Business Commons^™

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.