Date
Tue November 10th 2015, 12:00pm
Event Sponsor
Stanford Laboratory for Social Research & Stanford Institute for Research in the Social Sciences
Location
SCANCOR Conference Room (CERAS 123)
Angela Lu (Sociology)
Lunch will be provided.
Abstract
Career mobility in organizations is an important topic in social sciences research. It is often theorized that mobility is driven by power dynamics within organizations, and individuals with sponsorship connections are more likely to get ahead. However, there are three major issues regarding this theoretical hypothesis. First, how do we objectively measure power, given that power is a relatively vague concept and has multiple dimensions? Second, how do we detect sponsorship relations, given that powerful individuals within organizations are often unknown to the public? Third, as the access to sponsorship connections is related to one's career experiences, what kind of experience facilitates sponsorship? Using a set of computational algorithms, the current project attempts to address these three challenges for establishing a more robust connection between sponsorship and mobility outcomes, as well as investigating the relationship between career experience and sponsorship access.
Bio
Angela Lu is a fifth-year PhD student in Sociology at Stanford University. Her research interests include social network analysis, organizational theories, computational algorithms and statistical modeling. Currently she is working on two large data sets from China and India on bureaucratic mobility.
Contact Email
reidhead [at] stanford.edu