Management Experience and Diversity in an Aging Organization: A Microsimulation Analysis

The aging of the Canadian population is a well recognized phenomenon and has received considerable policy research attention, particularly in the health and public pension domains. Very little work has been focused on the impacts of aging at the organizational level. Foot and Venne studied the advancement of the baby boom through traditional organizational hierarchies, noting its impacts on human resource policies that encourage horizontal career development. Saba et al looked more particularly at the management of older professionals in the Quebec public service, finding that employee recognition was an important human resource strategy for motivating this group. We extend these studies further along the aging ladder -- to the point where retirement and replacement become the major concerns. Looking at the management hierarchy within Statistics Canada, we use a microsimulation model first to estimate the expected level of retirements over the next 10 years. We then detail the adjustments to promotion and hiring rates required to replace outgoing managers. We then examine simulated microdata to estimate the experience effects of increasing turnover. Finally, we use the demographic features of the model to examine whether the increasing turnover is likely to increase the representation of women and visible minorities among Statistics Canada managers. Given the assumptions outlined in the paper, we find that increasing turnover rates in the next 10 years will generally not reduce management experience to below recently observed levels. We also find that given equal promotion rates for men and women, the representation rate of women among Statistics Canada managers is likely to increase rapidly in coming years. On the other hand, visible minority representation among managers will likely stall for several years, even with proactive recruitment and advancement policies.