Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Business Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Articles 1 - 4 of 4

Full-Text Articles in Business

Introduction To Special Section: Careers In Context, Hugh Gunz, Wolfgang Mayrhofer, Pamela Tolbert Dec 2011

Introduction To Special Section: Careers In Context, Hugh Gunz, Wolfgang Mayrhofer, Pamela Tolbert

Pamela S Tolbert

[Excerpt] Career scholars regularly cite Hughes’ (1937: 413) dictum that the study careers as “the moving perspective in which persons orient themselves with reference to the social order, and of the typical sequences and concatenations of office – may be expected to reveal the nature and 'working constitution' of a society.” Yet the greater part of the careers literature typically ignores this by focusing, largely, on the careers of individuals and influencing factors mainly linked to the person and his or her immediate context, to the neglect of the broader context within which the careers are lived. However, large-scale economic …


[Review Of The Book The Shopfloor Politics Of New Technology], Pamela Tolbert Jun 2011

[Review Of The Book The Shopfloor Politics Of New Technology], Pamela Tolbert

Pamela S Tolbert

[Excerpt] The results of the study provide support for Wilkinson's primary contention that neither the adoption of particular technologies nor the organization of work based upon those technologies is objectively determined. Instead, both are the result of informal political negotiations between management and workers. Much of the previous work on the impact of technology on organizations has assumed, at least implicitly, that the adoption of technical innovations is determined by the pressures of competitive survival, and that the requirements of particular technologies largely dictate the form of work arrangements. Wilkinson is critical of such assumptions, and his research clearly supports …


Organizational Demography And Individual Careers: Structure, Norms, And Outcomes, Barbara Lawrence, Pamela Tolbert Jun 2011

Organizational Demography And Individual Careers: Structure, Norms, And Outcomes, Barbara Lawrence, Pamela Tolbert

Pamela S Tolbert

[Excerpt] As the terms career choices and opportunity structure suggest, demographic influences on careers operate at multiple levels of analysis: at the individual level, on individuals' perceptions of work environments and career decisions, and at the organization level, on group dynamics and organizational selection processes. However, there are few theories that explicate the processes that bridge these levels. What are the dynamics by which demographic patterns influence an individual's career choices? Similarly, how do individual actions shape the processes of demographic change within organizations? This chapter presents one approach to exploring such questions.


The Institutionalization Of Institutional Theory, Pamela Tolbert, Lynn Zucker Jun 2011

The Institutionalization Of Institutional Theory, Pamela Tolbert, Lynn Zucker

Pamela S Tolbert

[Excerpt] Our primary aims in this effort are twofold: to clarify the independent theoretical contributions of institutional theory to analyses of organizations, and to develop this theoretical perspective further in order to enhance its use in empirical research. There is also a more general, more ambitious objective here, and that is to build a bridge between two distinct models of social actor that underlie most organizational analyses, which we refer to as a rational actor model and an institutional model. The former is premised on the assumption that individuals are constantly engaged in calculations of the costs and benefits of …