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.