A Laboratory Experiment on Bureaucratic Authority

Abstract

ten to nineteen years, while the Time 1 graduates have been engineers from thirty to forty-nine years. In other words, given sufficient time in the engineering profession our Time 3 graduates would appear quite similar to our Time 1 graduates with respect to holding job positions that are not related to social economic origins. This particular difficulty was pointed out above when we outlined the kinds of data needed to test the proposition embodied in our conception of what an open or structure meant. Since we have no data for our Time 1 engineers that would indicate their job positions at earlier stages in their career, we have been unable to control the effect of time in the profession upon the job position an engineer holds. However, we hold to our conclusion concerning a trend toward a more closed structure in view of the following assumption concerning the effect of time upon job position. We assume that the job positions held by engineers at graduation and in the early stages of their career are most likely to be the result of such general criteria as the needs of the industry and the particular specialized qualifications of the engineer, while particular factors, such as the selection for promotion of those engineers who are from upper and middle class backgrounds, are most likely to be operative at later stages in their careers. We predict that the social economic differences found among our Time 3 engineers will become greater when they reach the stage in their career that our Time 1 engineers are in (thirty to fortynine years in the profession). Despite the lack of data to test the validity of this assumption, we tentatively conclude that the evidence presented in this paper indicates a possible trend toward rigidity in the American opportunity structure.