NEW YORK, NY — The boss knows best, or at least their resume may suggest they do. The acceptance by employees of a boss’s superior role is crucial, especially as many Americans report dwindling trust in their supervisors. A study from Columbia Business School reveals how the alignment of a supervisor's role with their experience, age, and education level affects employees' views on promotion fairness. Traditionally, supervisors are older, more experienced, and have greater education than their subordinates, known as “status congruence.” The study explores a related but different matter: how a superior’s perceived competence and their status congruence influence their subordinates’ perceptions of promotion system fairness.
In the paper, “My Boss Is Younger, Less Educated, and Shorter Tenured: When and Why Status (In)congruence Influences Promotion System Justification,” Professor Joel Brockner and co-authors, Professors Huisi Jessica Li of the University of Washington, Xiaoyu Christina Wang of Tongji University, Michele Williams of Iowa University, and Ya-Ru Chen of Cornell University discovered that when a supervisor was perceived as less competent, their possession of traditional status markers such as age, experience, and high levels of education tended to lead to more favorable views of the promotion system, especially in instances when employees felt they had less power or limited options for advancement. Professor Brockner and his team propose that these results are rooted in system justification theory, which states that people want to see the systems they’re beholden to as fair and legitimate — and they will attempt to rationalize unfair elements of the system when they see themselves as having to accept or make peace with it.
“Employees are more likely to see promotion systems as fair when supervisors have status markers like experience or education—even if the supervisor’s competence is in question,” said Professor Joel Brockner, the Phillip Hettleman Professor of Business at Columbia Business School. “This highlights how individuals are driven to justify and accept workplace systems, even when they may be flawed. Understanding these perceptions is crucial for uncovering how they shape employees' attitudes and behaviors, particularly their productivity and morale."
Professor Brockner and his team used a collection of Chinese HR surveys that asked employees how competent they thought their boss was at performing their job. The team also conducted controlled experiments with U.S. workers, asking them to imagine various workplace scenarios involving bosses of differing ages and competence levels. The team used this collected data to determine how employees took status markers of their bosses, such as age, education, and experience, into account when assessing the fairness of the promotion system in their workplace. The researchers found that if workers viewed their boss as competent, regardless of whether the boss was status congruent, they perceived the promotion system in their workplace as fair. When a supervisor was considered less competent, however, status indicators had more of an effect on workers’ perception of fairness, as they looked for ways to explain the boss’s promotion. In these instances, the more status characteristics a boss had, the fairer the promotion system was considered to be.
Additional Findings:
- Competent Younger Bosses are Accepted: Younger bosses can be accepted just as much as their older counterparts if they show themselves to be competent in their role. In other words, employees tended to care less about status congruence when their boss was perceived to be competent.
- Advice for Employers and Employees: Employers looking to promote or hire employees without status markers should emphasize their competence in the role to avoid perceptions of unfairness. Employees should try to be aware of how they react to instances in which bosses lower in competence have the “markers” of competence — otherwise, they may fall prey to justifying an unfair system.
- System Justification in the Workplace is Understudied: More research is needed to reveal how much psychological tendencies toward system justification relate to employees’ willingness to accept systems in the workplaces as fair when in fact, they are not.
"With status incongruence on the rise, companies must recognize how it shapes employee perceptions and workplace dynamics," said Professor Brockner. "By addressing concerns about competence and fairness in promotions, organizations can build trust and engagement. Future research should explore how these dynamics impact long-term employee retention and performance, helping companies create fairer, more effective workplace systems."
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