Preface

Summary

My ambition in this work has been to give some preliminary but suggestive answers to the problem of internal organizational stratification. The questions that I have raised about race and gender differentiation and the tentative answers that I have offered should ramify in interesting directions; obviously, however, no single study can claim to resolve such a complex problem.

In the analysis, I have concentrated most of my attention on the statistically detectable traces of organizational stratification. The measurement decisions that I have made, if not always optimal, are fairly straightforward; as a consequence, the results should be easily replicated. At the same time, I am very much aware that what people do with, to, and in spite of each other in organizations and how all of this relates to ascribed status differences must at some point be examined interpretively in order to place it in the context of a system of emergent intersubjective meaning. My hope is that the findings that I offer, and especially the gaps and uncertainties in the findings, will point to the kinds of questions that need to be asked in more fine-grained, qualitative studies in the future.

On a more macro level, I have also been attentive to the community ties of the organizations and respondents in the study, and I have taken into account the broader features of the external labor market. In fact, such considerations provide the theoretical leverage for some of the interpretations that I have advanced. However, I have not directly addressed in any comprehensive way either the origins of human service organizations or the functions they serve for the larger structures in which they are embedded.