Good Times, Bad Times: The Impact of Organizational Dynamics on the Careers of Male and Female Managers

This paper investigates the effects of organizational dynamics ? founding, growth, decline, and merger ? on gender differences in the career mobility of managerial employees. Male and female managers? careers are affected differently by these four kinds of events. In our research site, the California savings and loan industry, female managers are generally less likely than male managers to be hired when the set of available jobs expands because of organizational founding and growth; they are also more likely than men to exit when the set of jobs contracts because of organizational decline and merger. These gender differences exist because relative to men, women occupy lower-level managerial jobs, work in smaller organizations, and work in organizations that have higher proportions of women at all ranks of management. Our findings suggest intriguing directions for future research on job mobility and status attainment.