The Challenge of Segmented Labor Market Theories to Orthodox Theory: A Survey

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 1985 American Sociological Association annual meeting, Washington, D.C. The authors were supported in part by a grant from the National Science Foundation (SES 79-24905) and by generous research funds from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. The Occupational Analysis Division of the U.S. Employment Service graciously provided data and assisted us in this research. Teri Bush, Kelsa Duffy, and Ann Bucher worked wonders on the manuscript. Howard Aldrich, Glenn Carroll, Paul DiMaggio, Frank Dobbin, John Meyer, Jeffrey Pfeffer, Peter Reiss, and the ASQ editors and reviewers offered assistance and helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper. This paper develops and tests hypotheses about the characteristics of organizations and their environments that favor the proliferation of detailed job titles to describe work roles. A method for measuring the proliferation of job titles is proposed and applied to a sample of 368 diverse work organizations. It is hypothesized that proliferation is linked to four main factors: technical and administrative imperatives; internal political struggles over the division of labor; the institutional environment and its role in shaping personnel practices; and the market environment. Crosssectional and longitudinal analyses indicate that job titles proliferate most in organizations that are large, bureaucratic, rely on firm-specific skills, have a professionalized workforce, and are in institutional sectors. We describe howfragmentation among job titles imposes status gradations and gender distinctions in organizations, noting some important theoretical and practical implications of the phenomenon.*

The Proliferation of Job Titles in Organizations.

This paper argues that within an economic system class and occupation are conceptually distinct positions. Class refers to control by some positions over others in a production system, and occupation refers to the functional differentiation of positions in a technical division of labor. The effects of measures of class and occupation on both economic and noneconomic rewards are analyzed using data obtained from two national samples of individuals. Class and occupation are found to have independent effects on both types of job rewards, and the commonly used measures of occupational position (Duncan's socioeconomic index [SEI], complexity/skill requirements of the occupation) do not adequately explain inequalities in job rewards associated with occupation. The implications of this analysis for the study of positional inequality in general are indicated.

Class, Occupation, and Inequality in Job Rewards

When do children become unequal in reading and math skills? Some research claims that inequality grows mainly before school begins. Some research claims that schools cause inequality to grow. And s...

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0038040718801760

Inequality in Reading and Math Skills Forms Mainly before Kindergarten: A Replication, and Partial Correction, of "Are Schools the Great Equalizer?".

Ever since its origin, anthropology has had a worldwide scope. Indeed, the very stimulus to the field were the advancing frontiers of European trade and colonies (77, 193). What distinguishes the present interest in the world scope of anthropology is the paradigm of integration of all people and cultures within a world capitalist system. This approach, fostered by Wallerstein (177-182), has roots in the political economy of dependent development and unequal exchange (2-5, 45) and in anthropological studies of the Third World (4, 7, 19, 176). This paradigm poses a challenge to established ways of describing as well as analyzing our field material. I shall attempt to review recent studies which assess the conceptual categories for placing ethnographic studies in the world system as well as the ongoing self-criticism and refinement of our traditional approaches in the intensive case studies, cross-cultural analyses, and ethnohistorical studies of colonialism and imperialism. I shall also attempt, and this is a much more difficult task, to assess the contributions anthropologists who have not addressed themselves to the specific paradigm of a world system have made as they developed a language for talking about worldwide customs and institutions. Eric Wolf prophesied this role for anthropology (188, p. 97): ". . . in the process of creating that science of man that will underwrite the new world culture and its new possibilities, anthropology will also change itself, and change itself beyond recognition. Some of the changes are already under way. To make them possible, in a world of necessity, is our obligation." According to Fred Eggan (44, p. 140), during World War II "the worldwide scope of the war made heavy demands on anthropological knowledge and anthropologists emerged with a new position in social science as well as with new ideas and sometimes new careers." With grants available, students turned from North American Indian studies to studies of Africa,

Howard M. Wachtel

Papers

Looking At Poverty From a Radical Perspective

Class Consciousness and Stratification in the Labor Process