An application of job vacancy chain model to a civil service internal labor market†

Abstract

This paper has three primary foci—a conceptualization of occupational mobility having system boundary properties and interrelated moves, tests of the job vacancy chain model to determine its predictive power for a civil service internal labor market, and additional use of the theory of absorbing Markov chains to gain further insight into the dynamics of job vacancies. The modes by which job vacancy chains entered the system by stratum are also examined for a twenty‐one year period. The job system analyzed is the police internal labor market of the Michigan State Police. The data are continuous for a forty‐three year period (1927–1970). Since, a reasonable degree of stationarity was not reached until 1949, the model was tested from 1949–1970. The model is viewed as having considerable predictive power. Moreover, when viewed as a system model rather than a formal organizational model, it can be used for internal labor markets and more general systems which link internal labor markets. It appears much less l...