Individual Economics Meet Organizational Terrain

While scholars in psychology, sociology, and economics have explored issues relevant to a person's economic circumstances (Leana, Mittal, & Stiehl, 2012), organizational scholars have only more recently begun to study economic factors as key drivers of employee attitudes and behavior. The various ways in which a person's economic situation (e.g., socioeconomic background in youth, income from current employment, and even subjective feelings of financial need) can shape important individual and organizational outcomes remain underexplored. This symposium brings together four field-based investigations of dynamics occurring at the interface of individual economics and organizational terrain. First, Cappelli and Won examine how different forms of financial aid, or more broadly, the way in which students pay for the same education, affect student outcomes in college. Second, Dittman, Stephens, and Townsend unpack the substantially different experiences of work reported by employees from working-class backgrou...