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Abstract
While great progress has been made in documenting that organizational practices affect workplace inequality, little is known about how managers in particular may shape the careers of the employees below them. Using unique longitudinal personnel data on managers and their subordinates, this study identifies and tests for evidence of three distinct mechanisms by which managers potentially influence the assessment of employee performance in the workplace: (1) social network influence between employees' current and former managers; (2) manager-manager (horizontal) homophily; and (3) manager-employee (vertical) homophily. I find evidence of the independent effects of all three mechanisms of managerial influence on the outcome of disagreement in the performance evaluation ratings of the same worker between former and current managers. In particular, my results stress that both managerial network influence and horizontal homophily affect the process of employee performance assessments, over and above the well-studied vertical homophily mechanism. I conclude by discussing the theoretical implications of these findings for future research regarding the interactional aspects of workplace inequality within contemporary organizations.
Keywords
performance, careers, social networks, homophily, stratification, organizations, employment
While much progress has been made in documenting that organizational practices contribute to workplace inequality (e.g., Kalev 2009; Kalev, Dobbin, and Kelly 2006; for a recent review, see Castilla and Benard 2010), less emphasis has been placed on understanding the specific ways by which managers may shape employees' careers. Some scholars argue that managers (and the managerial composition of workplaces) affect workplace segregation (Huffman, Cohen, and Pearlman 2010), wage inequality (Cohen, Broschak, and Haveman 1998; Cohen and Huffman 2007; Ely 1995; Reskin and McBrier 2000; Reskin and Padavic 1988), and access to authority and power (Elliott and Smith 2004; Hultin and Szulkin 1999, 2003). This is not surprising given that individuals in managerial positions are involved in deciding employee job/project assignments, training and development possibilities, pay raises, promotions, and terminations (Briscoe and Kellogg 2011; Elvira and Graham 2002; Reskin 2000). Recent scholarship finds that managers can introduce (potentially unintended) discretion into workers' compensation decisions (Castilla 2008; Manning and Swaffield 2008). However, what remains less well-known is how managers in particular, who design and implement organizational procedures, influence the workplace treatment and assessment of workers over the course of their careers.
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