Kenneth I. Spenner

Deciphering Prometheus: Temporal Change in the Skill Level of Work

Major hypotheses about temporal change in the skill levels of work correspond to notions of upgrading, downgrading, and little net change. This paper identifies reasons why research has been equivocal on the larger question. Research designs yield differing conclusions: aggregate studies suggest little net change in recent years; case studies portray more volatile upgrading and downgrading within subsectors. A comprehensive answer to the question of skill transformation will require more systematic assessment of compositional and work content shifts, more complete sampling of the temporal and spatial domain, and better concepts and measures for skill. An improved approach includes direct measurement of two primary dimensions of skill, substantive complexity and autonomy-control. A review of existing aggregate studies illustrates the methodological problems and suggests future directions and hypotheses.

Skill Meanings, Methods, and Measures

This article reviews concepts and measures of skill in the social sciences. Conceptual positions differ in the ultimate origin of bases for skill, the locus and nature of skill valuation mechanisms, the extent of social constructionist influences, and the dimensionality of skill. An emerging consensus posits two organizing dimensions: substantive complexity and autonomy control. The major research designs that include the study of skill are highly varied and complementary in their knowledge yield. The major measurement strategies have shifted in recent years from nonmeasures and indirect measures of skill to direct measures of two types: expert systems and self-report measures. The review considers in detail the major expert system, the Dictionary of Occupational Titles, in terms of population coverage, aggregation bias, reliability, validity, and relationship to self-report measures.This article reviews concepts and measures of skill in the social sciences. Conceptual positions differ in the ultimate origin of bases for skill, the locus and nature of skill valuation mechanisms, the extent of social constructionist influences, and the dimensionality of skill. An emerging consensus posits two organizing dimensions: substantive complexity and autonomy control. The major research designs that include the study of skill are highly varied and complementary in their knowledge yield. The major measurement strategies have shifted in recent years from nonmeasures and indirect measures of skill to direct measures of two types: expert systems and self-report measures. The review considers in detail the major expert system, the Dictionary of Occupational Titles, in terms of population coverage, aggregation bias, reliability, validity, and relationship to self-report measures.

Temporal Changes in Work Content

Hypotheses about temporal changes in work content over the past century include notions of the upgrading, downgrading, and no-change in skill requirements over time. Current evidence is limited largely to case studies. Analytically, two types of change underlie aggregate variations in skill requirements: change in the distribution of workers in jobs and actual change in the content ofjobs. Recent research for the first type of change in the American economy suggests a modest skill downgrading since 1900. Using data from two consecutive editions of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles for a sample of jobs, I present new evidence that shows small variations for the second type of change for the last 10-12 years. There has been a slight upgrading in skill requirements in several sectors of the labor force.

Occupational Sex Segregation and Women's Early Career Job Shifts.

Previous research has found considerable mobility between “male” and “female” occupations across the work life. This article uses employment histories from the Washington State Career Development Study to examine the frequency and determinants of jobs shifts that take women across gender-type boundaries. It was found that many women go between sex-typical and sex-atypical occupations with a change of jobs. Higher work commitment tends to slow moves from male to female occupations, and higher job rewards slow moves across occupational gender types. But family variables do not constrain moves to male occupations nor speed moves to female ones. Thus the results do not always fit with stereotypes about characteristics of predominately male and female jobs. The article suggests that further research is needed to identify career lines and career-line segments by gender type, rather than relying on the sex composition of a particular occupation or even job.

The Upgrading and Downgrading of Occupations: Issues, Evidence, and Implications for Education

This paper reviews a major debate that has implications for educational research and policy communities. The debate concerns the skill upgrading versus downgrading of occupations in the United States and relationships to schooling and vocational preparation. The review summarizes the major positions in the debate, surveys the evidence on skill changes, including methodological and design issues and concepts and measures for skill, and discusses research and policy implications for general and vocational education.

Occupational Characteristics and Classification Systems

Recent social research shows a renewed interest in detailed characteristics of jobs. The Dictionary of Occupational Titles (DOT) and census classification systems as bases for measures of job features are reviewed. The article reports on a set of characteristics that have been estimated for detailed 1960 and 1970 census categories, including those generated by Temme and new indicators for routiniza tion and closeness of supervision in work. The report includes information on how the measures were generated, evidence on their validity as assessed against corresponding individual-level measures, and an assessment of the measurement slippage involved in moving between the different occupation classification systems.

Strong legacies and weak markets : Bulgarian State-owned enterprises during early transition

The authors examine the factors affecting the performance of State-owned enterprises (SOEs) during early transition to a market economy. Data come from a longitudinal study of a representative sample of Bulgarian SOEs for the period from 1989 (the last year under communism) to 1993 (three years after major macroeconomic shifts). They investigate how changes in authority structure, work organization, technology, marketing strategy, and organizational boundaries during these years affected organizational performance in 1993. They also assess the degree of path dependence in performance and the role of competitive industry conditions. Numerous organizational changes made by SOEs during early transition had little effect on performance. Yet organizational performance from 1989 to 1993 was highly path-dependent, although this dependence was mediated by the competitive conditions : stronger markets displayed less path dependence. Overall the results favor the interpretations derived from selected neo-institutional and ecological perspectives of organizational sociology over neoclassical economic interpretations

THE BLACK-WHITE ACHIEVEMENT GAP IN THE FIRST COLLEGE YEAR: EVIDENCE FROM A NEW LONGITUDINAL CASE STUDY

ABSTRACT In the United States, an achievement gap between whites and blacks persists at all levels of schooling from elementary school to higher education. Definitive reasons and remedies for minority underperformance remain unclear. This study examines how students acquire and utilize “collegiate capital” which, in turn, relates to their academic achievement in the first year of college. Results indicate that significant black-white differences in academic achievement emerge as early as the first semester of students’ first year in college. Controls for family background, parental involvement, prior ability, cultural capital acquired during the middle- and high-school years, and other factors produce a moderate reduction in the achievement gap, but over half of the gap remains unexplained. The study is part of a larger research project that involves a longitudinal study of two cohorts – the graduating classes of 2005 and 2006 – at a major private university. Through the assessment of pre-college differences and extensive data collected via student surveys and academic records during the college years, the goal of the larger project is to illuminate the factors underlying raced-based variations on a range of academic outcomes such as educational performance and attainment, but also several new measures of collegiate intellectual development such as students’ ecological integration, perceptions of other groups, and satisfaction with college.

Women, work, and identities☆

Abstract This paper uses the concept of identity to understand constancy and change in womens work histories. Identities are self-in-role meanings such as parent, worker, or professional. Identities are relational, hierarchical, and have consistency and motivational implications for behavior. From a life course perspective, we posit that identities both help organize and also change with the course of peoples lives. We illustrate the organizing role of identities with a continuous-time discrete-state stochastic model of womens movement between job-related identities (employed but not as part of a career and employed in a career) and less-than-full-time employment. The model considers the rates of transitions into and out of identity states as functions of fixed and changing personal resources, changes in stage of the family life cycle, rewards and opportunities associated with the present job and the career line, and several forms of duration dependence (time spent in the state). Data come from life histories of a Washington state sample of women, studied at age 30 in 1979 and 13 years earlier in 1966 ( N = 2536). The analyses suggest work identities operate largely as hypothesized and that the concept has potential for understanding work histories.

Racial Segregation Patterns in Selective Universities

This paper examines sorting into interracial friendships at selective universities. We show significant friendship segregation, particularly for blacks. Indeed, blacks’ friendships are no more diverse in college than in high school, despite the fact that the colleges that blacks attend have substantially smaller black populations. We demonstrate that the segregation patterns occur in part because affirmative action results in large differences in the academic backgrounds of students of different races, with students preferring to form friendships with those of similar academic backgrounds. Within a school, stronger academic backgrounds make whites’ friendships with blacks less likely and friendships with Asians more likely. These results suggest that affirmative action admission policies at selective universities, which drive a wedge between the academic characteristics of different racial groups, may result in increased within-school segregation.