Politics, Environmental Uncertainty and Organizational Change: Race and Sex Workplace Opportunity in the Post-Civil Rights Era, 1966-2002.

Abstract

Government intervention in capitalist labor markets has been a controversial issue throughout the history of the U.S. Political debates surrounding the appropriate reach of the Federal government culminated with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and subsequent Affirmative Action mandates. The effectiveness of equal opportunity legislation and mandates, however, remains contested. Changes in the institutional bases that maintained inequality in the United States undoubtedly led to cultural shifts in the actions, behaviors and practices of work organizations, but race and sex employment equality, a central goal of the legislation, remains unachieved. Contemporary stratification research continues to illuminate the individual level correlates of race and sex economic inequalities and the extent to which inequality exists across the U.S. economy; however, it typically ignores the institutional bases that maintain and reinforce boundaries around status group distinctions. It continues to show that discrimination remains ubiquitous, but fails to explain the contemporary or historical circumstances leading to change.

This study addresses several weaknesses of previous research by applying new institutional theory, a theory of organizations rather than individuals, and using unique longitudinal data collected at the establishment level from 1966 to 2002. The theory suggests that organizations change their routines and structure in response to uncertainty in their institutional environments. I explore a specific component of the institutional environment — uncertainty stemming from the political environment — on changes in race and sex workplace inequality in the post-civil rights era. It is my position that the passage of laws and mandates, by itself, is unlikely to bring about employment opportunities for women and racialized minorities. It is the degree of uncertainty generated by the passage of ambiguous state and Federal laws and regulatory compliance that pressures organizations to change (Edelman 1990, 1992; Edelman and Petterson 1999; Dobbin et al. 1993; Sutton et al. 1994). This research takes a structural approach by contextualizing changes in workplace opportunities for African Americans and women within industrial, spatial, and community contexts, as well as historical processes unique to race and sex.