Social Stratification Practice Test

In this theory, functional importance is about how essential a position’s function is within the organization’s workflow, not about pay or tenure. The two criteria are the degree of functional uniqueness and the degree of dependency from other positions on the given one. Functional uniqueness means how hard it would be to replace the function—if only a few people can perform it, the function is highly important. Dependency from other positions refers to how much output from this position is used by others; the more units rely on it to do their work, the more important the position is. For example, a function that coordinates and integrates input from multiple departments will often be highly functionally important because its outputs are needed across many roles, and there are few easy substitutes. On the other hand, factors like salary level, tenure, number of subordinates, age of the occupation, geographic location, or union status do not measure how central the SAMPLEfunction is to the organization’s operations, so they don’t define functional importance.