rewards, and challenges that a job has to offer, it is expected that
there will be greater job satisfaction and fulfillment and a lesser ten-
dency to change jobs over the course of the career. These emphases
in the psychological literature are reflected in more recent work (for
example, see Vondracek, Lerner, & Schulenberg, 1986, and many
of the other chapters in this volume).
In recent decades, these divergent interests have come to-
gether to a large extent. Psychologists have become more inter-
ested in the social settings that influence and constrain individual
action (Bronfenbrenner, 1979), including institutional time tables
for important life transitions that make persons who are, for what-
ever reason, “off time,” at a disadvantage (Heckhausen, 1999).
Sociologists have recognized that a much broader range of psy-
chological orientations, in addition to educational and occupa-
tional aspirations and plans, influence vocational directions and
the capacity to be successful in the world of work (Mortimer,
1994, 1996). These include occupational values, that is, pref-
erences with respect to intrinsic, extrinsic, and people-oriented
rewards; to a particular work ethic; and to a personal sense of effi-
cacy or control. For example, researchers have recently considered
the determinants of efficacy—particularly with respect to future
economic matters such as having a well-paying job and owning a
home, which are located in the family, the school, and the ado-
lescent workplace (Grabowski, Mortimer, & Call, 2001).
Moreover, these various orientations, including occupational
values, have been considered important by sociologists, insofar as
they influence nonvertical dimensions of occupational mobility.
They have increasingly recognized that a conceptualization of work
in terms of a unidimensional hierarchy of occupational prestige is
inadequate, both in terms of its characterization of the occupational
structure and its representation of intergenerational mobility. For
example, the tendency for young people to choose work that is sim-
ilar in function or context to that of their parents cannot be ad-
dressed if only a unidimensional prestige hierarchy is considered.
Mortimer (1974) found evidence that occupational “inheritance”
A SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE 39