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<p>This dissertation examines how knowledge is developed and deployed among employees
inside one of the largest internal labor markets in the United States: the federal
civil service. Each chapter lays out the theoretical background behind career- and
capabilities-based processes, discusses the application to the federal employment
context, and tests hypotheses derived from theoretical review, extension, and development.
This dissertation uses data from two similar but distinct datasets, which come from
the US Office of Personnel Management’s administrative records database. These datasets
cover different periods of time (either 1974-2014 or 1989-2011), but both contain
core information on civil servants and their employment.</p><p>The dissertation begins
with a short introduction to organizational theory and sociological research on bureaucracies.
The first chapter shows, contrary to standard economic and sociological theory, generalists
in the federal civil service experience higher downstream pay than specialists. Several
competing mechanisms are discussed, laying the groundwork for the next chapter. The
second chapter explores the mechanism of coordinative capability as a key component
of civil servants’ career success, finding that integration with the skillsets of
co-workers positively predicts later salaries and levels of authority. This effect
is most pronounced in larger divisions of the government, where the need to coordinate
among employees with diverse capabilities is greatest. Thethird chapter moves from
individual processes to organizational aggregates, demonstrating the influence of
public-sector personnel capabilities on private-sector research and development (R&D).
This final chapter evaluates the impact of the government’s geographically-bounded
scientific capabilities on private R&D funding mechanisms and the downstream likelihood
of patenting by federally-funded firms.</p><p>As a whole, this dissertation traces
the historical dynamics of career progression for hundreds of thousands of individuals
over multiple decades, elucidating both the career dynamics experienced by civil servants
as well as the external influence of those collective dynamics as allocative processes
that influence non-governmental outcomes.</p>
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