This article reviews recent theoretical and empirical research addressing organizations and workplace stratification, with an emphasis on the generic organizational mechanisms responsible for producing both stability and change in workplace inequality. We propose that an organizational approach to the study of stratification should examine status- and class-based inequalities at the intersection of (a) the inertial tendencies of organizational structure, logic, and practice; (b) the relative power of actors within workplaces; and (c) organizations' institutional and competitive environments. The interplay of these generic forces either reproduces static practices and structures or leads to dynamic processes of change. We conclude with theoretical and methodological implications for analyzing social stratification through an organizational lens.

This article revisits Tam's finding that occupational sex composition does not influence wages. This problem is approached in two quite different ways. First, a potential conceptual and methodological weakness in all research that focuses on national occupational, rather than local job and organizational, processes is pointed out. Second, the implications of organizationally relevant social closure and gendered labor process theories for our understanding of wage determination models is developed. The gendered devaluation and specialized human capital theories, which are stressed by Tam and his critics, do not represent the entire story. We find that the sex composition effect on wages exists, but it is indirect and relatively weak, operating largely through lower access of typically female jobs to extensive training. There is no strong evidence for the existence of a more generic gendered labor process in these crosssectional data. The evidence for social closure processes in this article is limited to the gendered nature of access to on-the-job training. INTRODUCTION Research has consistently demonstrated substantial gender segregation and gender inequality in many workplaces. However, there is considerable debate over the exact processes that lead to gender segregation in job assignment and the resulting inequalities (see the reviews in Reskin [1993] We gratefully acknowledge helpful suggestions by Ken Bolen, Paula England, Tony Tam, Catherine Zimmer, and the AJS reviewers. Remaining errors and ambiguity are our responsibility.

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This article explores the basic assumption of statistical discrimination theory, which holds that women and minorities earn lower wages because they, on average, have lower productivity. Employer exploitation of women and minorities and social closure by advantaged employees are advanced as alternative explanations for the lower wages of women and minorities. The authors first demonstrate that there are substantial gender and racial wage penalties net of human capital for a sample of employees. The primary analysis focuses on the sample of private-for-profit establishments in which these individuals are employed. Establishment productivity as well as aggregate salaries and wages and profits are regressed on the sex and race composition of the establishment with other factors that may influence establishment productivity. Findings show that neither the sex nor race compositions of the workplace are associated with productivity. The authors interpret the results to be most consistent with a social closure account of gender and racial earnings inequality.

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