Organizational Careers: A Sourcebook for Theory

by Barney Glaser

Overview

Although sociologists have written extensively on the broad subject of occupational careers, generally they have referred only incidentally to organizational careers within work organizations. In this pioneering sourcebook, now considered a classic, Glaser gathered from the literature of occupational sociology those studies that bear most directly on organizational careers. His objective was to provide the first survey of the substantial body of data on the subject and to place this data in a framework that illustrates its significance for the development of theory.

In an extensive introduction, the editor explains the several purposes of the book and describes in detail the process of comparative analysis through which sociological theory on organizational careers can be generated. Organized around general themes such as recruitment, motivation, commitment, mobility, and succession, the writings of prominent sociologists—including Riesman, Caplow, Hughes, Becker, and Wilensky—form the content of the book and systematically cover every important facet of organizational careers. The editor's introductions to each section of the book alert the reader to the general phenomena—such as processes, conditions, categories, hypotheses, and properties—that crosscut and are generally relevant to all organizational careers and are, therefore, the raw material of theory. These introductions also suggest questions and problems for further analysis and research.

This book as a whole stands as a demonstration of the contributors' method of how the sociologist, working from the data of research, can generate grounded, formal theory on this or any social phenomenon. This book also presents a vital body of data on organizational careers and a guide to further research that will be of great use both to occupational sociologists and to all those involved in the study of organizations.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780202361628
Publisher:	Transaction Publishers
Publication date:	09/30/2007
Pages:	480
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)
Age Range:	16 Years

About the Author

Barney G. Glaser is founder of the Grounded Theory Institute in California, and has also been a research sociologist at the University of California Medical Center, San Francisco. He is the author or co-author of several books, including The Grounded Theory Perspective II and Experts versus Laymen: A Study of the Patsy and the Subcontractor, published by AldineTransaction.

Table of Contents

Introduction; I: Toward a Theory of Organizational Careers; 1: Career and Office; 2: Careers Personality, and Adult Socialization; 3: The Study of the Career Timetables; 4: Careers, Life-Styles, and Social Integration; II: Recruitment to Organizational Careers; 5: The Recruitment of Industrial Scientists; 6: Recruitment to the Academic Career; 7: Procedures of Academic Recruitment; 8: Recruiting Volunteers; 9: Recruitment of Wall Street Lawyers; III: Career Motivations within the Organization; 10: Professional Incentives in Industry; 11: Military Career Motivations; 12: Career Development of Scientists; 13: Careerist Types; 14: Prestige Grading: A Mechanism of Control; 15: Aspirations of Telephone Workers; 16: The Chronology of Aspirations of Automobile Workers; IV: Loyalty and Commitment to the Organizational Career; 17: Cosmopolitan and Locals; 18: Reference Groups and Loyalties in the Out-Patient Department; 19: Enculturation in Industrial Research; 20: Career Concerns and Footholds in the Organization; 21: The Expansion Orientation of Supervisors of Research; 22: Career Mobility and Organizational Commitment; V: Sources and Strategies of Promotion; 23: Success; 24: The Accumulation of Advantages vs. the Bureaucratic Crawl; 25: Patterns of Mobility within Industrial Organizations; 26: Military Tactics of Promotion; 27: Selecting Law Partners; 28: The Airline Pilot’s Career Timetable; 29: Publish or Perish; 30: Informal Factors in Career Achievement; 31: Sponsorship and Rejection; 32: Sponsorship in the Medical Profession; 33: The Negro Union Official: A Study of Sponsorship and Control; 34: Advancement in the Japanese Factory; VI: Managing Demotion; 35: Consequences of Failure in Organizations; 36: Demotion in Industrial Management; 37: Comparative Failure in Science; 38: Demotion; 39: Moving Up and Down in the World; 40: Incompetence in the Japanese Factory; 41: “Failures” Who Stay with the Law Firm; 42: Demotion and Sinecure Offices; VII: Organizational Succession; 43: The Problem of Succession in Bureaucracy; 44: Regularized Status-Passage; 45: Vacant Position and Promotion; 46: How Vacancies Occur in Academic Careers; 47: Weeding Out Lawyers; 48: Bureaucratic Succession; 49: The Problem of Generations in an Organizational Structure; 50: The Effects of Succession: A Comparative Study of Military and Business Organization; 51: Executive Succession in Small Companies; VIII: Moving between Organizations; 52: The Career of the Schoolteacher; 53: Touristry: A Type of Occupational Mobility; 54: Compliance Specialization and Executive Mobility; 55: Security and Alternative Career Possibilities in Other Organizations; 56: Internship Appointments of Medical Students; IX: Executive and Worker Career Patterns; 57: The Chief Executives; 58: Self-Made Men; 59: The Elite Military Nucleus; 60: Organizational Career Patterns of Business Leaders; 61: Career Patterns of Manual Workers; 62: The Career of the Letter Carrier; 63: From Organizational Career to Private Practice