Because such competencies entail nontrivial replacement costs, there exists an economic rationale for their continued utilization in current employment. When the economic contribution of these firm-specific KSAs cannot be readily assessed quantitatively, internal (hierarchical) mechanisms are presumably superior to the external or "spot" market in facilitating the efficient allocation and utilization of such resources. Williamson and colleagues (1975)maintained that internal labor markets (ILMs),by engendering collective bargaining (which places emphasis on objective task characteristics rather than on the subjective, idiosyncratic knowledge, skills, and abilities of workers as the basis for determining wage structure), serve to reduce workers' proclivity to behave opportunistically (i.e., to seek self-interest with guile).