Labour input and the theory of the labour market

This book is constructed around an empirical relationship about relative work and relative pay which it attempts to interpret in terms of concepts and propositions of economic theory. Such an interpretation is necessary because the conceptual variables which enter the relationship, as well as the method of their empirical measurement and the hypo thesis of causal relation between them were not originally derived from economics, theoretical or applied. The principal concepts involved are called time-span of discretion (TSD), felt-fair pay (FFP) and capacity (C). They are an original discovery, in a field where theory is scarce, of Elliott Jaques and the team of researchers who subsequently formed the Glacier Institute of Management. These three concepts are the principal elements of a theory of evolution of organisational institutions. It is inside these institutions that the reality of work and pay is mainly found in industrial society. The concepts of work and pay formulated by Jaques are of psychoanalytic origin and, on the face of it, are entirely independent of any economic process. The first question. therefore likely to arise in the economist's mind is, What, then, is Jaques' theory about? After some attempts to answer this question in a way useful to economists I have come to the conclusion that there is virtually no payoff in merely transliterating Jaques' theory, which was worked out inside another discipline (even if it has partly invented the discipline), into 'economese. The exercise is bound to be both tedious and irritating for the reader, who can in any case acquaint himself directly with the forceful presentation of the first-hand version. Moreover, simple transliteration appears of dubious value when the object of the exercise is to explain rather than just to present what Jaques' social analytic theory may mean when treated as economics..