Prof. Michael J Piore

Professor Piore is best known for the development of the concept of the internal labor market and the dual labor market hypothesis and, more recently, for work on the transition from mass production to flexible specialization. He is a labor economist but is also concerned with the broad interplay between economics, politics, and society. The central themes in Piore's work are the social, institutional and cognitive dimensions of economic activity. He has worked on a number of labor market and industrial relations problems including low income labor markets, the impact of technology upon work, migration, labor market segmentation, and the relationship between the labor market, business strategy and industrial organization. He is currently working on new forms of labor market regulation in the United States as a response to a shift in the axes of social and political mobilization from economic class to social identities associated with race, sex, ethnicity, age, and disability. He is also working on the contrast between labor market regulation in the United States and forms of regulation in Mexico and Latin America.
RECENT PUBLICATIONS

Professor Piore's most recent book, Innovation, The Missing Dimension (with Richard Lester [Harvard University Press, 2004]), argues for the role of interpretation alongside rational decision making in the innovative process, and the importance of public space, sheltered from the pressures of the competitive market, in the interpretative process. Piore's other publications include Beyond Individualism (Harvard Press, 1995), and The Second Industrial Divide (Basic Books, 1984) written in collaboration with Charles Sabel. Among his earlier books are Bird of Passage (Cambridge University Press, 1979); Unemployment and Inflation, Institutionalist and Structuralist Views (Sharpe Press, 1979); Dualism and Discontinuity in Economic Life (with Suzanne Berger, Cambridge University Press, 1980); and Internal Labor Markets and Manpower Analysis (with Peter Doeringer, 1969); as well as numerous shorter papers and journal articles.