Abstract

Turnover among top executives in government organizations warrants our research interest because of their importance for executive politics, public policy, and the management and performance of public organizations. Whereas the literature so far has primarily studied political, organizational and individual antecedents of turnover, we focus on the relational level. Based on homosocial reproduction, relational demography and social identify theory, we hypothesize that demographic similarities between senior executives and their political counterparts influence executive turnover. Using longitudinal register data of Danish mayors and chief administrative officers (CAOs), our results suggest that gender dissimilarity (specifically, a male mayor and a female CAO) increases the risk of CAO turnover. Similarly, the risk of CAO turnover is higher when the CAO is older than the mayor. Contrary to expectations, however, differences in education reduces turnover risk (specifically when the CAO has more education than the mayor). Our study illustrates the relevance of understanding turnover as a relational phenomenon based on factors beyond rational, political, and functional explanations.

摘要

政府组织中高层管理人员的更替值得我们的研究兴趣，因为他们对行政政治、公共政策以及公共组织的管理和绩效具有重要意义。尽管迄今为止的文献主要研究了离职的政治、组织和个人前因，但我们关注的是关系层面。基于同质社会再生产、关系人口统计学和社会认同理论，我们假设高级管理人员与其政治对手之间的人口统计学相似性会影响高管人员流动率。使用丹麦市长和首席行政官 (CAO) 的纵向登记数据，我们的结果表明，性别差异（特别是男性市长和女性 CAO）增加了 CAO 更替的风险。相似地，当 CAO 比市长年长时，CAO 更替的风险更高。然而，与预期相反，教育差异降低了离职风险（特别是当 CAO 的教育程度高于市长时）。我们的研究说明了将营业额理解为一种基于理性、政治和功能解释之外的因素的关系现象的相关性。