This chapter reviews research on the determinants and consequences of race and sex composition of organizations. Determinants include the composition of the qualified labor supply; employers' preferences, including the qualifications they require; the response of majority groups; and an establishment's attractiveness, size, and recruiting methods. The race and sex composition of an establishment affects workers' cross-group contact; stress, satisfaction, and turnover; cohesion; stereotyping; and evaluation. Composition also affects organizations themselves, including their performance, hiring and promotion practices, levels of job segregation, and wages and benefits. Theorydriven research is needed (a) on the causal mechanisms that underlie the relationships between organizational composition and its determinants and consequences and (b) on the form of the relationships between organizational composition and workers outcomes (e.g., cross-group contact, cohesion, turnover, etc). Research is needed on race and ethnic composition, with a special focus on the joint effects of race and sex.

This article revives the debate over whether women's upward mobility prospects decline as they climb organizational hierarchies. Although this proposition is a core element of the "glass ceiling" metaphor, it has failed to gain strong support in previous research. The article establishes a firm theoretical foundation for expecting an increasing female disadvantage, with an eye toward defining the scope conditions and extending the model to upper-level external hires. The approach is illustrated in an empirical setting that meets the proposed scope conditions: corporate law firms in the United States. Results confirm that in this setting, the female mobility disadvantage is greater at higher organizational levels in the case of internal promotions, but not in the case of external hires.

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