Lisa E. Cohen

The Ecological Dynamics of Careers: The Impact of Organizational Founding, Dissolution, and Merger on Job Mobility'

This article unites social mobility and organizational ecology research and develops an ecological theory of career mobility. The vital events of organizational populations (founding, dissolution, and merger) cause substantial shifts in populations of employing organizations and jobs, thereby greatly altering opportunity structures. Founding creates jobs; dissolution and merger destroy jobs. These processes have strong direct effects on employees in new and failed organizations. Moreover, these processes have strong indirect effects on employees in other organizations, which can be best understood by extending vacancy-chain models to encompass industry dynamics. Analysis of job mobility in one industry generally supports the theory.

Location Matters: A Cross-Level Analysis of the Effects of Organizational Sex Composition on Turnover

Building on demography theories, we study the effects of organizational sex composition at different job levels on the turnover of men and women at the same or lower levels. We found that women wer...

Assembling Jobs: A Model of How Tasks Are Bundled Into and Across Jobs

How are tasks bundled into and across jobs within organizations? In this paper, I develop a model of this process of job design by drawing on a multisite qualitative study of task allocation following the installation of a DNA sequencer. The model that emerges is one of the assembly of tasks through multiple subassembly processes with multiple assemblers. Four activities produced requirements and requests for job designs and propositions about how to meet these: actively searching, passively receiving, doing work, and invoking preexisting ideas. The ideas that emerge from these processes are further transformed through reconciliation, interpretation, and performance. My observations show that this overall process is far reaching and incorporates many elements, not all of which are explicitly intended for job designs. The arrangements that emerge from this process are not the product of a deliberate and controlled job design process within the boundaries of a single organization.

Whose Jobs Are These? The Impact of the Proportion of Female Managers on the Number of New Management Jobs Filled by Women versus Men

In this paper, we examine the relationship between an organization’s proportion of female managers and the number of new management jobs initially filled by women versus men. We draw on theories of job differentiation, job change, and organizational demography to develop theory and predictions about this relationship and whether the relationship differs for jobs filled by female and male managers. Using data on a sample of New York City advertising agencies over a 13-year period, we find that the number of newly created jobs first filled by women increases with an agency’s proportion of female managers. In contrast, the effect of the proportion of female managers on the number of new management jobs filled by men is positive initially but plateaus and turns negative. In showing these influences on job creation, we highlight the dynamic and socially influenced nature of jobs themselves: new jobs are created regularly in firms and not merely as a response to technical and administrative imperatives. The results also point to another job-related process that differs between women and men and that could potentially aggravate, mitigate, or alleviate inequality: the creation of jobs. Thus this research contributes to literatures on demography, the organization of work, and inequality.

Good times, bad times: the effects of organizational dynamics on the careers of male and female managers

Purpose – This paper investigates the effects of founding, growth, decline, and merger on gender differences in managerial career mobility. These common events create and destroy many jobs, and so have big impacts on managers’ careers. We build on previous research to predict gender differences in job mobility after such events, and show that these gender differences are moderated by the positions managers occupy: level, firm size, and sex composition. Methodology – We test our predictions using archival data on all 3,883 managerial employees in all 333 firms in the California savings and loan industry between 1975 and 1988. We conduct logistic-regression and event-history analyses. Findings – Female managers are less likely than male managers to be hired when the set of jobs expands because of founding and growth, and more likely to exit when the set of jobs contracts because of decline and merger. These gender differences exist because relative to men, women occupy lower-level jobs, work in smaller firms, and work in firms with more women at all managerial ranks. The effects of all but one event (the growth of ones own employer) are moderated by managers’ positions. Value of the paper – Our paper is the first to offer a large-scale test of gender differences in career trajectories in the wake of common organizational events. By showing that these market-shaping events affect male and female managers’ careers differently, and that these effects depend on the positions of male and female managers, we demonstrate economic sociologys potential for studying inequality.

Jobs as Gordian Knots: A New Perspective Linking Individuals, Tasks, Organizations, and Institutions

Abstract Jobs fundamentally influence and are influenced by individuals, organizations, and societies. However, jobs themselves are largely conceptualized in an atomized and disembodied way. They are understood as being designed, altered, and dissolved and bringing their consequences one at a time. I advance an alternative view of jobs as a system of ties that span jobs, organizations, and the environment beyond organizational boundaries. These ties create Gordian Knots that hold jobs in place and explain how they change. I illustrate the model with case study evidence and propose an agenda for research on jobs as organizational systems.

Introduction: Bringing Jobs Back In: Toward a New Multi-Level Approach to the Study of Work and Organizations

Abstract In this paper, we call for renewed attention to the structure and structuring of work within and between organizations. We argue that a multi-level approach, with jobs as a core analytic construct, is a way to draw connections among economic sociology, organizational sociology, the sociology of work and occupations, labor studies and stratification and address the important problems of both increasing inequality and declining economic productivity.