Jacob Mincer's Contribution to Modern Labor Economics: A Review Essay

One of the key figures in the development of modern labor economics is Jacob Mincer (1922- 2006). His contributions have recently been highlighted and assessed in two books. The most indepth and substantive of these volumes is by Portuguese economist Pedro Teixeira, entitled Jacob Mincer: A Founding Father of Modern Labor Economics (2007). Also valuable and well done is an edited volume by Shoshana Grossbard, Jacob Mincer: A Pioneer of Modern Labor Economics (2006). It is composed of a number of short remembrances by Mincer's colleagues and students, an oral history interview with Mincer by Teixeira, several larger review chapters on important parts of Mincer's research program, and several speeches and short articles by Mincer. In this review essay I provide a brief summary and evaluation of Mincer's research contributions and place in the history of thought in labor economics, drawing largely on these two books but with some of my own observations and perspectives interspersed. Working Paper 08-2

The Core Principle and Fundamental Theorem of Industrial Relations

This paper describes the original paradigm of industrial relations, as developed in the United States in the early part of the 20th century. The original paradigm had three faces: science-building, problem-solving, and ethical/ideological. It is argued that the core principle that spans and unites these three faces is rejection of the orthodox economic model of a competitive labour market. This proposition may also be stated as rejection of the proposition that labour is a commodity. Building on this core principle is the fundamental theorem of industrial relations. It states that a free market capitalist economic system cannot survive and efficiently perform without the practices and institutions of industrial relations that humanize, stabilize, professionalize, democratize and balance the employment relationship. Working Paper 07-0

Hired Hands of Human Resources? Case Studies of HRM Programs and Practices in Early American Industry

[Excerpt] This book is the second volume of a two-volume set on the roots, birth, and early development of the human resource management (HRM) function in American industry. The story starts in the mid-1870s with the emergence of large-scale industry, an urban-based wage-earning workforce, and a growing labor problem heralded by the Great Railway Strike of 1877; it ends in 1932 at the nadir of the Great Depression when the nonunion welfare capitalism movement of the 1920s is in tatters and its New Deal union replacement lies just over the horizon. Between these two end points lies a remarkable half-century evolution in human resource management philosophy and practice that in cumulative form and effect can only be described as a transformation. The first volume, Managing the Human Factor: The Early History of Human Resource Management in American Industry (2008) presents the big picture side of the story with a broad historical account of the people, events, and ideas that together led a small band of innovative, pioneering companies to transform the way they managed their employees. Parading through these pages are the main forces and actors that revolutionized labor management a century ago. Counted in the former, for example, are the welfare, safety, and scientific management movements; the rise of trade unionism and labor law; World War I and the industrial democracy movement, and the invention of the assembly line and mass production; counted among the latter are such big names as Henry Towne, George Patterson, Frederick Taylor, Samuel Gompers, John D. Rockefeller Jr., Meyer Bloomfield, Walter Dill Scott, John Commons, Henry Ford, and Clarence Hicks. At the height of the HRM transformation in the late 1920s, labor management at leading companies in the United States had much greater similarityto what was to follow a half century later (in the 1980s) than to what had already passed a half century earlier (in the 1880s). This volume complements the first by filling in and rounding out the story with a set of fifteen detailed case studies of early HRM programs and practices in individual companies and industries. The time span is exactly the same as the first volume—the mid-1870s to the early 1930s—but is broken into two distinct parts. Part 1 is devoted to nine case studies that extend through the World War I years, and the six case studies of part 2 cover the 1920s and early 1930s

Nonunion Employee Representation in North America: Diversity, Controversy, and Uncertain Future

The diverse conceptual perspectives and practical experiences with nonunion employee representation (NER) in the United States and Canada are reviewed. We first propose a 6 dimensional descriptive schema to categorize observed NER practices. Dimensions of diversity include (1) form, (2) function, (3) subjects, (4) representation characteristics, (5) extent of power, and (6) degree of permanence. We then turn to the NER controversy, which is a tangled skein consisting of many different threads of values and prescriptions. To unbundle the controversy, we develop four "faces" of NER - (1) evolutionary voice, (2) unity of interest; (3) union avoidance, and (4) complementary voice -- so that future research can more consciously test the validity of competing perspectives with hard data. Generalizing about NER is problematic because of these many dimensions of diversity, and because NER is viewed through different ideological and conceptual lenses. We conclude that NER's future trajectory is uncertain due to conflicting trends but in the short-run is most likely to remain a modest-sized phenomenon. Working Paper 06-4

The Institutional Theory of John R. Commons: Foundation for a Heterodox Labor Economics

Over the last three decades neoclassical economic theory has become the dominate approach for the study of labor, most clearly in North America but also increasingly in Europe and elsewhere. Rival heterodox approaches, on the other hand, are threatened with marginalization, partly due to the imperializing tendencies of neoclassical economics and partly due to the inability of heterodox economists to articulate an alternative unified theoretical framework. The purpose of this paper is to push forward the heterodox project by outlining a theoretical framework and set of core ideas that may provide the basis for an alternative paradigm. Toward this end, I re-examine the theoretical writings of institutional economist John R. Commons and describe and synthesize his theory of institutional economics. Although his theory is general, I focus on its application to the study of labor. Key concepts are bounded rationality, property rights, working rules, institutions, transactions, and incomplete contracts. I argue that these concepts not only form a coherent body of theory but also give rise to numerous insights and predictions about labor markets and the employment relationship, highlight crucial weaknesses and lacunas in the neoclassical approach, and provide a theoretical framework for an integration of the economic and social dimensions of human behavior. Working Paper 06-0

Theorizing Human Resource Management and the Firm's Demand for HRM Practices

Drawing on the economics and industrial relations literatures, this paper argues that the conventional conceptualization and theorization of human resource management, and the attendant empirical literature on the HRM-firm performance relationship, are likely to suffer from significant problems of mis-specification and limited domain. A new theoretical framework is advanced that generalizes the HRM concept, models the linkage between HRM practices and firm performance (the "black box"), generates an HRM input demand function and demand curve, and demonstrates how these analytic tools can explain major features of the distribution of HRM practices among firms and over time. Working Paper 07-3