• hierarchies
• Theory of organizations
• Comparative National Tasks Database
• job polarization

How do institutions affect work organization? This contribution aims at characterizing different European occupational structures using the Comparative National Tasks Database (Fana et al., 2020), an innovative and highly unexplored database on job content across European countries. The main conjecture is that the distribution of power and knowledge across occupations is heterogeneous across institutional settings.
In chapter one, the dominant approach in labour economics, known as routine-biased technical change (RBTC) (Autor et al., 2003; Acemoglu and Autor, 2011) is discussed. At the center of the stage there is the RBTC view on labour market structure evolution, namely job polarization, and the subsequent rising wage inequality. Critical positions are also presented which stress the RBTC theory negligence of social relations shaping division of labour (Fernández-Macías et al., 2016) and the inconsistency of the technological explanation of inequality (Mishel et al., 2013; Card and DiNardo, 2002).
In chapter two, an alternative approach to organization theory is proposed. The firm is conceived as a hierarchical entity where work organization evolves to balance coordination and control over the workforce (Coriat and Dosi, 1998; Simon, 1991).
Grounding on the regulation approach (Boyer and Saillard, 2005), chapter three addresses the institutional embeddedness of work organization. Complementarity between institutional forms play a crucial role in shaping the wage-labour nexus, such that a direct link between the institutional setting and the division of labour is identified.
The last section brings these concepts into practice by developing a cross-country analysis of occupational structures, in the wake of Cetrulo et al. (2020). This is done by performing an extensive empirical investigation over indicators concerning job content in Italy, Germany, Spain, and United Kingdom at the job category level (two-digit occupation in macrosector). Our analysis shows that (i) at this level of aggregation, the occupation is the most relevant dimension for explaining job content variability, and the between-occupations component is predominant (in contrast with the extant literature Fernández Macias et al., 2016; Autor et al., 2003). Thus, occupational categories are good proxies for the position in the division of labour defined in terms of power and knowledge; (ii) all considered countries generally share a hierarchical pattern in indicators’ distribution over occupations, which suggests that mature capitalism is characterized by a hierarchical occupational structure; (iii) each national case also presents peculiar features, which point at an institutional influence over the occupational structure. Italy is characterized by a strong class segregation, where top occupations differ from middle occupations for their higher levels of autonomy and control but also of knowledge and teamwork. In Germany and United Kingdom learning dynamics are very diffused and they are supported by a wide spread autonomy, while control over people remains in managers’ hand. The Spanish occupational structure seems to be poor in terms of knowledge and learning, autonomy, and control, but rich in terms of teamwork. In the end of the thesis, partial results on the relation between job content and wage are provided.