Project info
Project name
8.2 Imprints at Work. How the pasts of organizations and leaders shape workplace precarity and inequality
Work package
- Work
Sustainability threat
- Spillovers
Challenge
- Reconfiguring-roles-and-relationships
- Reshaping organizational forms
Study info
Related studies according to this researcher
Change Agents with a Past: Female Executives’ Early-CareerContexts and Gender Equality at Workplaces
Imprinting and contested practices: early-careers of public sector directors and the adoption of temporary employment in Dutch public sector organizations
History and persistence in organizations and institutions
Related studies according to other researchers
History and persistence in organizations and institutions
Change Agents with a Past: Female Executives’ Early-CareerContexts and Gender Equality at Workplaces
Description of Study
Women increasingly occupy higher organizational positions, and studies document mixed effects of their presence on gender equality in the organizations they manage. This study provides a novel approach to understand under which condition female leaders become "agents of change" who increase other women's wages in the organization they manage. This paper studies how organizational founding history impacts whether female leaders act as “agents of change” who increase gender equality in their workplace, or as “cogs in the machine” who perpetuate or worsen workplace inequalities. We used a unique employee/year-level register panel data on the founding history of Dutch organizations, their leaders, and employees, focusing on wage and employment contract outcomes of male and female employees.
Study research question
We address two research questions: to what extent do female leaders influence gender inequality in the organizations they manage, and what is the role of the organization's founding history on this relationship?
Collection provenance
- External data
Collection methods
- Archival
Personal data
Yes
External Source
Source description
The micro datasets we use are composed of i) tax records, ii) company registers of the Netherlands Chamber of Commerce (KVK), iii) population administration, iv) additional sources with information on urbanisation levels in municipalities
File formats
- Stata
- SPSS
Data types
- Structured
Languages
- Dutch
Coverage start
Coverage end
01/01/2010
31/12/2019
Spatial coverage
The Netherlands
Collection period start
—
Collection period end
—
Variables
Unit
Unit description
Sample size
Sampling method
Individuals
Employees, and citizens of municipalities.
No sample size
Register data from CBS
Organizations
Economically active organizations in the public sector, and economically active organizations in the private sector
No sample size
Register data from CBS
Hypothesis
Theory
H1.1: In organizations with a female founder imprint, a higher share of female board members will decrease the gender wage gap
Imprinting theory, agents of change literature
H1.2: In organizations with a female founder imprint, a higher share of female board members will decrease the gender wage gap
Imprinting theory, agents of change literature
H2.1: In organizations with a high urbanization imprint, a higher share of female board members will decrease the gender wage gap
Imprinting, modernization theory, urbanization literature, agents of change literature
H2.2: In organizations with a high urbanization imprint, a higher share of female board members will decrease the gender wage gap
Imprinting, modernization theory, urbanization literature, agents of change literature
H3.1: In organizations with a second feminist wave imprint, a higher share of female board members will decrease the gender wage gap
Imprinting, agents of change literature
H3.2: In organizations with a second feminist wave imprint, a higher share of female board members will decrease the gender wage gap
Imprinting, agents of change literature
Variable type
Variable name
Variable description
Dependent variable
Hourly wage
The monthly tax register documents information on wages and working hours for all Dutch employees, allowing us to calculate their average hourly wage.
Dependent variable
Permanent contract
The monthly tax register documents the type of employment contract (temporary versus permanent) of all Dutch employees
Independent variable
Female board members
We used a dummy do identify each director’s gender (0 = male, 1 = female) and aggregated this information to obtain the proportion of female directors present in the organization of each individual in our dataset per year.
Independent variable
Female employee
We created a dummy for each individual in our dataset indicating whether they were female (0 = no, 1 = yes).
Independent variable
Founder imprint
To test our hypotheses pertaining to the founder imprint, we identified the founding date of each organization, and identified directors present at that moment as the founders. We linked this information to the municipality register to obtain information on the director’s gender, and were able to observe whether female founders were present. We created a dummy indicating whether female founders were present (0 = all founders male, 1 = female founder(s) present).
Independent variable
Contextual imprint: urbanization
To test our hypothesis pertaining to the contextual imprint where we investigate the urbanization at time of founding, we identified the founding date and location of each organization. The location is identified at the municipality level. CBS provides unique codes for each municipality in the Netherlands. We linked this information to the dataset containing the level or urbanization per municipality per year, to obtain the urbanization at time of founding for each organization. CBS provides five levels of urbanization: high, semi-high, medium, low, and very low level of urbanization. We created five dummy variables indicating whether the organization contains a specific level of urbanization (0 = no, 1 = yes).
Independent variable
Contextual imprint: feminist wave
To test our hypothesis pertaining to the contextual imprint where we investigate organizations founded during the second feminist wave, we identified the founding date each organization. We created a dummy variable indicating whether the organization was founded during the second feminist wave between 1965-1985 (0 = no, 1 = yes).
Independent variable
Average age of board members
This variable represented the average age of the board present in the organization of each individual in our dataset per year.
Independent variable
Maximum tenure on board
The variable showed the number of board members in the organization of each individual in our dataset per year.
Independent variable
Board size
The variable showed the number of board members in the organization of each individual in our dataset per year.
Independent variable
Age/age squared
We controlled for each individual employee’s age
Independent variable
Organization size
We defined organization size as the number of employees
Independent variable
Proportion of female employees
A dummy identified each individual employee’s gender (0 = male, 1 = female), we aggregated this information to the organizational level. The variable shows the proportion of female employees of the organization of each individual in our dataset per year.
Independent variable
Organizational events
We created dummies (0 = no, 1 = yes) for four organizational events: (1) birth of an organization, meaning that the organization first appeared that year; (2) death/collapse/combination birth and death of an organization, meaning that the observed year is the last time this organization appeared in the records (0 = no, 1 = yes); (3) the organization splits, merges with another organization, or is taken over by another organization; (4) the organization restructures.
Independent variable
Founding cohort
We created a variable ranging from 1 through 6 which indicated a founding cohort starting from organizations with a founding date before 1968 (1), between 1968 and 1977 (2), between 1978 and 1987 (3), between 1988 and 1997 (4), 1998 and 2007 (5) and organizations with a founding date after 2007.
Discipline-specific operationalizations
Conflict of interest
Data packages
n.a.
Data package DOI
—
Description
The final dataset was an individual/year-level panel with 15,129,286 observations for the period 2010-2019, with an average of 1,526,925 employees per year.
Accessibility
Restricted Access
Repository
CBS RA environment
User license
Retention period
10
Publications
Documents
Filename
Description
Date
Ethics
Ethical assessment
No
Ethical committee