Homophily and Homogeneity in the Evolution of the Senior Executive Service

• In Event: Finding the Right Person: Political Appointees and Agency Effectiveness

Abstract

We use longitudinal personnel data on federal employees to examine whether and how an employee’s occupational background, race, and gender are associated with promotion into the federal government’s Senior Executive Service (SES), whose approximately 7,000 members comprise an elite corps of high-level public managers. More specifically, we examine whether employees who are members of a federal agency’s dominant occupational group are more likely to be promoted into the SES than members of non-dominant occupational groups. Additionally, we examine whether this occupational advantage is more pronounced for female and racial minority members of dominant occupational groups than for white male members of these groups. In short, we are interested in how occupation interacts with gender and race to affect employees’ chances for promotion to top-level management teams.

Our theoretical argument has two parts. First, we argue that top-level managers will act, consciously or unconsciously, on homophilic impulses to help lower-level employees who share their occupation. Second, we demonstrate that the federal government has, particularly in recent years, evinced an interest in bolstering racial and gender diversity in its managerial ranks. We proceed to argue that dominant occupational groups will co-opt this concern to press for the promotion of occupational in-group members who are female and/or nonwhite. The core of our argument is that they will do so to strengthen their hold on organizational power, not to increase gender or racial diversity. Nevertheless, increased diversity will be an unintended, and welcome, consequence of their efforts.

Author

• John Marvel, George Mason University