Dynamic models and attainment in the workplace

The two most marked trends in recent stratification studies are: (1) the shift away from a statical approach to attainment and toward a dynamical representation of achievement, and (2) the shift away from the assumption that achievement is largely a matter of individual characteristics, and toward the view that achievement is the outcome of an employer-employee exchange of productive resources for earnings and status. This paper forges a link between these parallel trends by elaborating on previous formulations of dynamic models of achievement and applying the results to the analysis of earnings attainment in an internal labor market. The modeling section of the paper joins within a single framework the growing interest in ascertaining how a given structure of opportunity shapes achievement and in determining the different points in the career line at which individual background and resource variables impact attainment. Special attention is devoted to the problems facing researchers who wish to bring a dynamic conceptualization of achievement to cross-sectional or otherwise deficient data. Although the empirical application of the various models is largely meant to be illustrative, it is of interest in its own right because it goes substantially beyond previous efforts in this area.     

Sexual inequality in the workplace: An employer-specific analysis of pay differences

This paper reports an analysis of employer-specific sex differences in the processes governing the salary attainment of personnel of a large company. The two dominant theories of inequality both view discrimination as the operative cause of pay differences, but locate the structural source of discrimination at different points in the employer-employee exchange space. The wage discrimination hypothesis asserts that the economic disadvantage of women issues directly from the pay practices of employers, with women receiving “unequal pay for equal work.” The crowding, or employment segregation, hypothesis asserts that inequality issues from the employment practices of employers; disparities in the allocation of jobs and promotions results in segregation along sexual lines, with women relegated to lower-paying positions. The findings show that both wage discrimination and sexual segregation of the company's job and rank structures contribute to inequality, but that the latter is more important. The implications for the issue of discrimination are briefly discussed.     

Job-shift differences between men and women in the workplace

Until now causal analyses of male-female career differences have been based on the standard attainment model and have focused on differences in career outcomes, namely status and earnings. This paper departs from this practice by using the career life-cycle model of achievement as a framework for the analysis of sex differences in the job mobility experiences of management personnel of a large corporation. The paper focuses not on sexual differences in the level of career rewards, but on differences in the rate of job shifts as the career unfolds. The models are based on the mean-value function of a Poisson arrival process. The principal findings are: (1) Male and female job-shift regimes are similar in form and described by the mean-value function of a nonstationary and heterogeneous Poisson arrival process; (2) the parameters governing male and female job-shift regimes are significantly different; (3) parameter differences indicate sexual inequities with respect to the rate of return to productive resources, but not with respect to structural opportunities to shift; (4) for men and women alike, schooling increases the rate of job shift, while labor force experience prior to being hired and entry-level achievement decrease the rate of shift.