ABSTRACT
Institutional economists are accustomed to relying on the existence of stable, slow changing and fairly transparent institutions to provide the building blocks for their analysis of labour markets and employment systems. Much has been made of the role of social norms (Wootton 1955), custom and practice (Brown 1972), family organisation (Humphries 1977), collective bargaining institutions, rules and practices (Clegg 1970), customary skill divisions and differentials (Turner 1962; Routh 1980), training and education systems (Maurice et al. 1986) and company culture and history (Sisson and Purcell 1983) to explain how and why labour market structures are resistant to rapid change, embody values which extend outside the market or exchange nexus and cannot be reduced to crude notions of supply and demand.
