Abstract

The aim of this paper is twofold. Firstly, it is aimed at surveying the institutionalist literature on the analysis of internal labour market and labour market segmentation. Secondly, this paper develops some insights about future research stemming from the idea that internal labour market, as conceived in the seminal contributions by Kerr (1955) and Doeringer-Piore (1971), have to be specified anew, if one wants to take into account recent structural changes occurred in these last years. The institutionalist approach about internal labour market and labour market segmentation was mainly developed in the 70s and the 80s. After that period the institutionalist literature has produced few relevant results, especially as far as theoretical analysis is concerned. This paper claims that these analytical tools need some radical innovations. First of all, the role of internal labour market in the creation and development of knowledge has to be taken into account. In addition, future research has to analyse in depth the relationship between internal labour markets and the institutional framework. This is an extremely important research topic, if one wants to understand how the institutions affect the organizational pattern of firms.