Sub-theme 23: The Impact of Organizational Practices on Career Outcomes
Call for Papers
At the core of research in organization studies lays the premise that organizations play a key role in generating and sustaining
inequality in the workplace. For example, many studies show that women and racial minorities occupy lower quality jobs, through
processes of screening, hiring, promotion, and termination. Recent empirical work has found that gender and racial disparities
in the workplace remain even after the adoption of diversity programs, problem-solving team and job-training arrangements,
merit-based pay practices, and other work policies. Other studies have also examined how structural factors internal to organizations,
such as organizational size and tenure, hierarchical structure, and the use of job categories, affect ascriptive inequality.
Ultimately, the distribution of resources, power and opportunities in society cannot be fully understood without paying attention
to the impact of organizations and their practices on individual work outcomes.
The purpose of this sub-theme
is to bring together a group of researchers who share a concern for advancing our knowledge about the impact of organizational
practices on workplace inequality and diversity. In particular, our goal is to discuss innovative research that sheds new
light on surprising theoretical mechanisms that explain how organizational practices affect key employment outcomes – such
as assignment to jobs, wages, promotions, career advancement, training opportunities, etc. Because the nature of organizations
and their boundaries are changing so rapidly, talking about “organizational practices” may not be the ideal way of thinking
about these issues any more. Thus we also would like to explore the blurring of organizational boundaries, values, and procedures,
the recent patterns of employee mobility, the increasing use of “market-driven” employment practices and the use of technology
in the employment domain. We aim to examine how these developments shape new forms of economic and social inequality. This
topic is not only relevant for the advancement of organizational theory and research, but it also has practical implications
for employees, managers, communities, and society as a whole.
We are open to learning from multiple theoretical
perspectives, ranging from purely structural or incentive-based accounts of inequality to cognitive and identity-based perspectives
on how differential opportunities and inequitable treatment may emerge within organizations. Some of the topics we would like
to discuss include (but are not limited to):
How do recruitment and hiring, training and development, as well as performance and reward systems within traditional and non-traditional organizations affect individuals’ careers in the workplace?
How do emergent information and other types of technologies (such as online platforms, algorithms, machine learning, predictive analytics, etc.) shape screening, hiring, task/job allocation and hence individual workplace outcomes?
How do new organizational forms and employment arrangements (temporary and contingent work, intermediaries, network-based firms, etc.) influence the distribution of power in labour markets and in turn workplace inequality?
What are the (un)intended consequences of old and new organizational practices and routines, in particular as they advantage some individuals or groups while constraining opportunities for others inside and outside work organizations?
How can organizational practices be designed and implemented to mitigate workplace inequality and increase diversity?
We welcome a broad array of methodologies, from qualitative or quantitative analysis to simulations and experimental approaches.
We are also interested in studies across industries and markets, as long as they share a concern for the role of organizational
practices in understanding workplace inequality. By learning from different theoretical and empirical approaches, we believe
attendees to this sub-theme will substantially enrich their particular research agendas within the broad topic of organizations,
inequality, and diversity.