Research

Despite continued research on workers’ quit behavior, questions remain on how race influences voluntary departure. To make progress on this topic, in this study I treat race as a structural position with respect to resources in order to develop a theoretical frame on why members of racial groups leave jobs. I argue that Black workers are more apt than White workers to voluntarily depart for reasons related to a lack of resources, such as a lack of health or transportation, whereas White workers are more likely than Black workers to depart for reasons that require resources, such as to start a new business or to find a new job. Using a nationally representative cohort sample spanning a period of two decades, I find support for my theory. The results indicate that Black workers are more likely than White workers to voluntarily depart their jobs due to resource constraints, and White workers are more likely than Black workers to voluntarily depart their jobs for reasons that require resources. This study suggests ways to reconceptualize the constraints and opportunities underlying voluntary departure and why such departure varies across racial groups.

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In this article we introduce and propose a research agenda on tryouts, a hiring arrangement in which individuals spend time in organizations performing job-related work prior to the chance to become regular, full-time employees. We define tryouts as a construct and discuss how tryouts differ from traditional, direct hiring. We provide a typology of alternative hiring arrangements that serve as tryouts and evidence for their utilization. We theorize that tryouts stem from changes in the nature of work, organizations, and labor markets in the 21st century. For labor market researchers, we raise questions about not only the consequences of tryouts—such as who is hired, what kinds of jobs they lead to for workers, and the social and economic awards attached to such jobs—but also about the motivations of individuals who engage in tryouts, how these motivations (and the consequences of tryouts) differ across demographic groups, and how tryouts may create multi-tiered hiring systems. For organizational scholars, we suggest that tryouts update theoretical conceptualizations of hiring, and lead organizational behaviors to commence during hiring that demand further attention. While worthy of study in their own right, we also discuss reasons that tryouts offer an “ontological laboratory” for assessing theories on organizations, labor markets, and the origins and remediation of workplace inequality.

In several science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields, women earn less than men. Using a three-wave survey, Adina Sterling et al. (pp. 30303–30308) queried 559 engineering and computer science students—195 female and 364 male—who had graduated from 27 institutions in the United States between 2015 and 2017 to uncover potential explanations for the gender pay gap. The authors suggest that self-efficacy, defined as self-confidence in following a course of action to achieve a goal, is a crucial factor that may explain the pay gap, in contrast to hypotheses that women are socialized to expect less pay or that women will accept less pay for a workplace culture that they perceive as favorable. The survey revealed that women in entry-level engineering and computer science jobs, on average, are paid less than their male counterparts and display relatively lower levels of self-efficacy, which may not only influence pay but also their rate of entry into some STEM fields. The authors suggest that cultural beliefs about the appropriateness of men and women for certain STEM professions may influence beliefs about self-efficacy. According to the authors, efforts to strengthen students’ self-assessment before they enter the engineering and computer science workforce could help address the gender pay gap.

We examine how signals of a candidate’s capability affect perceptions of that person’s commitment to an employer. In four experimental studies that use hiring managers as subjects, we test and show that managers perceive highly capable candidates to have lower commitment to the organization than less capable but adequate candidates and, as a result, penalize high-capability candidates in the hiring process. Our results show that managers have concerns about a high-capability candidate’s future commitment to the organization because they view highly capable candidates as having lower levels of organizational interest—meaning they care less about the mission and values of the organization and exert a lower level of effort toward those ends—and because they assume highly capable candidates have more outside job options, increasing their flight risk. Our findings highlight that capability signals do not necessarily afford candidates an advantage in selection, suggesting an upper limit on credentials and other signals of capability in helping candidates get jobs. Our study contributes to research on labor markets, human capital, and credentialing by offering a theory for why and when capability signals can negatively influence job candidate selection decisions.

This paper examines when and under what conditions whom to hire is a strategic decision. We identify four mechanisms involved in hiring that add to the “strategicness” of human capital decisions. We posit that, to the degree that human capital outcomes are influenced by these mechanisms, hiring cannot be effectively delegated or treated independently from a firm’s other strategic decisions, nor will a “best athlete” approach to hiring lead to optimal results. We outline the shifts in scholarly attention required for scholars to conceptualize hiring as a strategic process, and we argue that this conceptualization is critical given the increasing use of data science tools by industry to support and automate hiring decisions. By delving into the mechanisms and conditions that make hiring strategic, we contribute to a broader understanding of how and why firms acquire human capital and highlight gaps and opportunities for future research.

Although women pursue managerial credentials at nearly the same rate as men, gender disparities in wages exist because of the shortfall in wages women sustain relative to men at the onset of their careers. This article develops a tryout approach to test for the presence of demand-side contributions to initial wage inequality while also developing and testing theory on why it may be lessened through internships. Using detailed data on graduates from an elite management program from 2009–2010, our analyses reveal that internships are associated with the gap in men’s and women’s initial salaries. For men, there is no difference in salary offers from employers where an internship occurs versus one where an internship does not occur. However, women receive higher salaries from employers where an internship first takes place.

While prior research has suggested that network-based hiring in the form of referrals can lead to better career outcomes, few studies have tested whether such career advantages differ across demographic groups. Using archival data from a single organization for nearly 16,000 employees over an 11-year period, the authors examine the effect of hiring by referrals on the number of promotions employees receive and the differences in this effect across demographic groups. Drawing on theories of referral-based hiring, inequality, and career mobility, they argue that referral-based hiring provides unique promotion advantages for minorities compared to those hired without a referral. Consistent with this argument, they find that referrals are positively associated with promotions for one minority group, blacks, even after controlling for individual and regional labor market differences. The authors explore the possible mechanism for this finding, with initial evidence pointing to referrals providing a signal of quality for black employees. These results suggest refinement to prior research that attests that referral-based hiring disadvantages racial minorities.

This paper investigates the impact of individuals' social ties at organizational entry on the formation of intraorganizational networks. When individuals enter organizations with one or more preentry relationships in place, I argue they form more extensive networks post entry than their untied counterparts. However, it is also suggested that under some conditions—i.e., when quality is more certain—the relationship between pre- and postentry social structure is contingent on individuals' quality attributes. I test and find support for these hypotheses in a study of new business and law professionals. The results indicate that individuals with an initial advantage in social ties form more extensive networks post entry than those without such an advantage, and that when certainty about quality is high, this effect depends on the quality attributes of the new entrants. Implications of this study for research on social networks, resource accumulation, and inequality are discussed.

This paper examines how organizations use employee networks to contend with job seekers' search behavior. According to prior research, in markets where job seekers engage in nonsequential job search, organizations respond with tactics such as exploding offers and recruiting candidates earlier. In this paper, I posit that organizations have a social structural response. I argue that in an attempt to avoid problems related to candidates' job search, organizations are more likely to provide job offers to candidates with friends in the hiring organization than to those without friends. I test and find support for this hypothesis in a study of entry-level professionals in business and law. After a period of trial employment, candidates were more likely to receive job offers from organizations if they had a friend employed there than if they did not. The implications of this study for research on labor markets, networks, and inequality are discussed.

We review the literature on recent changes to US employment relationships, focusing on the causes of those changes and their consequences for inequality. The US employment model has moved from a closed, internal system to one more open to external markets and institutional pressures. We describe the growth of short-term employment relationships, contingent work, outsourcing, and performance pay as well as the success of social identity movements in shaping employment benefits. In doing so, we address the role of organizations as sites of conflict within and between stakeholder groups, examining how struggles among stakeholders have contributed to reorganizing employment relationships. We also examine how these changes have affected inequality by (i) influencing the distribution of rewards within organizations (via changes in the determination of pay and benefits and in the allocation of workers to jobs) and (ii) altering, on a macro level, how rewards are distributed among different stakeholders. In closing, we identify areas where future work is urgently needed.

Entrepreneurs that were employed by successful industry incumbents prior to founding tend to confer advantages on their new organizations. We propose and then demonstrate a similar “network progeny” effect rooted in the social relationships that form among entrepreneurs. Our analysis of new entrants into the Ontario wine industry shows that prefounding friendship ties of the founders of one especially prominent entrepreneurial firm led to significantly higher ice wine prices. This attests to the promise of a network progeny extension of the parent–progeny account of new firm success. Follow-on analysis indicates that this effect is not attributable to an entrant's ability to make ice wines of superior quality or to it having access to better distribution knowledge. We therefore conclude that having a social tie to this prominent entrepreneurial firm generated reflected prominence that enhanced the valuations and therefore prices of wines made by connected market entrants.

We document a race-based difference in reemployment prospects following the dissolution of a law firm. We then probe the contribution of coworker relationships to our understanding of that difference. We treat the unexpected dissolutions of six large law firms as quasi experiments (i.e., mobility shocks). We analyze over 1,400 lawyers’ post-dissolution labor market outcomes. Our empirical analyses produce key findings that are consistent with a race-based mobility advantage in legal careers.