Negotiating Labor Market Effects: Descriptive Practice in a Work Incentive Program

Abstract

By analyzing labor market description and theorizing in everyday life, the author focuses on the ways in which staff and others associated with a Work Incentive Program (WIN) use labor market descriptions to produce quasi‐theories intended to justify their positions on matters of practical concern. The major issue in dispute involved the practical effects on the recessionary area economy for WIN staff and clients. Specifically, should they be held accountable to typical organizational expectations and standards in such an economic environment? This issue is developed by considering the (1) organizational context within which labor market description and negotiations occurred, (2) images of labor markets used by WIN staff and others in justifying their positions, (3) social organization of the negotiations, and (4) ways in which such negotiations sometimes resulted in the reformulation of the “real” issues at stake in staff member interactions with others. The analysis concludes by considering some of the implications of the findings for analyzing labor market description in contemporary organizations.