IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/ecdequ/v33y2019i2p76-91.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Occupational Structures of Low- and High-Wage Service Sector Establishments

Author

Listed:
  • Eliza C. Forsythe

Abstract

The occupational structure of an establishment provides a description of its production process by detailing the distribution and relative intensity of tasks performed. In this study, the author investigates whether there are substantive differences in the occupational structures of low- and high-wage service sector establishments. The author shows that low-wage establishments organize production to use less labor in professional occupations compared with high-wage establishments operating in the same local labor market and industry. In addition, low-wage establishments employ fewer individuals in information technology occupations, employ fewer managers, and have substantially wider supervisory spans of control. These results indicate that, despite operating in the same narrowly defined labor and product markets, low-wage establishments organize production to less intensively use labor in skilled occupations.

Suggested Citation

  • Eliza C. Forsythe, 2019. "The Occupational Structures of Low- and High-Wage Service Sector Establishments," Economic Development Quarterly, , vol. 33(2), pages 76-91, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:ecdequ:v:33:y:2019:i:2:p:76-91
    DOI: 10.1177/0891242419838328
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0891242419838328
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0891242419838328?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Card, David & Krueger, Alan B, 1994. "Minimum Wages and Employment: A Case Study of the Fast-Food Industry in New Jersey and Pennsylvania," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 84(4), pages 772-793, September.
    2. Eric Maurin & David Thesmar, 2004. "Changes in the Functional Structure of Firms and the Demand for Skill," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 22(3), pages 639-664, July.
    3. Nicholas Bloom & John Van Reenen, 2007. "Measuring and Explaining Management Practices Across Firms and Countries," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 122(4), pages 1351-1408.
    4. Daniel S. Hamermesh & James Grant, 1979. "Econometric Studies of Labor-Labor Substitution and Their Implications for Policy," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 14(4), pages 543-562.
    5. Pedro Ortin-Angel & Vicente Salas-Fumas, 2002. "Compensation and Span of Control in Hierarchical Organizations," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 20(4), pages 848-876, October.
    6. Patrick Bolton & Mathias Dewatripont, 1994. "The Firm as a Communication Network," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 109(4), pages 809-839.
    7. Chad Syverson, 2004. "Market Structure and Productivity: A Concrete Example," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 112(6), pages 1181-1222, December.
    8. Raghuram G. Rajan & Julie Wulf, 2006. "The Flattening Firm: Evidence from Panel Data on the Changing Nature of Corporate Hierarchies," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 88(4), pages 759-773, November.
    9. John M. Abowd & Francis Kramarz & David N. Margolis, 1999. "High Wage Workers and High Wage Firms," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 67(2), pages 251-334, March.
    10. Tolbert, Charles M. & Sizer, Molly, 1996. "U.S. Commuting Zones and Labor Market Areas: A 1990 Update," Staff Reports 278812, United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service.
    11. Kenneth R. Troske, 1999. "Evidence On The Employer Size-Wage Premium From Worker-Establishment Matched Data," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 81(1), pages 15-26, February.
    12. Haltiwanger, John C. & Lane, Julia I. & Spletzer, James R., 2007. "Wages, productivity, and the dynamic interaction of businesses and workers," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 14(3), pages 575-602, June.
    13. Ann Bartel & Casey Ichniowski & Kathryn Shaw, 2007. "How Does Information Technology Affect Productivity? Plant-Level Comparisons of Product Innovation, Process Improvement, and Worker Skills," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 122(4), pages 1721-1758.
    14. Acemoglu, Daron & Autor, David, 2011. "Skills, Tasks and Technologies: Implications for Employment and Earnings," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 12, pages 1043-1171, Elsevier.
    15. Timothy F. Bresnahan & Erik Brynjolfsson & Lorin M. Hitt, 2002. "Information Technology, Workplace Organization, and the Demand for Skilled Labor: Firm-Level Evidence," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 117(1), pages 339-376.
    16. Arindrajit Dube & Suresh Naidu & Michael Reich, 2007. "The Economic Effects of a Citywide Minimum Wage," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 60(4), pages 522-543, July.
    17. Ekaterina Jardim & Mark C. Long & Robert Plotnick & Emma van Inwegen & Jacob Vigdor & Hilary Wething, 2017. "Minimum Wage Increases, Wages, and Low-Wage Employment: Evidence from Seattle," NBER Working Papers 23532, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Sophie Kelmenson, 2023. "Between the farm and the fork: job quality in sustainable food systems," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 40(1), pages 317-358, March.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Bloom, Nicholas & Van Reenen, John, 2011. "Human Resource Management and Productivity," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 19, pages 1697-1767, Elsevier.
    2. Nicholas Bloom & Luis Garicano & Raffaella Sadun & John Van Reenen, 2014. "The Distinct Effects of Information Technology and Communication Technology on Firm Organization," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 60(12), pages 2859-2885, December.
    3. Nicholas Bloom & Benn Eifert & Aprajit Mahajan & David McKenzie & John Roberts, 2013. "Does Management Matter? Evidence from India," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 128(1), pages 1-51.
    4. Nicholas Bloom & Raffaella Sadun & John Van Reenen, 2010. "Recent Advances in the Empirics of Organizational Economics," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 2(1), pages 105-137, September.
    5. Nicholas Bloom & Raffaella Sadun, 2012. "The Organization of Firms Across Countries," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 127(4), pages 1663-1705.
    6. David J. Deming, 2017. "The Growing Importance of Social Skills in the Labor Market," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 132(4), pages 1593-1640.
    7. Raffaella Sadun & John Van Reenen & Nick Bloom, 2008. "Measuring And Explaining Decentralization Across Firms And Countries," 2008 Meeting Papers 246, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    8. Hugo Castro-Silva & Francisco Lima, 2023. "The struggle of small firms to retain high-skill workers: job duration and the importance of knowledge intensity," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 60(2), pages 537-572, February.
    9. Harrigan, James & Reshef, Ariell & Toubal, Farid, 2021. "The March of the Techies: Job Polarization Within and Between Firms," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 50(7).
    10. Chad Syverson, 2011. "What Determines Productivity?," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 49(2), pages 326-365, June.
    11. Luis Garicano & Paul Heaton, 2010. "Information Technology, Organization, and Productivity in the Public Sector: Evidence from Police Departments," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 28(1), pages 167-201, January.
    12. Maarten Goos & Melanie Arntz & Ulrich Zierahn & Terry Gregory & Stephanie Carretero Gomez & Ignacio Gonzalez Vazquez & Koen Jonkers, 2019. "The Impact of Technological Innovation on the Future of Work," JRC Working Papers on Labour, Education and Technology 2019-03, Joint Research Centre.
    13. Nguyen Tuan Kiet & Ho Huu Phuong Chi & Trinh Cong Duc, 2022. "Management practices of firms: A study in the Vietnamese Mekong Delta," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 43(5), pages 1185-1208, July.
    14. Phillipe Aghion & Nicholas Bloom & John Van Reenen, 2014. "Incomplete Contracts and the Internal Organization of Firms," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 30(suppl_1), pages 37-63.
    15. Wouter Dessein & Tano Santos, 2003. "The Demand for Coordination," NBER Working Papers 10056, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    16. Anyfantaki, Sofia & Caloghirou, Yannis & Dellis, Konstantinos & Karadimitropoulou, Aikaterini & Petroulakis, Filippos, 2024. "The need for an industrial policy for long-term growth," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 121983, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    17. Sofia Anyfantaki & Yannis Caloghirou & Konstantinos Dellis & Aikaterini Karadimitropoulou & Filippos Petroulakis, 2024. "The 2013 Cypriot Banking Crisis and Blame Attribution: survey evidence from the first application of a bail-in in the Eurozone," GreeSE – Hellenic Observatory Papers on Greece and Southeast Europe 193, Hellenic Observatory, LSE.
    18. Van Reenen, John, 2011. "Wage inequality, technology and trade: 21st century evidence," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(6), pages 730-741.
    19. MORIKAWA Masayuki, 2014. "Are Large Headquarters Unproductive? Evidence from a panel of Japanese companies," Discussion papers 14036, Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI).
    20. Junichiro Ishida, 2012. "Promotion without Commitment: Signaling, Time Inconsistency and Decentralization of the Firm," ISER Discussion Paper 0843, Institute of Social and Economic Research, Osaka University.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    disadvantaged workers; labor economics; service industries;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J23 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Labor Demand
    • J31 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials
    • L23 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior - - - Organization of Production

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:ecdequ:v:33:y:2019:i:2:p:76-91. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.