Encyclopedia of SociologyVol._3

In 1977, Philip Stone and his colleagues published The General Inquirer, a computerized content analysis system. While many of the applications involve the coding of written text, it has also been used for the coding of transcribed conversations. In one of the first applications of the method, Dexter Dunphy used The General Inquirer to code descriptions that group members had written of recent sessions. The great advantage of the methods is that it allows the user to define a dictionary. Three of the earliest dictionaries were the Harvard III Psychosocial Dictionary, the Stanford Political Dictionary, and the Need-Achievement Dictionary. It would also be possible to develop a SYMLOG value-level dictionary. In the case of a computerized content analysis system, the dictionary designer infers meaning before the behavior is coded.

RECENT DEVELOPMENTS

Observation systems only flourish when supported by a substantial research group. Because of the expense and the need for multiple coders, it is difficult to use observation systems as an isolated researcher. For three decades (the 1950s through the 1970s) such a group existed at Harvard. Bales and his colleagues had a well-equipped observation room and plenty of graduate student labor available. When Bales retired in 1985, the observation laboratory ceased to function as a research center. For most of the 1980s there were really no major research centers conducting observation work.

In the 1990s Joseph McGrath and his colleagues at the University of Illinois established a major research agenda around McGrath’s theory of time, interaction, and performance (TIP) (1991). While much less method-driven than Bales’s IPA and SYMLOG research groups, McGrath’s group uses an observation method known as ‘‘time-by- event-by-member pattern observation’’ (TEMPO) (Futoran et al. 1989).

TEMPO was designed as a general observation method for the analysis of a wide range of group performance settings. It is divided into two sets of categories. The first codes on four performance functions:

1.Propose content—solutions, ideas.

2.Propose process—goals, strategies, acts.

3.Evaluate content—agreement, disagreement, clarification.

4.Evaluate process—agree, modify, disagree.

The two ‘‘proposal categories’’ are further classified as: (1) new—a new proposal; (2) prior— previously proposed; or (3) dictate—repeat content for clarification or emphasis. The two evaluation categories are further classified as: (1) agree,

(2) clarify or modify, (3) disagree, or (4) reject/veto.

The second set of categories codes seven nonproduction function categories:

T. Task digression

P. Personal comments

I. Interpersonal comments

R.React to experiment

D.Digressions

U.Uninterpretable

S.Silence

McGrath’s group devised their own methodology rather than relying on IPA or SYMLOG because they were concerned with both process and activity. They felt that the existing systems did not allow for the level of temporal pattern recognition that they were looking for. Their primary criteria for the system were that it: (1) be timebased, (2) identify individual member behavior,

(3)recognize multiple acts within a single speech,

(4)allow for multiple simultaneous acts and periods of inactivity, and (5) relate act to task products. Virtually all their observation studies are based on the analysis of videotaped records of interacting groups. The TIP theory and the TEMPO method are central to the line of research that McGrath and his colleagues conducted in the 1990s. Small Group Research devoted an special issue to six articles that resulted from a single large research project known as ‘‘The JEMCO Workshop Study’’ (McGrath 1993), but additional work from this research team has resulted in numerous journal articles and books.

Another major research effort that has produced its own observation system is led by Susan Wheelan. The work of Wheelan and her colleagues focused on group development. The Group Development Observation System (GDOS) is based in Wilfred Bion’s concept of basic assumption and

work groups (1959). It consists of seven categories (Wheelan et al. 1993):

1.Dependency statement

2.Counterdependency statement

3.Fight statement

4.Flight statement

5.Pairing statement

6.Counter-pairing statement

7.Work statement

Like McGrath’s group, Wheelan’s group is primarily concerned with temporal patterns in group development. The conceptual underpinnings of the two lines of research are, however, very different. Again, GDOS has resulted in numerous journal articles and books. A special issue of Small Group Research was also devoted to this line of research (Wheelan 1999).

While there have been a number of other observation systems to emerge in the past decade, these two represent extended lines of research. Most of the publications that have used observation systems since 1980 have used either modifications of existing systems or idiosyncratic systems that were used once or twice and so did not generate a comparative body of work.

A DECADE OF SMALL GROUP RESEARCH

In 1990, International Journal of Small Group Research and Small Group Behavior merged to form a new international and interdisciplinary journal known as Small Group Research. This journal publishes research on small groups that ranges across sociology, psychology, organizational behavior, social work, group psychotherapy, communications, and management information systems. As the only interdisciplinary journal in the field of small groups, it is a good indicator of the popularity of the observation systems in general and also of specific systems. Table 2 presents the results of an inventory of the past decade of research published in Small Group Research. In addition to tabulating the total number of articles using observation systems each year, it also indicates whether the articles used direct observation, videotapes, or transcriptions and whether they used one of the

four most popular general-purpose methods (IPA, SYMLOG, TEMPO, and GDOS) or some other method.

Of the 270 articles published in Small Group Research over the past decade, 41 used observation methods. IPA and SYMLOG are still in use; the other most common methods were TEMPO and GDOS, described above. However, the majority of articles (28) used idiosyncratic observation methods. While many represent real contributions to the literature, the lack of a common method makes comparisons across studies difficult. The other trend that is evident from Table 1 is that relatively few studies (9) used live observation. The remaining studies were almost equally split between the coding of videotapes and the coding of transcriptions. Perhaps the real loss in this shift of methodology is that so many rely on transcripts. One of the strengths of observation methods is that they capture paralinguistic cues; these data are lost to systems that rely on transcriptions.

THE FUTURE OF OBSERVATION SYSTEMS

Observation systems have been used less and less in recent years for a mundane reason: cost. Training observers is time consuming, as is the actual process of observing and coding behavior. At this point, serious research using direct SYMLOG observation is being done at only two or three institutions. In contrast, the much less time-consuming method of SYMLOG retrospective rating (using either the Bales items or the Polley revisions) is currently in use in at least fifty institutions around the world. While there is some indication of a resurgence of interest in direct observation, as evidenced by the studies cited in the preceding sections, it is clear that the method requires a substantial commitment of time and money on the part of the researcher.

While the costs of direct observation are high, it is clear that there are a great many aspects of social behavior that simply cannot be understood without it. Basic research still needs to be done on group development, particularly as it relates to team building in organizations. The effects of various leadership styles and decision-making processes on group functioning are still not thoroughly understood. A wide range of styles is currently

used by group therapists, but these styles are more often backed by rival schools of thought than empirical evidence.

As with content analysis, the future of observation systems may well lie with computerization. Johansen (1989) coined the term groupware to refer to computer systems for the support of groups or teams. To date, most of the systems have provided little more than an ‘‘electronic flipchart’’ for nominal group technique sessions. With advances in artificial intelligence, more sophisticated examples of groupware have been gradually emerging. Speech-recognition programs for the automatic transcription of meetings could greatly reduce the cost of using content analysis. Programs have been developed for recognizing emotional content in speech. If these were to be combined with voiceactivated, some automatic scoring of behavior—at least at the paralinguistic level—should be possible. Until technology substantially reduces the costs, a return to the widespread use of observation systems seems unlikely.

REFERENCES

Bales, Robert F. 1950 Interaction Process Analysis. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

——— 1998 Social Interaction Systems: Theory and Measurement. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers.

———, Stephen P. Cohen, and Stephen A. Williamson 1979 SYMLOG: A System for the Multiple Level Observation of Groups. New York: Free Press.

Bion, Wilfred 1959 Experiences in Groups. New York: Basic.

Birdwhistell, Ray 1970 Kinesics and Context. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Borgatta, Edgar 1963 ‘‘A New Systematic Interaction Observation System.’’ Journal of Psychological Studies

14:24–44.

———, and Betty Crowther 1965 A Workbook for the Study of Social Interaction Processes. Chicago: Rand McNally.

Chapple, Elliot D. 1940 ‘‘Measuring Human Relations: An Introduction to the Study of the Interaction of Individuals.’’ Genetic Psychology Monographs 27:3–147.

Couch, Arthur S. 1960 Personality determinants of interpersonal behavior. Ph.D. diss, Harvard University.

Futoran, Gail K., Janice R. Kelly, and Joseph E. McGrath 1989 ‘‘TEMPO: A Time-Based System for Analysis of Group Process.’’ Basic and Applied Social Psychology

10(3):211–232.

Hall, Edward T. 1963 ‘‘A System for the Notation of Proxemic Behavior.’’ American Anthropologist

65:1003–1026.

Hare, A. Paul 1976 Handbook of Small Group Research, 2nd ed. New York: Free Press.

Johansen, Robert 1989 Groupware. New York: Free Press.

Leary, Timothy 1957 Interpersonal Diagnosis of Personali-

ty. New York: Ronald.

McGrath, Joseph E. 1991 ‘‘Time, Interaction, and Performance (TIP): A Theory of Groups.’’ Small Group Research 22:147–174.

——— (ed.) 1993 ‘‘Time, Task, and Technology in Work Groups: The JEMCO Workshop Study.’’ Small Group Research (Special issue). 24:285–420.

McLemore, Clinton, and Lorna Benjamin 1979 ‘‘Whatever Happened to Interpersonal Diagnosis?’’ American Psychologist 34:17–34.

Mann, Richard D. 1967 Interpersonal Styles and Group Development. New York: John Wiley.

Mehrabian, Albert 1970 ‘‘A Semantic Space for Nonverbal Behavior.’’ Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 35:248–257.

Moreno, Jacob 1953 Who Shall Survive? Beacon, N.Y.:

Beacon House.

Parsons, Talcott, and Robert F. Bales 1955 Family, Socialization, and Interaction Process. New York: Free Press.

Polley, Richard B. 1979 ‘‘Investigating Individual Perceptual Biases of Group Members in Rating and of Observers in SYMLOG Interaction Scoring.’’ In R. F. Bales, S. P. Cohen, and S. A. Williamson, eds.,

SYMLOG: A System for the Multiple Level Observation of Groups. New York: Free Press.

——— 1987 ‘‘The Dimensions of Interpersonal Behavior: A Method for Improving Rating Scales.’’ Social Psychology Quarterly 50:72–82.

———, A. Paul Hare, and Philip J. Stone (eds.) 1988 The SYMLOG Practitioner: Applications of Small Group Research. New York: Praeger.

Slater, Philip J. 1955 ‘‘Role Differentiation in Small Groups.’’ American Sociological Review 20:300–310.

Stone, Philip J. 1988 ‘‘SYMLOG for Skeptics.’’ In R. B. Polley, A. P. Hare, and P. J. Stone, eds., The SYMLOG Practitioner: Applications of Small Group Research. New York: Praeger.

———, Dexter C. Dunphy, Marshall S. Smith, and Daniel M. Ogilvie 1966 The General Inquirer: A Computer Approach to Content Analysis. Cambridge, Mass.: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press.

Weick, Karl E. 1985 ‘‘Systematic Observation Methods.’’ In G. Lindzey and E. Aronson, eds., The Handbook of Social Psychology, 3rd ed. New York: Random House.

Wheelan, Susan A. (ed.) 1999 ‘‘Group Development.’’ Small Group Research (Special Issue). 30:3–129.

———, A. F. Verdi, and R. McKeage 1993 The Group Observation Development System: Origins and Applications. Philadelphia: PEP.

Wiens, A. N., J. D. Matarazzo, and G. Saslow 1965 ‘‘The Interaction Recorder: An Electronic Punched Paper Tape Unity for Recording Speech Behavior during Interviews.’’ Journal of Clinical Psychology 21:142–145.

Wish, Myron, Morton Deutsch, and S. Kaplan 1976 ‘‘Perceived Dimensions of Interpersonal Relations.’’

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 33:409–420.

RICHARD B. KETTNER-POLLEY

OCCUPATIONAL AND

CAREER MOBILITY

Occupational and career mobility in adulthood is often referred to as intragenerational social mobility. It involves change in an individual’s position in the labor market over the adult life course. Change is studied with respect to both type of work and the rewards derived from work. The term career refers to an individual’s job history. Empirical regularity in the careers of individuals in the labor force defines what we call a ‘‘career line’’ or ‘‘job trajectory,’’ since a work history common to a portion of the labor force reflects the existence of structurally determined linkages among jobs in the economy. Jobs are located in particular firms, whereas occupations and industries encompass jobs in many firms. An individual may remain in the same occupation or industry but change firms (and jobs within the same firm) any number of times. Since the process of job change does not necessarily involve a change of occupation or industry, but a change of occupation or industry always involves a job change, the process of job change provides a more detailed account of career movement. Changes in the rewards derived from work usually accompany job changes but can also occur during the course of tenure in a job.

Research on intragenerational mobility has focused on the labor force as a whole and on employees in particular occupations and firms. Research on the labor force as a whole has usually considered change in occupation and industry, as measured for detailed categories or more aggregated groupings that define broad occupational

and industrial groups. It has also considered change in the rewards derived from work, focusing primarily on occupational prestige and earnings. Research on particular occupations and firms has usually focused on job status and authority changes within organizational hierarchies and on changes in work rewards.

Early work on intragenerational mobility involved the mathematical modeling of transition probabilities, usually among a few, highly aggregated categories (see Mayer 1972 for a review). This work used Markov models and semi-Markov models to analyze transition probabilities in a sequence under the assumption that the job category an individual will occupy in the future depends only on the job category occupied in the present and not on job categories occupied previously. Although there was empirical support for this assumption in some studies, it was not found to be broadly applicable. In semi-Markov models, transition probabilities are permitted to vary with time and for subgroups of the population. These models capture declines in mobility with age or duration of stay and allow for the fact that some individuals are more likely to move than others. There is evidence that mobility is an exponentially declining function of time (Mayer 1972) and that some individuals become ‘‘movers’’ while others become ‘‘stayers’’ (Blumen et al. 1955).

Later analyses have considered more refined models of job change, focusing on job shifts as elementary acts in the mobility process. Job shifts may be either voluntary or involuntary, and may occur at a decreasing rate with time in the labor market. They are also more likely to occur within a firm than between firms as labor market experience increases (Rosenfeld 1992; DiPrete and Nonnemaker 1997). As time spent in a firm increases, both rates of promotion and rates of leaving the firm also decline (Petersen and Spilerman 1990; DiPrete and Nonnemaker 1997). When the effect of labor market experience is considered simultaneously, firm tenure may have a positive effect on within-firm job mobility, but this effect indicates that the rate of within-firm job mobility declines with labor market experience more slowly for each year of tenure with an employer than for each year of pre-employer labor market experience. Job shifts (both voluntary and involuntary) are strongly and negatively related to job tenure. As the duration of a job increases, the probability

of leaving it declines. Most of this decline occurs in the first year of a job, after which there is a leveling off (Topel and Ward 1992). Within firms, however, job tenure has a positive effect on the probability of promotion, in some instances increasing up to a point and then decreasing (Felmlee 1982; Althauser and Kalleberg 1990; Petersen and Spilerman 1990). The rate of mobility varies with characteristics of the individual, the job, the occupation, the employing organization, and the economic environment.

Change in the rewards derived from work usually accompanies a job shift (Sørensen 1974; Rosenbaum 1984; Topel and Ward 1992). Voluntary job shifts are associated with increases in prestige and wages; involuntary job shifts, with losses. Job shifts within firms and occupations are more often associated with gains in prestige and wages than those between firms and occupations (DiPrete and Krecker 1991; DiPrete and McManus 1996; Cheng and Kalleberg 1996). In general, the rewards of changing jobs decline with labor market experience and job tenure. Wages, as well as the opportunity for wage growth and promotion, bear a negative relationship to the probability of a job shift (Petersen and Spilerman 1990; Topel and Ward 1992). Change in wages also occurs during the course of a job (Topel 1991), declining with labor market experience and, at a decreasing rate, with job tenure (Topel and Ward 1992). For the labor force as a whole, occupational prestige and earnings increase over the adult working life. The shape of these trajectories tends to be concave downward—with a rise early in the career, a plateau during the middle years, and a slight decline as the end of the work career approaches. Status and earnings trajectories have the same form, but the former is flatter (Mincer 1974; Rosenfeld 1980). There is also variation in the shape of these trajectories for those in different career lines (Spilerman 1986).

Given the heterogeneity of career lines and the important role that age, or duration since career entry, plays in shaping career lines, there have been attempts to study the path of careers in recent years. Not only does mobility decline sharply with age, and therefore with the proximity of a job to the end of a ca reer line, but job changes that occur later in an individual’s work life tend to involve jobs requiring skills that are more similar than those that occur earlier in the work life

(Spenner et al. 1982; Althauser and Kalleberg 1990). There is also evidence that early career experiences have an important effect on later career outcomes. This evidence indicates not only that those entering different career lines, who receive different rewards at career entry, can expect different career outcomes (Marini 1980; Spenner et al. 1982), but also that early experiences within a career line can condition subsequent progression and the level of reward attained relative to others who enter the same career line (Stewman and Konda 1983; Rosenbaum 1984). The career lines most often studied have been trajectories within institutional structures, but there have also been attempts to describe career lines that cross institutional boundaries (Spilerman 1977; Spenner et al. 1982; Althauser and Kalleberg 1990).

LABOR MARKET STRUCTURE

The concept of ‘‘career line’’ or ‘‘job trajectory’’ derives from the view that the labor market is structured in a way that makes some types of job changes more likely than others. Early work on career mobility ignored this structural differentiation, estimating the overall (linear) relationship between the status and earnings of an individual’s first job and the status and earnings of a job held later in the career (Blau and Duncan 1967; Coleman et al. 1972; Marini 1980). Jobs resembling each other in status, pay, and working conditions, however, are sometimes part of a career line and sometimes not, even if part of a career line can be attached to different career lines. Jobs providing similar current rewards may therefore not offer the same prospects for future mobility.

Since career lines are rooted in labor-market structure, their existence demonstrates that intragenerational mobility is influenced by the structure of the labor market and changes in that structure, as well as by the demography of the labor force and individual characteristics that affect movement within segments of the labor market. If jobs have entry requirements and confer rewards, the structure of jobs plays a critical role in establishing the link between the attributes of individuals and work rewards. Recognition that the labor market is structured in a way that produces segmentation among career lines has led to attempts not only to describe career lines but to identify the forces shaping them.

Pioneering work by White (1970) directed attention to the importance of social structure in shaping careers by modeling the way in which vacancies in a structured labor market trigger career movement. More recent models of vacancybased movement have further delineated the ways in which vacancy chains, job distributions, and managerial staffing and hiring practice structure the relative career chances of individuals (Sørensen 1977; Skvoretz 1984; Stewman and Konda 1983; Stewman 1986). In these models the availability of job openings determines career advancement possibilities, and the shape of organizational hierarchies affects the probability of advancement. Since most organizational hierarchies are pyramidal, with many more low-level than high-level positions, the average employee’s advancement must slow down over time. Aggregate age-promotion curves appear to be described empirically by an exponen- tial-decline function where the highest promotion chances occur at the outset, declines are a fixed proportion of an individual’s current chances, and promotion chances become increasingly rare but not impossible. In short, promotion favors youth, declines gradually, but does not disappear for older workers. There may also be chances for an increase in promotion during the initial career years when most on-the-job training occurs.

Although career advancement often occurs as a result of job change to fill a vacant position, not all career movement depends on or is affected by a job opening. New jobs in organizations are sometimes created for particular individuals, and jobs that are vacated may be eliminated rather than filled. New jobs can also be created by individual moves to become self-employed, and the termination of self-employment does not necessarily create a vacancy. Within organizations, career advancement occurs through upgrading as well as vacancy filling. An employee receives an upgrade promotion when a certain level of seniority or a certain performance marker is reached. Such promotions involve reclassification to a higher rank and do not depend on a vacancy’s being present (Stewman and Yeh 1991; Barnett and Miner 1992). Both upgrade promotions and vacancy promotions may occur during the course of an individual’s career. These alternative advancement mechanisms, however, are not necessarily found equally throughout an organizational hierarchy. In several occupational categories studied

in one organization, most lower-level promotions were vacancy based, and a higher proportion of upper-level promotions occurred through upgrading (Barnett and Miner 1992). The mechanisms available for promotion affect an individual’s promotion chances. It has been found that if promotion occurs through upgrading based on performance rather than vacancy filling, salary grade level is not necessarily associated with a lower probability of promotion (Petersen and Spilerman 1990). Similarly, the effect of hiring temporary workers on the promotion chances of permanent workers depends on the extent to which promotion occurs through vacancy filling rather than upgrading (Barnett and Miner 1992).

Because the structure of the labor market affects career movement, there have been attempts to understand the structural bases of segmentation among career lines. During the 1940s and 1950s, institutional economists called for an understanding of well-defined systems of jobs and firms, drawing a distinction between internal and external labor markets. For example, Dunlop (1957) argued that within a firm there are groups of jobs, or ‘‘job clusters,’’ each of which is linked together by technology, the administrative organization of the production process, and the social customs of the work community. A job cluster usually contains one or more key jobs and a group of associated jobs, and the wage rates for the key jobs mediate the effects of labor market influences, including union and government wage policies, and forces in the market for products on the wage structure of the firm. The distinction between internal and external labor markets was later reintroduced by Doeringer and Piore (1971), who discussed what they called a ‘‘mobility cluster.’’ The central idea was that administrative rules and procedures tend to set up separate markets for those already hired (an internal labor market) and those seeking employment (an external labor market). A firm hires workers from the outside labor market into ‘‘entry jobs,’’ and other jobs are filled internally as workers progress on well-defined career ladders by acquiring job-related skills, many of which are firm-specific. Thus, firms make investments in individuals, and these investments segment the workforce with respect to advancement opportunity.

The concept of the internal labor market was developed further in what was first called dual and

then segmented labor market theory (Gordon 1972; Kalleberg and Sørensen 1979). This theory draws a distinction between primary and secondary jobs, arguing that the internal labor market is only one kind of work setting. Primary jobs emphasize longterm attachment between workers and firms and offer built-in career ladders and promotion opportunities, whereas secondary jobs do not offer these advantages. The distinction between primary and secondary jobs may occur within the same firm or between firms, since primary jobs are considered more likely to be found in oligopolistic, unionized industries, and secondary jobs in competitive industries.

Dual and other segmented labor-market theories have come under attack as being too crude to meaningfully characterize the multiple dimensions on which labor markets vary. Attempts to measure labor-market segmentation by crude topologies, including industrial and occupational categories, have also been criticized. Because there is extensive heterogeneity within industrial and occupational categories, and because there is no way to link them to the kinds of job clusters hypothesized to exist, it has been argued that more disaggregated analyses of jobs and firms are needed. Many subsequent analyses have focused on particular bureaucracies or firms, and those examining larger segments of the labor market have sought to measure the characteristics on which employing organizations and occupations vary.

Attempting to develop a systematic conceptual scheme for studying labor market segmentation, Althauser and Kalleberg argued that ‘‘the concept of an internal labor market should include any cluster of jobs, regardless of occupational titles or employing organizations, that have three basic structural features: (a) a job ladder, with (b) entry only at the bottom, and (c) movement up this ladder, which is associated with a progressive development of knowledge and skill’’ (1981, p. 130). Based on four possible pairings of type of control and prospects for advancement, they differentiated four types of labor market structures: (1) firm internal labor markets, which are internal labor markets controlled by firms; (2) occupational internal labor markets, which are internal labor markets controlled by occupational incumbents; (3) firm labor markets, which provide

firm-specific security without advancement prospects; and (4) occupational labor markets, which provide occupational security without advancement prospects.

Within a firm or an occupation, there may be multiple job ladders that vary in length and shape, and there are structured relationships among job ladders. Job mobility occurs not only along formal organizational and occupational ladders but across them (Baron et al. 1986; Stewman 1986; DiPrete 1989). For example, job ladders often cross detailed and even aggregated occupational boundaries. DiPrete (1987) described the permeability of these boundaries as depending on several types of contingencies: (1) skill-based contingencies, (2) information-based contingencies, (3) contingencies due to the configuration of positions in an organization, and (4) contingencies that emerge from the institutionalization of formal structure. Internal labor markets limit competition from outsiders by offering a combination of closed and restricted mobility contests that involve movement on and across job ladders (DiPrete and Krecker 1991; Stewman and Yeh 1991).

Because employing organizations vary in the kinds of jobs they offer, the occupational groupings in which those jobs fall, and the wages they pay, there has been some attempt to examine the effect of organizational characteristics on job mobility. Large organizations offer better pay, have more job ladders offering opportunities for promotion and wage growth, and offer better employee benefits. Organization size is therefore positively related to mobility within an organization and negatively related to voluntary movement out of an organization (Hachen 1992; DiPrete 1993; Cheng and Kalleberg 1996). Organizations in concentrated industries and industries dominated by conglomerates experience both lower rates of withinfirm mobility and lower rates of voluntary exit because they have higher average wage levels, and there is a negative relationship between the average wage level of an industry and the probability of both within-firm mobility and voluntary firm exit. High-wage industries have lower rates of withinfirm mobility than low-wage industries because, net of organizational size, internal labor markets are less prevalent in firms in high-wage industries. Capital-intensive industries have higher rates of

both within-firm mobility and voluntary firm exit but lower rates of involuntary exit. These differences are linked to the greater prevalence of internal labor markets in firms in capital-intensive industries (Hachen 1992).

Although there is general agreement that the technical character of work influences organizational development, existing variation in institutional and personnel structures, especially crossnationally, indicates that the technical character of work alone does not determine job ladders and career lines. These are affected by the historical circumstances surrounding an organization’s founding, including the gender, racial, and ethnic composition of the workforce; by market and other social conditions that affect organizational change and employment growth; and by the negotiating strength of various bargaining units.

A number of explanations have been advanced for the emergence of internal labor markets. One focuses on the development of specialized knowledge and skill relevant to employment in particular occupations, jobs, and firms. Becker (1964) noted that when a worker receives training specific to the needs of an employer, the worker’s value to the employer increases since a new employee would have to receive similar training before being able to perform at the same level. It is therefore in the interest of the employer to retain workers with such specific training by providing them with opportunities for promotion, salary growth, and employment security. When firm-specific skills are rewarded, workers also have an interest in remaining with the employer because the wages and other benefits they could obtain from another employer are lower. Based on this reasoning, Williamson (1975) argued that internal labor markets emerged because they were preferable to long-term contracts for maintaining the employment relationship. Thus, internal labor markets are seen as resulting from employers’ needs for renewable supplies of otherwise scarce, highly skilled workers. Substantial empirical evidence is consistent with this view. Another explanation, offered by Bulow and Summers (1986), is that job hierarchies offering promotion prospects and wage increases are an important means of motivating workers when individual performance is not easily monitored.

The emergence and spread of internal labor markets is also seen as related to the development

of personnel departments, formalized rules, and the rise of bureaucratic control. Although there is some empirical support for this view, at least some internal labor markets preceded the emergence of bureaucratic control systems and rules (Althauser 1989; Stovel et al. 1996). Spilerman (1986) has noted that workers have an interest in barring lateral entry and in having high-level positions filled through promotion. Workers may also wish to limit employer discretion by having decisions about promotion and layoff tied to seniority. These worker interests cause labor unions to work to create more widespread job hierarchies and promotion. Although internal labor markets have been argued to be a result of unionization, evidence suggests that they are to some degree an alternative to unionization (Pfeffer and Cohen 1984). In manufacturing establishments, the technology of production helps to manage the workforce, binding workers to a specific organization with specific machines and production technology, and providing necessary skills and training. Unionization reduces turnover by providing workers with a voice, skewing compensation toward deferred benefits over current wages and bonuses, and paying a larger proportion of total compensation as fringe benefits valued particularly by senior workers. In the presence of a governance system under unionization, the internal labor market and other forms of bureaucratic control are redundant if not in competition with union mechanisms.

Because the prevalence of internal labor markets varies across organizations, there has been some attempt to explain why they are found more often in some organizations than others. It was initially argued that firms characterized by high profit levels, oligopolistic pricing, and large organization size were more likely to create internal labor markets because they could better afford to. However, there is evidence that internal labor markets are not merely a derivative feature of core-economy organization (Althauser 1989). Hachen (1992) has suggested that they are affected by three characteristics of employer personnel policy: the need to retain workers, the availability of alternative mechanisms for retention, and the ability to use specific mechanisms. In labor-intensive industries where labor costs are substantial and worker replacement is used as a strategy to maintain or even lower wage levels, retaining workers is less important. As a result, within-firm mobility rates

are low, and involuntary exit rates are high. When an organization desires to retain workers, offering higher wages and increasing internal opportunities are two means of retention, but organizations vary in their ability to use these mechanisms. A large organization will be better able to offer internal opportunities. An organization that can offer high wages may have less need to offer advancement opportunities.

Career lines not only involve substantial movement between job ladders within firms but often cross firm and industry boundaries rather than remaining within them. In the U.S. economy, most job change involves a change of employer (DiPrete and Krecker 1991). It has been estimated that only somewhat over a quarter of U.S. workers are continuously employed by the same employer for twenty years or more (Hall 1982). In some careers, such as the salaried professions, crafts, and ‘‘secondary’’ labor-market positions, firm and industry are not a locus of career line structure. Nevertheless, moves between firms and industries often occur between related positions, so that labormarket segmentation emerges even without institutional barriers.

Aspects of the structure of labor markets, other than internal labor markets, that have implications for occupational and career mobility have been documented in cross-national research. One type of cross-national variation is in the relationship between the educational system and the labor market, which varies according to the structure of the educational system. In countries with more stratified and standardized educational systems, such as Germany, Austria, France, and Norway, there is a tighter linkage between educational preparation and labor-market position than in the United States. In these countries, reliance on educational degrees and other credentials as screening devices is greater, and rates of occupational and job mobility are lower (Haller et al. 1985; Allmendinger 1989; DiPrete and McManus 1996). In the United States, where schooling is more open and comprehensive, the number of years of education attained matters more, and career mobility is higher because a larger proportion of employees are allocated to low-level entry positions in organizations. In Great Britain, which has a stratified educational system, similar to those of the other European countries, occupational mobility is higher than in the United States because

the linkage between education and training prior to labor-market entry and job placement is weaker. Workers are also more likely to attain part-time education after labor-market entry that leads to occupational change (Winfield et al. 1989).

Another aspect of labor market structure that varies cross-nationally is the degree of institutional separation between manual and white-collar work, which affects mobility across this boundary. Existing throughout Europe, but strongest in the Ger- man-speaking middle-European countries, is the institution of apprenticeship for manual work, which restricts access to jobs for skilled workers to those who complete an apprenticeship after elementary schooling. In countries where the institution of apprenticeship is less strong, as in France and the United States, access to a job as a skilled worker is more dependent on affiliation with a specific enterprise and is open to those moving up from unskilled jobs. The greater stratification of the educational system in countries where the institution of apprenticeship is strong also restricts upward mobility from manual to nonmanual jobs.

Another variation observed cross-nationally is in the degree of separation between hierarchically ranked white-collar positions. In Austria and France, there is greater separation among hierarchical layers of white-collar work than in the United States, where the higher levels of white-collar work are more open to entry from below (Haller et al. 1985). In the United States, both the highest and lowest categories in the occupational structure are less separated from the middle layers than they are in Austria and France. As a result, mobility over relatively long distances is more common in the United States. This difference may be due in part to the less stratified educational system in the United States.

Another type of variation in labor market structure found across countries is in the links of the labor market to other national institutions such as the state and centralized employer and labor associations. In some countries, such as China, the state remains the major employer (Zhou et al. 1997); in others, such as Austria and France, large enterprises and whole industrial sectors are nationalized (Haller at al. 1985). Labor markets in Europe have also been described as less flexible than those in the United States because ‘‘corporatist’’

institutional arrangements of various types coordinate and regulate the labor markets. Countries described as corporatist have relatively centralized wage-setting institutions that result in less volatility in wages and smaller wage differences (DiPrete and McManus 1996; Gottschalk and Smeeding 1997). They may also have greater employment security that reduces involuntary job mobility, but restrictions on wages may result in relatively high unemployment as well.

Because the availability of vacancies in organizational hierarchies affects career advancement, and the supply of labor affects both the probability of advancement and wages, career progress in all countries is affected by demographic factors such as the size and distribution of education and skills in various age cohorts and the rate of exit from positions (Stewman and Konda 1983). It is also affected by organizational growth and contraction that result in the creation and termination of jobs. Change in the actual structure of jobs occurs in response to social and economic influences, including technological development. At the level of the firm, expansion increases the rate of promotion, and contraction decreases it (Stewman and Konda 1983; Barnett and Miner 1992). Expansion of an industry, as measured by growth in the average size of firms or the establishment of new firms, increases the rate of job shifts within and between firms in the industry and decreases the rate of involuntary exit (Hachen 1992; DiPrete 1993; Haveman and Cohen 1994; DiPrete and Nonnemaker 1997). Contraction of an industry, as measured by decline in the average size of firms or the closing of firms, decreases the rate of job shifts between firms in the industry and increases the rate of movement out of the industry, including movement to unemployment. Contraction of an industry may either decrease or increase the rate of within-firm mobility, since contraction may lead to the internal redeployment of labor as a substitute for new hiring. Internal mobility that reflects reorganization occurs primarily among lower whitecollar, service, and blue-collar workers. Movement out of the industry and to unemployment occurs primarily among service and blue-collar workers (DiPrete 1993). Change that involves merger and acquisition within an industry has fewer effects, but they tend to be similar to the effects of industry contraction (DiPrete 1993; Haveman and Cohen 1994). The effects of occupational expansion and