Work group demography, social integration, and turnover

Administrative Science Quarterly,  March, 1989  by Charles A. O'Reilly, III,  David F. Caldwell,  William P. Barnett

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Work Group Demography, Social Integration, and Turnover

Using 20 actual work units with 79 respondents, this study explores the relationships among group demography, social integration of the group, and individual turnover. Results suggest that heterogeneity in group tenure is associated with lower levels of group social integration which, in turn, is negatively associated with individual turnover. Models of these effects using individual-level integration measures are not significant. Further, the results suggest that it is the more distant group members who are more likely to leave. Both individual-level and group-level age demography directly affect turnover and are not moderated by social integration. The findings suggest a process by which group demography affects outcomes and support the usefulness of organizational demography for understanding group and individual functioning.(*) In the past several years a number of authors have begun to investigate the effects of organizational demography (e.g., McCain, O'Reilly, and Pfeffer, 1983; Ahlburg and Kimmel, 1986). Previous sociological research has demonstrated that demographic cohort characteristics such as size and age can affect outcomes such as economic well-being (Easterlin, 1980), mobility patterns (Reed, 1978; Stewman and Konda, 1983), crime rates (Maxim, 1985), and marriage practices (Guttentag and Secord, 1983). These studies, however, typically have not focused on demographic impacts on individuals in organizations. Pfeffer (1983) noted that the general concepts of demography could have substantial effects on organizational outcomes such as innovation, performance, executive succession, and control. He argued that it is the distributional properties of the demography of an organization that are critical, not simple descriptive statistics such as the mean or proportion of the membership with a given attribute. Thus, in organizations it is not only the simple demographic characteristics such as age, tenure, race, or education that are important to understand, but the potential compositional effects of these variables. Using this approach, McCain, O'Reilly, and Pfeffer (1983) found that larger gaps among cohorts in academic departments were associated with higher subsequent rates of individual turnover. Wagner, Pfeffer, and O'Reilly (1984) found age differences among managers in large firms to be associated with exit rates. Tsui and O'Reilly (1989) have shown that, after controlling for an individual's demographic characteristics, the greater the difference in superior-subordinate dyads in terms of age, education, race, and sex, the lower the supervisor's rating of the subordinate's effectiveness and the higher the subordinate's role ambiguity. But why should these effects occur? Although organizational demography has been related to outcomes such as executive succession (Pfeffer and Moore, 1980), innovation (O'Reilly and Flatt, 1989), individual performance (Tsui and O'Reilly, 1989), and communication (Zenger and Lawrence, 1989), no specific effort has been made to investigate directly what accounts for the findings. If organizational demography is to become a more useful theory for understanding group and individual phenomena, studies need to be undertaken that explore the processes by which demography influences the outcomes it does. In addition, studies must be undertaken that carefully differentiate between individual-and group-level explanations of demographic effects. To date, no empirical studies have directly investigated the means through which demography influences behavior, although social-psychological explanations have been offered. In examining turnover, for example, Wagner, Pfeffer and O'Reilly (1984) speculated that it is relative integration within groups that is critical. Arguing that managers' attitudes and perspectives are affected by their times of entry, these authors suggested that demography can affect the relative cohesiveness of groups, which may, in turn, enhance or diminish the probability of turnover. People who leave are likely to be those who are most different in terms of age and date of entry. Pfeffer (1985) elaborated on this theme by proposing that homogeneity in age and date of entry may increase attraction through similarity (e.g., Byrne, 1971) and the increased likelihood of communication (e.g., Roberts and O'Reilly, 1979). Thus, the logic is that organizational demography may enhance social integration and, in turn, lead to a lower likelihood of leaving. Individuals who enter a group at the same time or who are of similar age may become more tightly bound to one another than individuals who are demographically heterogeneous. The purpose of this study was to investigate explicitly the relationships between work group demography, the social integration of the group, and individual turnover. More specifically, the model proposed here is that demographic homogeneity will lead to socially integrated groups which, in turn, will lead to lower rates of individual turnover.