ORGANIZATION THEORY AND STRUCTURAL PERSPECTIVES ON MANAGEMENT

Structural effects represent the influence of an individual's position in social space on that person because of the constraints and opportunities for interaction and social comparison that derive from the structural realities. The effects of structural position (including network location, physical location, and one's demographic relationship to others) on job attitudes, turnover, performance, and wages illustrate the application of a structural perspective and how that perspective can enrich our understanding of phenomena typically studied from the perspective of individual attributes and dispositions. A structural perspective seeks to put the fact of social relations and organizations back into the study of organizational behavior.