Work by Steven Vallas

Author:Steven Vallas
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wiley

Structural Approaches: The Demand Side of the Equation

Often developed in opposition to human-capital approaches, a number of competing models have developed that stand at odds with this approach. One important difference is that theories in this latter camp attach much more significance to the social and organizational features of the workplace itself, rather than to the attributes of individual workers. (This is why the term “structural” is sometimes used to describe such thinking.) A further difference is that theorists in this second group emphasize the demand side of the equation (that is, the decisions and preferences of the employers, rather than those of the workers as such). This difference is important not only for social scientific research (which orients empirical analysis in very different directions), but also for reasons involving legal culpability. By focusing on the demand size of the equation, social scientists begin to address questions that involve employer discrimination and equal employment opportunity laws (matters discussed at the end of this chapter).

One of the most influential studies in the structural vein has surely been Men and Women of the Corporation (1977), the above-mentioned study by the Harvard organizational studies scholar Rosabeth Moss Kanter. Breaking with human-capital theory, Kanter claimed to identify several sources of gender inequality within the social organization of the workplace itself. An in-depth analysis of workplace dynamics at a large corporate headquarters, this study made several enduring contributions to the field.

First, she emphasized the role played by homophily (or same-group preference) in the distribution of job rewards. Since managers and executives confront high levels of uncertainty in their jobs, Kanter suggests that they understandably place a premium on trust. Executives will often favor managers who share their basic assumptions about the world, in other words, and who can conform to the executive’s thinking without having to be told what to do. The predictable result is that managers will exhibit a powerful tendency toward in-group selection – that is, they will select employees who closely resemble their own backgrounds and orientations about the world. The result strongly perpetuates the privileges of established elites. This emphasis on homophily has given rise to much empirical research, especially focused on the search methods that employers tend to use.

Next, and even more important, is a second line of analysis that Kanter opened up, focusing on what she termed “relative proportions.” While the absolute size of the firm had long been a major source of concern among researchers, few researchers had studied relative size – that is, the effects that flow from the social or demographic composition of the group or department itself. Where women workers accounted for only a small proportion of the groups and departments within a given workplace (as in “skewed” groups), they were likely to experience three perceptual tendencies: greater visibility (and thus more intense performance pressures), an exaggeration of their differences from the dominant group (leading to heightened boundaries), and an imposition of stereotypical images or perceptions on women (even when such images were a poor fit).

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