TARGETS OF OPPORTUNITY - ORGANIZATIONAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL DETERMINANTS OF GENDER INTEGRATION WITHIN THE CALIFORNIA CIVIL-SERVICE, 1979-1985

Links organizational change to social inequality by examining how organizational dynamics affected rates of gender integration among California state agencies between 1979 and 1985. The analysis draws on theories of organizations and organization-environment relations to identify factors that influence economic, political, and social pressures for change, the costs of change, and capacities to change in a specific work setting. In conformity with those theories, it is shown that progress toward gender integration has been substantially influenced by the degree of external pressure and vulnerability, the relative sizes of various internal interest groups (eg, women, nonwhites, unions) that favor or oppose integration, the extent of structural inertia to which an organization is prone by virtue of its size and age, and by characteristics of agency leadership. Some implications of these results for studies of organizations and of social inequality are discussed. -Authors