Do the Determinants of Promotion Differ for Blacks and Whites?

Baldi, Stéphane; McBrier, Debra Branch

doi:10.1177/0730888497024004005

Cited by 114 publications

(130 citation statements)

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“…A representative sample of U.S. workers revealed a negative association between the proportions of Black employees in the organization and promotion rates for Blacks, but no parallel association for Whites (Baldi and McBrier 1997). The overrepresentation of Whites in managerial positions may help explain why negative career outcomes accrue to Blacks but not Whites in the presence of higher proportions of same-race peers.…”

Section: Demographic Match and Promotionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Looking Up and Looking Out: Career Mobility Effects of Demographic Similarity Among Professionals

McGinn

Milkman

2013

Organization Science

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We investigate the role of workgroup gender and race composition on the career mobility of professionals in “up-or-out” organizations. We develop a nuanced perspective on the potential career mobility effects of workgroup demography by integrating the social identification processes of cohesion, competition, and comparison. Using five years of personnel data from a large law firm, we examine the influence of demographic match with workgroup superiors and workgroup peers on attorneys’ likelihood of turnover and promotion. Survival analyses reveal that higher proportions of same-sex superiors enhance junior professionals’ career mobility. On the flip side, we observe mobility costs accruing to professionals in workgroups with higher proportions of same-sex and same-race peers. Qualitative data offer insights into the social identification processes underlying demographic similarity effects on turnover and promotion in professional service organizations.

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Section: Demographic Match and Promotionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Looking Up and Looking Out: Career Mobility Effects of Demographic Similarity Among Professionals

McGinn

Milkman

2013

Organization Science

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“…A firm with one job obviates any additional segregating effects of the matching process. Similarly, the well-documented segregating effects of promotions and internal job ladders (Baldi and McBrier, 1997;Diprete and Soule, 1988;Doeringer and Piore, 1971;James, 2000;Kelley, 1982;Maume, 2004;Miech, Eaton and Liang, 2003;Smith, 2005;Thomas and Gabarro, 1999;Wilson, Sakura-Lemessy and West, 1999) are controlled for by using a one-job firm. Second, to control for human capital and other individual-characteristics explanations for disparate labor market outcomes, all agents in the model are defined as being identically qualified for the job and performing equally well while on the job.…”

Section: Model Definitionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Missing Links: Referrer Behavior and Job Segregation

Rubineau

Fernández

2010

SSRN Journal

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How does referral recruitment contribute to job segregation, and what can organizations do about it?Current theory on network effects in the labor market emphasizes the job-seeker perspective, focusing on the segregated nature of job-seekers' information and contact networks, and leaves little role for organizational influence. But employee referrals are necessarily initiated from within a firm by referrers. We argue that referrer behavior is the missing link that can help organizations manage the segregating effects of referring.Adopting the referrer's perspective of the process, we develop a computational model which integrates a set of empirically documented referrer behavior mechanisms gleaned from extant organizational case studies.Using this model, we compare the segregating effects of referring when these behaviors are inactive to the effects when the behaviors are active. We show that referrer behaviors substantially boost the segregating effects of referring. This impact of referrer behavior presents an opportunity for organizations. Contrary to popular wisdom, we show that organizational policies designed to influence referrer behaviors can mitigate most if not all of the segregating effects of referring. , and is associated with the imposition of mandated policy changes on organizational defendants in EEO lawsuits (regarding sex discrimination cases, see Hirsh [2008]). In light of these perceived organizational and societal perils, the numerous calls to reduce or even eliminate recruitment via employee 1 Although referral recruitment is viewed to have associations with both the race and sex segregation of jobs, in this paper we focus on sex segregation. The simplifying choice to focus on sex segregation was a pragmatic one: modeling the dynamics of a dichotomous variable such as sex is more straightforward than a multi-valued (and potentially multidimensional) variable as race. We recognize this choice as a limitation. Sex and race are both important and omnipresent social markers of individuals in organizational contexts (Ashforth and Humphrey 1995;Heilman 1995; Hirschfield 1999), and these particular markers can interact in complex ways (Chafetz 1997), especially in the context of the labor market (Browne and Misra 2003;Robinson et al. 2005). This simplification neither makes any assumptions of the relative importance of one type of segregation over another, nor reflects a view that the homogenous treatment of groups by race or sex, and not both simultaneously, is unproblematic. We plan to expand future versions of the model to include race and sex simultaneously.

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“…Similarly, Giscombe and Mattis (2002) found women of color "less optimistic" than White women about future advancement. Baldi and McBrier (1997) have suggested that the subjectivity often inherent in the promotion process permits discrimination to occur in subtle, difficult-toidentify ways.…”

mentioning

confidence: 98%