著者

小林 雅之

出版者

日本教育社会学会

雑誌

教育社会学研究 (ISSN:03873145)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.36, pp.51-62,en214, 1981-09-12 (Released:2011-03-18)

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In 1970s a lot of critical works on the Human rCapital Theory which has been a theoretical framework of the economics of education have been raised in the U.S.A. Among them, the Segmented Labor Market Theory, especially the Internal Labor Market Theory and the Screening Device Hypothesis seem to be very suggestive from a view point of the sociology of education. This paper aims at reviewing these new views and acquiring implications about school education systems.The Internal Labor Market Theory insists as follows: There are barriers to entry in the internal labor markets. Employment of workers is restricted to entry jobs and they are promoted internally. They acquire their vocational skills not by school education but by On the Job Training (OJT). By acquiring these skills they are promoted to the higher rank jobs. If these skills are enterprise-specific, employers must bear the training costs. To minimize the hiring and training costs, employers prefer to promote workers internally rather than hire them from outside the enterprises. The more skills are enterprise-specific, the more the labor markets are internalized.The Screening Device Hypothesis insists as follows: Education does not contribute to raising productivity, but serves as a means to sorting people for jobs. Employers do not have enough information about work performances of workers. So they use education as an indirect proxy measure of workers' abilities.In the internal markets, the more skills are enterprise-specific and training needs long time, the more employers use education as a Screening Device and become indifferent to vocational skills acquired by school education and skills are acquired by OJT. Thus in the internal labor market school education is used as a Screening Device and the transmission function of vocational skills by school systems is weakened. Moreover, some economists declare that school education develops personalities which are correspondent to hierarchical work relations in enterprises.Japanese labor markets characterized by a life-time employment system seems to be well explained by the Internal Labor Market Theory. In the internal labor markets the utilities of vocational knowledge and skills acquired by school education are denied. Some empirical research evidences support this conclusion.