The original essays in this book discuss the origins and importance of these internal labor markets, providing new insights into their changing power and influence.

Employment systems consist of complex arrays of formal and informal rules that structure the relationships between employees and employers. There are many different types of employment systems. Some are specified in considerable detail in collectively bargained quasilegal employment contracts, while others are left to discretion. This book describes the latter type of employment system-one in which there is an active market for knowl edge and skills. This is the salaried employment system of ForestCo-a large multiplant manufacturing company in the forest products industry. Here, supervisors and managers actively adjust the jobs and persons under their authority to meet the market, social, and institutional forces that influence the activities and performance of their departments. The study of employment systems is a relatively recent phenomenon, and few prior studies or theories were found to guide this investigation. Neither the scope nor the components of employment system studies are yet established. The field is confused and contested. Nevertheless, there is related literature which can be used to focus attention on different features of employment systems. One emerging body of work that holds the most promise for the study of employment systems is internal labor market (lLM) theory.

This book provides a description of a number of institutional features of the U.S. labor market and prompts an analytical debate about the origins of the institutions it describes and their significance for the operation of the U.S. economic system.

Excerpt from Length of Service and the Operation of Internal Labor Markets Our work on the operation of enterprise internal labor markets has produced very strong evidence that at least the within-grade or within-job fraction of the observed return to years of company service (40 to 80 percent of the total return to company service in the settings for which we have seen data) cannot be explained on the basis of an underlying relationship between service and productivity. Furthermore, we have collected survey data which imply that years of service play a significant role in promotion decisions for a very large fraction of our country's workforce; for those employees, the cross - grade or cross - job earnings differential associated with service must also be considered at least in part a return to service per se. It would thus appear that junior workers are typically paid less, and senior workers more, than the value of their marginal product. One might expect this sort of deferred compensation scheme to be accompanied by constraints on firms' ability to cheat workers out of the return promised for the second half of their work lives; we have gathered evidence that senior employees at most u.s. Firms do in fact enjoy substantial protection against being involuntarily terminated. Our results raise the intriguing question of why_senior workers receive higher earnings than their junior peers, even though they are no more productive. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work.This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

The economic performance of a national economy, as shown by indicators such as the rate of unemployment and inflation, is heavily dependent on the operation of its external and internal labour markets. From this standpoint the book focuses on the functions of internal labour markets and their interaction with external labour markets, comparing those of the Japanese and Western styles. The differing mechanisms of internal labour markets are examined by a strong range of international contributors from Japan, North America and Europe.