Organizational Perspectives on Stratification

This essay reviews recent theory and research on organizations and social stratification, focusing on two dimensions of inequality that are affected by organizations and their environments: (a) how rewards and opportunities vary as a function of organizational attributes and (b) how enterprises differ in their criteria for matching workers and jobs. The effects of reward structures and sorting processes on workers, organizational performance, and interorganizational relations are also considered briefly. Since many hypotheses about labor markets concern links between organizations and socioeconomic achievement, there is a need for comparative organizational research to complement analyses at the individual and aggregate levels. Moreover, the interdependence of career outcomes within and among enterprises is widely recognized but requires explicit study. Future research will benefit immeasurably from the development and testing of hypotheses about how organizations and environments influence labor market processes.