Alison Davis-Blake

The Structure of Opportunity: How Promotion Ladders Vary within and among Organizations.

A previous version of this paper was presented at the 1984 Academy of Management annual meeting. The authors gratefully acknowledge research support from the National Science Foundation (SES 7924905), the CenterforAdvanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (BNS 76-22943), and the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Teri Bush, Kelsa Duffy, and Jill Fukuhara provided splendid technical support. Howard Aldrich, Robert Althauser, Yinon Cohen, Frank Dobbin, Paul Osterman, and the ASQ reviewers and editors offered helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper. This paper analyzes data describing jobs in 100 establishments in order to test hypotheses about the characteristics of jobs and organizations associated with the structure of internal promotion ladders. The diversity of labor market arrangements found within the organizations indicates only weak support for hypotheses linking internal labor markets to organizational or sectoral imperatives. Atthe job level, however, there is support for hypotheses linking job ladders to firm-specific skills, organizational structure, gender distinctions, technology, occupational differentiation, the institutional environment, and the interests of unions. The paper concludes with an examination of how promotion ladders are formed from clusters of jobs associated with each other by occupation, skill, or gender composition.e

The Effect of the Proportion of Women on Salaries: The Case of College Administrators.

The authors gratefully acknowledge the assistance of the College and University Personnel Association in making available the data that were used in these analyses. The conclusions and interpretations are those of the authors alone, and the association is not responsible for nor does it necessarily *endorse the conclusions of this study. We would also like to thank Gerald R. Salancik, Associate Editor of Administrative Science Quarterly, and the three anonymous ASO reviewers for the substantial contribution they made in helping us clarify the arguments. The comments of James Baron, Rosabeth Kanter, and Alison Konrad on an earlier version of this manuscript are also gratefully acknowledged. The entry of women into organizations and occupations previously closed to them changes the demographic composition of organizations in ways that can affect the monetary and psychic rewards available to both men and women. This article examines the effect of the proportion of women administrators on the salaries of both men and women in administrative positions in colleges and universities. Four theoretical perspectives that make predictions about the effect of the proportion of women are identified: economic competition and crowding, demographic group power, group interaction, and institutionalization. The results indicate that there is an inverse relationship between the proportion of women and the salaries of both men and women. This relationship holds both cross sectionally and longitudinally, and the effect is not completely linear. These results are inconsistent with both the demographicgroup-power and group-interaction perspectives and provide some support for both the economic competition and institutionalization approaches.

Salary Dispersion, Location in the Salary Distribution, and Turnover among College Administrators:

This paper examines how the amount of dispersion in an organizations salary distribution and an individuals location in that distribution affect turnover. Using data for the years 1978–79 and 1983–84 on more than 10,000 administrators in 821 U.S. colleges and universities, the authors find that salary dispersion negatively affected the turnover of administrators with relatively high salaries and positively affected the turnover of those with relatively low salaries. The joint effect of salary dispersion and relative salary on turnover was strengthened when salary information was publicly available and when a well-developed external labor market was present.

Managing Interdependence: The Effects of Outsourcing Structure on the Performance of Complex Projects*

The outsourcing of complex activities has become a common organizational practice. Yet very little research has focused on the implications of how these activities are divided up among outsourcing partners. Drawing on structural contingency theory, we argue that: (1) because activities within stages of complex projects are highly interdependent, outsourcing structures where owner firms do not maintain high levels of dominance over the activities that are performed will pose control and coordination challenges, leading to poor project performance; (2) the adverse effects of poorly structured outsourcing arrangements will spill over to subsequent project stages when activities are interdependent across project stages; and (3) dividing activities among large numbers of contractors or distributing work evenly among contractors exacerbates coordination and control problems further contributing to poor project performance. Our empirical analysis of 323 capital facility construction projects supports our predictions. Overall, these results provide strong evidence that some outsourcing structures are more costly than others and that because of the nature of complex projects the detrimental effects of poorly structured outsourcing are often not completely observable at the time activities are completed. We discuss the implications of our findings for capital construction and for outsourcing more generally.

The Effects of Outsourcing, Offshoring, and Distributed Product Development Organization on Coordinating the NPD Process

Outsourcing arrangements continue to evolve from peripheral activities, such as food services and back office transaction processing, to encompass more core activities such as new product development. Some arrangements maintain a clear lead organization while others, such as open source networks, are less centralized. We develop a framework identify the specific impact of different outsourcing arrangements on the search, selection, transformation, and coordination processes involved in new product development new product development.

Chapter 10 – The effects of outsourcing, offshoring, and distributed product development organizations on coordinating the NPD process

Outsourcing arrangements continue to evolve from peripheral activities, such as food services and back office transaction processing, to encompass more core activities such as new product development. Some arrangements maintain a clear lead organization while others, such as open source networks, are less centralized. We develop a framework identify the specific impact of different outsourcing arrangements on the search, selection, transformation, and coordination processes involved in new product development new product development.

CEO Demographics and Acquisitions: Network Effects of Educational and Functional Background

This study investigates the effects of CEO educational and functional background on corporate acquisitions. Educational and work-related functional backgrounds are likely to come with interorganizational networks, networks that stay with individuals over long periods of time and have the potential to affect acquisitions. We argue that these networks constitute a form of interorganizational social capital, which directs acquisition activities along certain channels. Hypotheses are tested on 449 firms and their acquisitions during the 1986–1993 period. We find evidence that the networks that come with different CEO education and functional backgrounds are related to the type of acquisition completed by that CEO’s firm. Obtaining a degree from an elite school, for example, is related to engaging in acquisitions in unrelated industries. We also find functional background effects are strengthened under conditions of uncertainty and educational background effects are weakened with tenure. These results suggest the importance of personal networks in affecting major firm strategic actions, and highlight the contextual nature of acquisition decisions.

Boris Groysberg: Chasing Stars: The Myth of Talent and the Portability of PerformanceGroysbergBoris, Chasing Stars: The Myth of Talent and the Portability of Performance. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010. 446 pp.

530/ASQ, September 2010 In Chasing Stars , Boris Groysberg attempts to answer a critical question about labor markets: are employees’ talents and skills portable across fi rms so that employee performance will remain constant after a change of employers? In answering this question, Groysberg focuses exclusively on “star” knowledge workers who are highly sought after by managers attempting to boost their own fi rms’ performance. Thus this book provides an evidence-based examination of the underpinnings of a common managerial myth described by Pfeffer and Sutton (2006): star systems are associated with strong fi rm performance. The book does not directly explore the effect on fi rm performance of hiring stars. But it does examine an essential assumption that must be true if hiring stars has a positive effect on fi rm performance, namely, that the performance of star employees will remain unchanged after they change employers.

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In The Good Temp , Vicki Smith and Esther Neuwirth examine the process of market-making in the segment of the temporary help industry in which agencies place workers with relatively limited skills into temporary, entry-level clerical, administrative, and light manufacturing positions. This market for temporary workers sits in between the chaotic world of informal-sector workers (e.g., construction day laborers, as described by Parker, 1994) and the elite world of highly skilled contractors (as described by Barley and Kunda, 2004). Though this middle portion of the market is an important and growing segment of the temporary workforce, it has received less research attention than either highor low-end nonstandard work.

Vicki Smith and Esther B. Neuwirth: The Good Temp.

We test the proposition that the mobility of top managers in advertisers and advertising agencies weakens client-agency relationships. Social embeddedness theory suggests that if client-agency rela...