Careers and Organizational Labor Markets: Demographic Models of Organizational Behavior

Abstract

It is commonly held that an individual's career prospects decline the higher he or she rises in an organization. In many cases this is not true; this paper identifies four organizational microstructures and two triggering mechanisms that provide clues for assessing one's career prospects in different organizations. The four microstructures are grade ratios, vacancy chains, managerial selection preferences, and cohort size. Growth and exit rates are important triggering mechanisms prompting these microstructures into action. In addition, the effects of being identified as a "star" are shown as they are mediated through these organizational structures. Since the microstructures stretch across the full set of hierarchical grades, they are used to explicate the sequential career chances over the full organizational career span and the comparative level of difficulty at each promotion "gateway." Biases from both retrospective and panel data also indicate the importance of sampling from labor markets as well as from career streams to identify the underlying structures that operate alongside the more commonly studied heterogeneity of individuals. The approach used here links three usually disparate areas-labor, organizations, and demography-and in some cases extends the results of stable population theory within organizational demography. Data from three organizations-in both private and public sectors-are used to illustrate the model and to conduct empirical tests and thereby provide initial confirmation of the theory.