Was bewegt die Führungskräfte? Von der Agency-Theorie zur Soziologie des Managements

Abstract

This paper studies the relationship between characteristics of men's place of residence and the probability of entering marriage in western Germany during the 1980s and 1990s. We link micro-information from the German Socio-Economie Panel Study (GSOEP) with district-level data to estimate discrete-time multilevel logit models. Our multivariate results stress the importance of men's individual economic status in marital decisions. They furthermore indicate a negative relationship between women's aggregate labour force participation and male transition rates to marriage, which could be interpreted as evidence for the popular 〉economic independence hypothesis〈 of marital behaviour. Complementary, we put forward an interpretation of female employment rates as indicators of regional differences in gender roles and individuals' autonomy. Our findings, which include a significant latent contextual effect, suggest that a man's propensity to marry is influenced by the regional socio-cultural milieu he lives in.