The Bureaucratic Labor Market

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xvi

   PDF

2. Structural Explanations for Inequality and Mobility in Bureaucratized Organizations

   1. Structural Explanations for Inequality and Mobility in Bureaucratized Organizations

      • Thomas A. DiPrete

      Pages 1-28

3. The Structure of White-Collar Job Ladders

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 29-29

      PDF

   2. The Hierarchy of White-Collar Work

      • Thomas A. DiPrete

      Pages 31-45

   3. The Clerical—Administrative Boundary

      • Thomas A. DiPrete

      Pages 47-69

4. The Shaping of Recruitment and Promotion Policies for White-Collar Jobs

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 71-71

      PDF

   2. Early Personnel Management in the Federal Civil Service

      • Thomas A. DiPrete

      Pages 73-92

   3. Progressivism and Public Personnel Administration

      • Thomas A. DiPrete

      Pages 93-118

   4. The Development of a Tiered Personnel System in the Federal Government

      • Thomas A. DiPrete

      Pages 119-157

5. Job Ladders and Career Outcomes

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 159-159

      PDF

   2. How Constraining Are White-Collar Job Ladders?

      • Thomas A. DiPrete

      Pages 161-196

   3. Equal Employment Opportunity and the Bridging of Job Ladders

      • Thomas A. DiPrete

      Pages 197-230

   4. The Determinants of Advancement on White-Collar Job Ladders

      • Thomas A. DiPrete

      Pages 231-257

   5. Conclusion

      • Thomas A. DiPrete

      Pages 259-275

6. Back Matter

   Pages 277-341

   PDF

A description of the jobs in a labor force, an "occupational" description of it, is an abstraction for describing the flow of concrete work that goes through one or more employing organizations; the flow of work proba­ bly changes at a higher speed than the system for abstracting a descrip­ tion of its occupations and jobs. A career system is an abstraction for describing the flow of workers through a system of occupations or jobs, and thus is doubly removed from the flow of work. The federal civil service, however, ties many of the incentives and much of the authority to the flow of work through the abstractions of its career system, and still more of them through its system of job descriptions. The same dependence of the connection between reward and performance on abstractions about jobs and careers characterizes most white-collar work in large organizations. The system of abstractions from the flow of work of the federal civil service, described here by Thomas A. DiPrete, is an institution, a set of valued social practices created in a long and complex historical process. The system is widely imitated, especially in American state and local governments, but also in the white-collar parts of many large private corporations and nonprofit organizations and to some degree by gov­ ernments abroad. DiPrete has done us a great service in studying the historical origins of this system of abstractions, especially of the career abstractions.

• Institution
• Nation
• management
• occupations
• organization

• Duke University, Durham, USA

  Thomas A. DiPrete

Policies and ethics