Labour Market Arrangements Research Articles

The Structure of Opportunity: How Promotion Ladders Vary Within and Among Organizations

A previous version of this paper was presented at the 1984 Academy of Management annual meeting. The authors gratefully acknowledge research support from the National Science Foundation (SES 7924905), the CenterforAdvanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (BNS 76-22943), and the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Teri Bush, Kelsa Duffy, and Jill Fukuhara provided splendid technical support. Howard Aldrich, Robert Althauser, Yinon Cohen, Frank Dobbin, Paul Osterman, and the ASQ reviewers and editors offered helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper. This paper analyzes data describing jobs in 100 establishments in order to test hypotheses about the characteristics of jobs and organizations associated with the structure of internal promotion ladders. The diversity of labor market arrangements found within the organizations indicates only weak support for hypotheses linking internal labor markets to organizational or sectoral imperatives. Atthe job level, however, there is support for hypotheses linking job ladders to firm-specific skills, organizational structure, gender distinctions, technology, occupational differentiation, the institutional environment, and the interests of unions. The paper concludes with an examination of how promotion ladders are formed from clusters of jobs associated with each other by occupation, skill, or gender composition.e

Determinants of Internal Labor Markets in Organizations

Jeffrey Pfeffer and Yinon Cohen Data from a sample of about 300 large establishments in the San Francisco Bay area were used to study internal labor markets. The extent to which internal labor market arrangements were present was positively related to the provision of training, to being in the industrial core, to having a personnel department, and to being a branch unit. Internal labor market arrangements were negatively related to the percentage of the work force covered by collective bargaining. Once other factors were controlled, there was no effect of change in size on internal labor market practices. A similar pattern of results was observed when manufacturing and nonmanufacturing establishments were analyzed separately, although the effects of size, training, and having a personnel department were stronger in nonmanufacturing organizations. The evidence suggests that organizational variables as well as economic considerations should be incorporated in explanations of the presence of internal labor markets.e

"Though Much Is Taken": Reflections on Aging, Health, and Medical Care

The Medicare trust funds face huge prospective deficits by the end of this decade.This paper discusses trends in six areas that bear on the Medicare problem: the number of the elderly, their health status, use of medical care, labor force participation, income, and living arrangements. Among the most important findings are: 1) a very large increase since 1965 in life expectancy at age 65; 2) a very large increase since 1976 in real per capita health care expenditures on the elderly relative to expenditures on persons under age 65; 3) a cross-sectional increase with age in per capita health care expenditures that is primarily attributable to very large expenditures in the last year of life; 4) a sharp decrease in labor force participation and a sharp increase in relative income of the elderly since 1965.The paper concludes by raising questions about the need to reconsider the definition of the elderly, the need for more flexible labor market arrangements for older workers, and a need for a social consensus concerning appropriate care of dying patients.