Abstract
Research on the correlates and consequences of work structures is broad and diffuse, ranging from studies of diverse work settings and their societal and other macroscopic contexts to small work groups, their members, and their members’ and leaders’ ways and means. In this first chapter, we review studies related to work structures found in various disciplines. We classify these studies by their authors’ assumptions about work structures and the processes to which they give rise. A look at the kinds of issues that preoccupy archetypal writers, including what they do and do not regard as problematic, affords us insights into the perspectives from which they view work structures. A discussion of past research thus sets the stage for the next chapter in which we outline our own perspective on work structures in the expectation that the resulting juxtapositions will be instructive.
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Notes
See the summary of orthodox and neoclassical economic theories in David M. Gordon, Theories of Poverty and Underemployment (Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath, 1972).
Also, the assumptions of neoclassical economic theory with regard to labor markets are reviewed in Arne L. Kalleberg and Aage B. Sørensen, “The Sociology of Labor Markets,” Annual Review of Sociology 5 (1979): 351–79.
Cited in Victor Fuchs, How We Live (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983), 10.
There are, of course, a few notable exceptions among essentially neo-orthodox economists who may be identified with the teachings, in the United States, of John Dunlop. See, for example, Peter Doeringer and Michael Piore, Internal Labor Markets and Manpower Analysis (Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath, 1971).
For useful and recent discussions of the adjustments of economists of different persuasions to the specifics of an overarching theoretical apparatus, see also Lester C. Thurow, Dangerous Currents: The State of Economics (New York: Random House, 1983; Introduction and Chapters 1 and 8)
E. J. Mishan, What Political Economy Is All About (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982).
More generally, see Robert Lekachman, The Age of Keynes (New York: Random House, 1966)
Sidney Weintrub, ed., Modern Economic Thought (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1977).
Key studies in this tradition include: Peter M. Blau and Otis Dudley Duncan, The American Occupational Structure (New York: John Wiley, 1967)
William H. Sewell and Robert M. Hauser, Education, Occupation, and Earnings: Achievement in the Early Career (New York: Academic Press, 1975)
David L. Featherman and Robert M. Hauser, Opportunity and Change (New York: Academic Press, 1978).
See, for example, Victor H. Vroom, Work and Motivation (New York: John Wiley, 1964); and the articles, generally, in the Journal of Applied Psychology and Personnel Psychology.
See, for example, Ross M. Stolzenberg, “Occupations, Labor Markets and the Process of Wage Attainment,” American Sociological Review 40 (1975): 645–65.
Paul Osterman, “An Empirical Study of Labor Market Segmentation,” Industrial and Labor Relations Review 28 (1975): 508–23.
On the multiparadigmatic nature of social science research, see Robert K. Merton, Social Theory and Social Structure (New York: Free Press, 1957).
See Kenneth Westhues, “Class and Organization as Paradigms in Social Science,” American Sociologist 11 (1976): 38–49.
See, for instance, Erik Olin Wright, Class Structure and Income Determination (New York: Academic Press, 1979)
Erik Olin Wright “Class and Occupation,” Theory and Society 9 (1980): 177–214.
For example, William T. Bielby and Arne L. Kalleberg, “The Structure of Occupational Inequality,” Quality and Quantity 15 (1981): 125–50; Paul M. Siegel, “The American Occupational Prestige Structure,” (Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Chicago, 1971).
This research is summarized in Melvin L. Kohn and Carmi Schooler, Work and Personality: An Inquiry into the Impact of Social Stratification (Norwood, N.J.: Ablex, 1983).
For example, Jerald Hage, “An Axiomatic Theory of Organizations,” Administrative Science Quarterly 10 (December 1965): 289–320.
For example, Richard Caves, American Industry: Structure, Conduct, Performance (Englewood Cliffs, N.J: Prentice-Hall, 1967).
Leonard Weiss, Case Studies in American Industry (New York: John Wiley, 1967).
Robert Blauner, Alienation and Freedom: The Factory Worker and His Industry (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964), 166.
The qualification “more or less” is used to leave abundant room for both structures that are very deliberately designed by managers (see Alfred P. Sloan, My Years with General Motors [New York: MacFadden-Bartell, 1965])
those that are often regarded as unplanned or “informal” as in the case of human relationists who, since the days of Harvard Business School investigations at Western Electric (see, for example, Fritz J. Roethlisberger and William J. Dickson, Management and the Worker [Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1939]), have stressed the structures invented by workers to flesh out, or subvert, “formal organizations” designed by managers.
One leading department, at Princeton, actually housed both disciplines until the principals separated in the late 1940s. That is, they divided their labors between departments informed by marginalist and neo-orthodox theory, on the one side, and by theories emerging from studies concerned with behavioral and managerialist phenomena, on the other. For a revisit to the scene of the “Second Battle of Princeton,” see Fritz Machlup’s Presidential Address to the American Economic Association: “Theories of the Firm: Marginalist, Behavioral, Managerial,” American Economic Review 57 (March 1967): 1–23.
See Walter Adams, ed., The Structure of American Industry, 6th ed. (New York: Macmillan, 1982).
The best summaries of a highly technical literature on industrial organization (market structures, concentration, and the like) are in F. M. Scherer, Industrial Market Structure and Performance (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1980) and, more briefly, in Caves.
Edward F. Denison, The Sources of Economic Growth in the United States (New York: Committee on Economic Development, 1962).
Gunnar Myrdal, Asian Drama: An Inquiry into the Poverty of Nations, Vol. 1 (New York: Pantheon, 1968), 5–126.
Charles Lindblom, Politics and Markets (New York: Basic Books, 1977)
Irma Adelman and Cynthia T. Morris, Economic Growth and Social Equity in Developing Countries (Stanford, Cal.: Stanford University Press, 1973)
Irma Adelman and Cynthia T. Morris, Society, Politics and Economic Development (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1971).
James S. Coleman, The Asymmetrical Society (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1982).
For a neo-orthodox argument of how much more significant “private sector” initiatives have been to United States growth than state interventions, see Douglas C. North, Structure and Change in Economic History (New York: Norton, 1981).
For a brilliantly conceived and beautifully written overview of American economic history informed by the best of studies in the so-called new economic history, see S. P. Lee and P. Passell, A New Economic View of American History (New York: W. W. Norton, 1979), currently in its fourth printing. Although a rash of new economic history writings on discrete historical-economic issues have appeared since its publication, this volume displays the lively new tradition per se in a very effective fashion.
Otto Eckstein, The Great Recession with a Postscript on Stagflation (Amsterdam and New York: North Holland, 1979).
See, for example, Clark Kerr, John T. Dunlop, Frederick H. Harbison, and Charles A. Myers, Industrialism and Industrial Man (London: Penguin Press, 1973).
Another example is provided by Reinhard Bendix, Work and Authority in Industry: Ideologies of Management in the Course of Industrialization (New York: Wiley, 1956).
William H. Form, “The Internal Stratification of the Working Class: System Involvements of Auto Workers in Four Countries,” American Sociological Review 38 (December 1973): 697–711.
Duncan Gallie, In Search of the New Working Class: Automation and Social Integration within the Capitalist Enterprise (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1978).
See also Ronald Dore, British Factory, Japanese Factory: The Origins of National Diversity in Industrial Relations (Berkeley, Cal.: University of California Press, 1973), a comparison in which industry is held constant.
The term new structuralists first appeared in James N. Baron and William T. Bielby, “Bringing the Firms Back In: Stratification, Segmentation and the Organization of Work,” American Sociological Review 45 (1980): 737–65.
For example, Arne L. Kalleberg and Larry J. Griffin, “Positional Sources of Inequality in Job Satisfaction,” Sociology of Work and Occupations 5 (November 1978): 371–401.
Arne L. Kalleberg and Larry J. Griffin, “Class, Occupation and Inequality in Job Rewards,” American Journal of Sociology 85 (January 1980): 731–76.
Neil Fligstein, Alexander Hicks, and S. Philip Morgan, “Toward a Theory of Income Determination,” Work and Occupations 10 (August 1983): 289–306.
Some writers in the dual economy tradition illustrate the univariate industry approach because they assume that industrial sectors alone adequately represent the structure of economic segmentation (see, for example, E. M. Beck, P. M. Horan, and C.M. Tolbert, II, “Stratification in a Dual Economy: A Sectoral Model of Earnings Determination,” American Sociological Review 43 [1978]: 704–20).
Other writers in the dual economy tradition explicitly recognize the need to combine explanations based on industrial sectors with those focused on other work structures such as occupations and organizations. See, for example, Michael Wallace and Arne L. Kalleberg, “Economic Organization of Firms and Labor Force Consequences,” in Sociological Perspectives on Labor Markets, ed. Ivar Berg (New York: Academic Press, 1981), 77–117.
See, for example, Robert P. Althauser and Arne L. Kalleberg, “Firms, Occupations, and the Structure of Labor Markets: A Conceptual Analysis,” in Sociological Perspectives on Labor Markets, ed. Ivar Berg (New York: Academic Press, 1981), 119–49.
Ivar Berg, Marcia Freedman, and Michael Freeman, Managers and Work Reform: A Limited Engagement (New York: Free Press, 1978).
For example, Arne L. Kalleberg, Michael Wallace, and Robert P. Althauser, “Economic Segmentation, Worker Power, and Income Inequality,” American Journal of Sociology 87 (November 1981): 651–83
Arne L. Kalleberg, “Work and Stratification: Structural Perspectives,” introductory essay to special issue of Work and Occupations: An International Sociological Journal on “Capital, Labor, and Work: Structural Determinants of Work-related Inequalities,” ed. Arne L. Kalleberg, 10 (August 1983): 251–59.
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Kalleberg, A.L., Berg, I. (1987). Research on Work Structures. In: Work and Industry. Springer Studies in Work and Industry. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-3520-5_2
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