Replaceability

Davis and Moore based their analysis on the proposition that positions or roles in society differ in functional importance, that is, in their consequences for the continued operation of society'. This is vital to their argument that stratification results from the need to motivate the most qualified people to take these posi­tions. Unfortunately, they found it difficult to establish that one position is more important than another except on the basis of how hard it is to fill that position. That is an inadequate standard. Today, for example, it is very hard to fill the position of housekeeper: to ensure an ample supply would require wages to be set at a level most potential em­ployers are unwilling to pay. Clearly, it does not follow that this position is extremely important. But should we then count it as of low functional importance be­cause we are not willing to pay much to fill the posi­tion? To rate the importance of a position on the basis of how much people are paid for filling it leads into a trap. Then, one must argue that rewards differ because of functional importance, but that is to say that rewards differ because rewards differ, since functional impor­tance has been defined as a difference in rewards. This is a tautology, or circular argument.

Fortunately, positions can be ranked according to functional importance without leading to contradic­tion or tautology. A position is of high functional importance to a society depending on its replaceability that is, to the degree that either the position itself or its occupants are hard to replace. Let us return to the ex­ample of housekeepers. The salary people are paid to clean other people's houses is low, even when those willing to take such jobs are in short supply, because the position of housekeeper is very replaceable. That is, their employers are fully able to take over the func­tions of the housekeeper, and when they are suffi­ciently motivated to do so (by the financial savings in­volved), they will tend to do so.

A position is highly replaceable when its functions can be performed by people in many other positions. Thus, hospital janitors are highly replaceable because all other hospital workers could perform their job. Orderlies are next most replaceable because doctors and nurses could perform their functions. Doctors are least replaceable because, presumably, not even nurses could fully take on their hospital duties.

People are highly replaceable when little skill is needed to perform their particular roles. Little training or skill is required to mop floors, for example, and thus people who hold such positions are always potentially in competition with all other workers for their own positions. On the other hand, very few people have the talent and the training needed to be surgeons, and so few people can compete for these positions. Thus, positional replaceability is the dominant basis of func­tional importance. People in highly replaceable posi­tions also tend to be individually highly replaceable. Given the replaceability notion, the functionalist the­ory can easily be viewed as a supply-and-demand ar­gument about the existence of stratification.