Wage-Attainment Processes: The Retail Clerk Case

Status-attainment and organizations literatures are integrated to develop a model of intraoccupational wage attainment using opensystems theory of organizations to specify structural parameters of the wage-attainment process. We analyze the effects of personal characteristics and organization structure on wages of retail clerks within one labor market. While sex and marital status show wage effects in dependent of work context, the data support our contention that work rountinization and organization dependence on environmental segments determine to a significant degree wage variation at the occupational level. Findings of sex segregation across and within firms and substantial interaction in the effects of sex and organizational variables on wages further specify the relationship among personal characteristics, organization structure, and wages. Our research suggests that organizational contexts influence wages independently of individual characteristics and of labor market factors and tha the inclusion of organization parameters in status-attainment models will prove-fruitful.

[1]  R. Hodge,et al.  Occupational Assimilation as a Competitive Process , 1965, American Journal of Sociology.

[2]  P. Lawrence,et al.  Organization and environment , 1967 .

[3]  Barbara F. Reskin,et al.  Sex Differences in Status Attainment in Science: The Case of the Post Doctoral Fellowship. , 1976 .

[4]  Herman P. Miller,et al.  Income Differences Between Men and Career Women , 1973, American Journal of Sociology.

[5]  O. D. Duncan,et al.  The American Occupational Structure , 1967 .

[6]  M. Ornstein.  Entry into the American labor force , 1976 .

[7]  D. Treiman,et al.  Sex and the Process of Status Attainment: A Comparison of Working Women and Men. , 1975 .

[8]  H. Shepard,et al.  Men Who Manage , 1959 .

[9]  R. W. Hawkes.  The Role of the Psychiatric Administrator , 1961 .

[10]  James D. Thompson.  Organizations in Action , 1967 .

[11]  O. D. Duncan,et al.  Socioeconomic Background and Achievement. , 1974 .

[12]  Jacob Cohen.  Multiple regression as a general data-analytic system. , 1968 .

[13]  G. Cain,et al.  Occupational Assimilation and the Competitive Process: A Reanalysis , 1966, American Journal of Sociology.

[14]  David V. Snyder,et al.  Occupational Income and the Effects of Minority Competition and Segregation: A Re-analysis and Some new Evidence. , 1976 .

[15]  D. Knudsen.  The Declining Status of Women: Popular Myths and the Failure of Functionalist Thought , 1969 .

[16]  Stephen Cole,et al.  Social Stratification in Science , 1974 .

[17]  Albert Rees,et al.  Workers and Wages in an Urban Labor Market. , 1971 .

[18]  R. Stolzenberg.  Occupations, Labor Markets and the Process of Wage Attainment , 1975 .

[19]  R. Berk,et al.  Determinants of white collar income: An evaluation of equal pay for equal work , 1974 .

[20]  Lowell L. Hargens,et al.  Sponsored and Contest Mobility of American Academic Scientists , 1967 .

[21]  J. Kreps.  Sex in the marketplace : American women at work , 1975 .

[22]  E. Gross.  Plus CA Change…? The Sexual Structure of Occupations Over Time , 1968 .