The Organizational Context for Affirmative Action for Women Faculty.
dies show women have made insignificant or, at best, modest gains on university campuses [1, 2, 11, 18]. The path to progress is affected by the decentralized structure of universities, because decisions regarding the composition of faculty originate in academic departments among other faculty. To understand faculty affirmative action, therefore, it is necessary to consider the organizational context in which judgments about faculty occur. The context includes features of decentralized decision making modulated by institutional characteristics. Several researchers have examined institutional factors that con-