Interorganizational Determinants of Promotion: Client Leadership and the Attainment of Women Attorneys

Abstract

S ince Baron and Bielby's (1980) call to engage more directly the role of organizations in stratification processes, an informative and compelling set of research has improved our understanding of how organizations affect individual attainment (see Kerckhoff 1995 for a review). One of the principal areas of research within this vein has been the mobility of women within organizations (e.g., Baron, Mittman, and Newman 1991;Cohen, Broschak, and Haveman 1998). Through work that has emphasized both individual ascriptive differences and structural bases of mobility and inequality (Rosenbaum 1984;Chase 1991;Blair-Loy 1999), a wealth of insight has been produced on the relationship between organizations and the attainment of women.The attainment of women is linked to a number of organizational and institutional factors. Many past studies examine factors internal to the employer (e.g., size, hierarchical structure, the use of job titles, demographic composition). Other research incorporates the environment of employers and often conceptualizes the environment abstractly in terms of market or institutional pressures (Edelman 1992; DiPrete and Explanations of gender inequality typically emphasize individual characteristics, the structure of internal labor markets, or pressures from the institutional environment. Extending the structuralist and institutional perspectives, this article argues that the demographic composition of an organization's exchange partners can influence the demographic composition of the focal organization when the focal organization is dependent upon its partners. Specifically, law firms with women-led corporate clients increase the number of partners who are women attorneys. Data on elite law firms and their publicly traded clients support a bargaining power hypothesis whereby law firms promote women attorneys when their corporate clients have women in three key leadership positions: general (legal) counsel, chief executive officer, and board director. These effects are stronger when the law firm has few clients, reinforcing the hypothesis that interorganizational influence is more vital when a focal organization is dependent on its exchange partner. The results also support a related explanation based on homophily theory. The analysis rules out several alternative explanations and establishes a relationship between the presence of women-led clients and the promotion of women attorneys in law firms.

Female Presence on Corporate Boards: A Multi-Country Study of Environmental Context

“…These positive spillovers may extend outside the firm. For example, law firms whose key clients have women on their boards are more likely to promote women (Beckman and Phillips, 2005). While the importance of women to corporate boards has been long acknowledged (Burke, 1997;Bilimoria and Wheeler, 2000), females have made only modest gains in terms of directorships on corporate boards (Arken et al, 2004;Daily et al, 1999).…”

Using Information Regulation to Enhance Workplace Diversity, Inclusion, and Fairness

“…-law firms' clients have played a leading role in getting more women promoted to partnerships in the law firms that serve as their outside counsel (Beckman & Phillips 2005); -activist stakeholders have changed the demographic composition of corporate boards of directors (Rose & Bielby 2011, Hillman, Shropshire & Cannella 2007) and other employment practices (David, Bloom & Hillman 2007); -investors' willingness to hold stock has reflected information about employment practices (Richardson & Welker 2001, Wright et al 1995;…”

A Positive Approach to Studying Diversity in Organizations

“…In an earlier study, Kalev and colleagues (2006) also showed that the proportion of white women, black men, and black women in firms increased the most due to programs that established organizational responsibility for diversity. In a study of women partners in law firms, Beckman & Phillips (2005) show that the percentage of female partners in law firms is growing and that this growth is related to the gender diversity of the firms' corporate clients.…”