Much of the terrain of cross-national comparative employment relations concerns issues of work organisation, variously regarded. The research programme to which David M. Gordon (e.g. 1996) was central pretends to indicate something of the comparative nature of work organisation from aggregate occupational classifications. By the late 1990s such work was becoming cited in cross-national comparative analyses, with some scholars attracted by the apparent comprehensiveness and precision of the gauges of work organisation offered. This paper explores the significance of official statistics bearing on the extent of the managerial hierarchy in eleven advanced industrial nations, focusing on manufacturing. Ultimately, this exploration of comparative historical gauges of the extent of the managerial hierarchy demonstrates only the inadequacy of such indicators of crossnational differences in work organisation, however this is conceived.
