Workplace hierarchy requires personality traits, not cognitive skills, from workers

Evidence

The personality traits and forms of consciousness required of workers are those which facilitate their harmonious integration into the hierarchical order of the enterprise. In the dominant corporate and state sectors, this order exhibits four essential characteristics. First, the duties, responsibil­ ities, and privileges of individuals are determined neither according to individual preference nor cooperative decision by workers, but rather by a system of formal and informal rules which guide the individual worker’s participation in the work process and set limits on his or her actions. Second, the relationships among workers are characterized by hierarchical authority and interdependence. — Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America, 896

Categorization

• DEFINE: This is the core of Bowles-Gintis’s ‘correspondence principle,’ later fully articulated — schools reproduce the personality dispositions demanded by hierarchical production.
• XREF: connects to: Hierarchical rank determines which personality traits employers need in a worker — Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America:…, 900; Worker skills exceeding their rank threaten the enterprise’s legitimacy — Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America:…, 893; Subordinates’ actions under instruction are not attributed to personality. — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 193

Broader Connections

• Hierarchical rank determines which personality traits employers need in a worker #corroborates (0.85) — Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America, 900
• Subordinates’ actions under instruction are not attributed to personality. #corroborates (0.80) — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 193
• Worker skills exceeding their rank threaten the enterprise’s legitimacy #expands (0.75) — Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America, 893