Elizabeth H. Gorman

Social Networks, Job Changes, and Recruitment

This chapter reviews scholarship on how the matching of people to jobs is influenced by networks of interpersonal ties. By all accounts, that role is substantial on both the individual’s side and the employer’s side of the labor market. The mediation of job change and recruitment/selection processes by networks illustrates the embeddedness of labor market processes in ongoing structures of social relations (Granovetter 1985) with special clarity.

Hierarchical rank and women's organizational mobility: glass ceilings in corporate law firms.

This article revives the debate over whether women’s upward mobility prospects decline as they climb organizational hierarchies. Although this proposition is a core element of the “glass ceiling” metaphor, it has failed to gain strong support in previous research. The article establishes a firm theoretical foundation for expecting an increasing female disadvantage, with an eye toward defining the scope conditions and extending the model to upper‐level external hires. The approach is illustrated in an empirical setting that meets the proposed scope conditions: corporate law firms in the United States. Results confirm that in this setting, the female mobility disadvantage is greater at higher organizational levels in the case of internal promotions, but not in the case of external hires.

“Golden Age,” Quiescence, and Revival: How the Sociology of Professions Became the Study of Knowledge-Based Work

Both professional work and the sociological study of professional work experienced a “golden age” in the mid-20th century. When dramatic changes began to shake the professions in the 1970s and 1980s, however, old approaches no longer fit, and the research area became quiescent. Yet interest in professional work simply “went underground,” surfacing under other names in a variety of sociological and interdisciplinary fields. In the process, researchers’ focus expanded to include a broader range of “expert” or “knowledge-based” occupations as well as traditional professions. This essay brings these disparate research streams together and shows that they cohere around four central themes: expert knowledge, autonomy, a normative orientation grounded in community, and high status, income, and other rewards.

We (Have to) Try Harder Gender and Required Work Effort in Britain and the United States

Across three decades in both Britain and the United States, surveys indicate that women must work harder than men do. Using data from the 1997 Skills Survey of the Employed British Workforce (U.K.) and the 1997 National Study of the Changing Workforce (U.S.), the authors investigate two possible explanations for this gap in reports of required effort: gender differences in job characteristics and family responsibilities. In multivariate ordered logistic regressions, extensive measures of job characteristics do not explain the difference between women and men. Family obligations, as well, account for little or none of the gap. The authors argue that the association between gender and reported required work effort is best interpreted as reflecting stricter performance standards imposed on women, even when women and men hold the same jobs. The authors discuss alternative interpretations and implications for research.

The Work and Family Handbook: Multi-Disciplinary Perspectives and ApproachesThe Work and Family Handbook: Multi-Disciplinary Perspectives and Approaches, edited by Pitt-CatsouphesMarcie, KossekEllen Ernst, and SweetStephen. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2006. 816 pp.

ticular vision of markets, states, and international commerce as the engine behind most ideas about “globalization.” Marxist—including world systems—approaches to globalization and regionalization are mostly ignored by Duina. Instead, the book’s theoretical framework emerges from institutionalist and international relations scholars. It is unfortunate that this dialogue has not expanded, because scholars from critical political economy traditions have made important contributions to understanding the dynamics of international trade and globalization. While Duina achieves greater specificity for explaining the sources of variation in RTAs, the work glosses some of the larger historical structures and impulses tugging at national and regional elite to construct regional blocs in the first place. Despite this limitation, Duina’s contribution fills an important void in the literature on comparative markets and politics. Duina cites the role played by “powerful actors” as one of the sources of variation in RTAs. Take the example of differences in the way that women’s rights and worklife are framed in different RTAs. In the EU, women’s organizations formed and coalesced across the region with the explicit aim of influencing the legal and institutional development of the EU. As a result, the EU standardizes and institutionalizes women’s rights. This did not happen in the case of NAFTA or MERCOSUR for that matter—both of which remain silent on women’s rights and work. These variations in the legal context of the RTAs, Duina convincingly demonstrates, are nicely explained by the presence and absence of political actors that advocate for particular goals. Yet, by focusing on differences in RTAs, Duina misses the sources of commonality behind RTAs, such as the fact that they appear on the historical stage in a particular era, in relation to other states and regional markets. In both the EU and the NAFTA, wellorganized, inter-industry coalitions played key roles in concert with state officials in designing and implementing the RTAs. The types of power wielded by these collective actors are surely different than the power of women’s rights groups or dairy industry representatives. Conceptualizing power is not easy; operationalizing the concept is even harder. But, a study like this—and future ones to be sure—would benefit from a more systematic approach to variations in power and participation. Relative to national trade and market institutions, regional and transnational trade agreements require the construction of shared “guidebooks to [economic] reality,” often from quite disparate cultural and political realities within the respective states. The author uses solid data and convincing comparative methods to foil ideas that RTAs are fundamentally similar. Furthermore, anyone reading this book can appreciate the idea that markets are constructed and by implication, that alternative “globalizations” are possible. The Social Construction of Free Trade helps pry open a welcome discussion about the contingencies behind the prevailing paths of regional trade agreements.

85.00 paper. ISBN: 0805850260.

Research has shown that marital status affects wages and work behaviors that influence wages, but little attention has been paid to the impact of marital status on attitudes toward pay and finances. This study develops theoretical propositions concerning the effect of marital status on pay valence and financial satisfaction and tests them with data from the General Social Survey. Consistent with these propositions, married men and women view pay as more important and feel less satisfaction with their financial circumstances than do their never-married counterparts. Divorced individuals reveal pay valence levels between those of single and married individuals but are even less financially satisfied than married individuals. An unexpected finding is that the effects of marital status on pay valence and financial satisfaction do not differ by gender. The effects of marital status on both attitudes are attributable in part to the association between marital status and parenthood.

Marriage and Money The Effect of Marital Status on Attitudes Toward Pay and Finances

Do men and women differ in the extent to which they work beyond the level required by their jobs? Does this gender difference vary across national contexts? The authors answer these questions using survey data from the United States and Britain. Multivariate ordered logistic regression models reveal no gender difference in self-reported discretionary effort in the United States, but greater discretionary effort among women in Britain, net of individual, family, and workplace characteristics. The authors attribute these findings to a greater divergence of women’s and men’s labor force participation and careers, historically weaker regulation of workplace equality, and a sharper differentiation of gender roles in Britain than in the United States. They conclude by discussing the relevance of national context for shaping gender differences in work orientations and behaviors.

Gender and Discretionary Work Effort Evidence From the United States and Britain

Explanations of minority underrepresentation among organizational managers have focused primarily on either employee deficits in human and social capital or employer discrimination. To date, research has paid little attention to the role of developmental practices and related cultural values within organizations. Using data on large U.S. law firms, the authors investigate the role of formal developmental practices and cultural values in the representation of three minority groups among firm partners: African Americans, Latinos, and Asian Americans. The authors find that formal practices and cultural values intended to aid employee growth and development do not “level the playing field” for minorities. Formal training and mentoring programs do not increase minority presence, while a longer time period to promotion, a cultural commitment to professional development, and a cultural norm of early responsibility are all negatively associated with minority representation. Although the pattern is broadly similar across all three groups, some effects vary in interesting ways.

Developmental Practices, Organizational Culture, and Minority Representation in Organizational Leadership The Case of Partners in Large U.S. Law Firms

This chapter examines the information sources that U.S. employers use in the course of internal staffing, that is, when promoting or transferring employees. We focus on the use of methods involving informal ties: referrals and direct approaches to candidates for promotion or transfer. Such ties may produce’ social capital’ by providing employers with information about the qualifications and abilities of personnel; at the same time, they provide employees with information about opportunities for mobility within the workplace or firm. Data from a representative sample of work establishments indicate that informal methods are widely used in filling vacancies with internal candidates, often in combination with more formalized procedures such as job posting and seniority systems. Differences in internal recruitment procedures across types of employers and jobs suggest that they are selected in light of both efficiency concerns and pressures for equity and procedural rationality in the treatment of employees.

Social Capital in Internal Staffing Practices

Although law schools have seen rising representation of diverse racial and ethnic groups among students, minorities continue to represent disproportionately small percentages of lawyers within large corporate law firms. Prior research on the nature and causes of minority underrepresentation in such firms has been sparse. In this paper, we use data on a national sample of more than 1,300 law firm offices to examine variation across large U.S. law firms in the representation of African-Americans, Hispanics, and Asian-Americans. Overall, minorities are better represented in offices located in Western states and in major metropolitan areas; offices that are larger and affiliated with larger firms; offices of firms with higher revenues and profits per partner; offices with greater associate–partner leverage; and branch offices rather than principal offices. They are equally distributed between offices with single-tier and two-tier partnerships. Distinct patterns emerge, however, when the three groups are considered separately and when hierarchical rank within firms is taken into account.