporate Survey 1979-1989 [dataset]. Version 1. South Africa: Urwick International [producer], 1989. Cape Town: DataFirst [distributor], 2025. DOI: https://doi.org/10.25828/5q6m-zz34
Contacts
| Name | Affiliation | URL | |
|---|---|---|---|
| DataFirst Support | University of Cape Town | support@data1st.org | www.support.data1st.org |
Metadata production
| Name | Affiliation | Role |
|---|---|---|
| DataFirst | University of Cape Town | Metadata producer |
2025-02-26
Metadata version
Version 1