Institutions and Labour Mobility: Occupational and Internal Labour Markets in Britain, France, Italy and West Germany

Abstract

What role do institutions play in the formation of labour markets, how big is it, and how important is it for policy? In this chapter, I wish to concentrate on one aspect of this problem, notably the question of institutional support for occupational and internal labour markets (abbreviated to OLMs and ILMs). I shall adduce some evidence that the former type is more prevalent in industry in Britain and West Germany, whereas the latter type is more so in France and Italy. This suggests that similar functions in similar industrial sectors may, in some countries, be organised on OLMs, and in others on ILMs. Then I propose to examine the institutional support which sustains the occupational markets in Britain and Germany, and present an argument as to why such institutional mechanisms have such a critical part to play in sustaining inter-firm labour mobility, and this suggests that OLMs are an historically contingent form of labour market organisation, dependent on certain institutional arrangements, and that there is nothing automatic, or ‘necessary’, about their existence. I wish to conclude with some thoughts about labour market policies.

This paper draws heavily on current joint research with F. Eyraud and J.J. Silvestre of the Laboratoire d’Economie et de Sociologie du Travail, Aix-en-Provence, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, and with Paul Ryan, Cambridge, funded by the Rowntree Memorial Trust. My thanks are due especially to Paul Ryan for extensive comments on the first draft, and also to Paolo Garonna, and the other participants in the conference.