Published
How does bureaucracy affect racial inequality? Prior research finds that bureaucratization can institutionalize racial inequality but also that insufficient bureaucracy creates opportunities for discrimination. In this project, we propose a third mechanism (differential worker sorting) through which bureaucratic work environments affect inequality. To clarify these perspectives, we contrast worker-protective features, like fixed pay and seniority protections, to performance-oriented features, which structure production targets and often incorporate high-powered incentives. We study Black-White earnings inequality by matching a large survey of U.S. manufacturing workplaces to employer-employee linked data. Bureaucratic workplaces pay relatively more to Black workers than do nonbureaucratic workplaces. These benefits are strongest for college-educated Black workers and are concentrated in firms with structured target setting rather than those with high-powered incentives or worker protections per se. Moreover, increased pay for Black workers stems mainly from bureaucratic workplaces selecting for relatively higher-skilled Black workers. These findings suggest that bureaucratic employers attract high-performing Black workers not by paying them more relative to White workers but by providing a formalized production context that supports clear performance targets.
Published version →When employers use input from workers, who benefits? Direct worker voice in production could boost productivity and strengthen the bargaining position of production workers. Or it could be a way that employers appropriate workers' knowledge and expertise, thereby weakening workers' position. Using a survey of 30,000 US manufacturing establishments matched to administrative records of worker earnings and business performance, the authors find that employers using worker voice pay workers more and have higher productivity. Even conditional on workers' human capital and establishment characteristics, workplaces using worker voice pay a small earnings premium. One-third of this premium is attributable to increased productivity; the remaining two-thirds of the premium reflects greater worker bargaining power. This analysis provides evidence that worker voice in production supports increased earnings for production workers.
Published version →Prominent employers, from Microsoft to the State of Maryland, are increasingly dropping college degree requirements when hiring. Does this provide upward mobility for workers without a college degree? Matching job postings to hires in US administrative data, we show that employers have reduced the share of posts requiring a college degree by more than 10% since 2011. Non-college workers who move to jobs that have dropped degree requirements see substantial and enduring upward mobility. Compared to similar workers on similar pre-hire earnings trajectories, they earn a $6,000 per year premium that endures for at least five years after the job move and across subsequent transitions. These hires are more likely to be Black, Hispanic, and female than incumbent workers. Employers also see benefits, as removing degree requirements reduces labor costs: although non-college workers hired into decredentialed jobs earn more than similar non-college workers, they make less than college graduates hired in the same job. Despite these benefits, most employers that drop explicit college requirements continue to hire college graduate applicants into those positions. We find suggestive evidence that employers struggle to integrate new non-college hires and that they face backlash from existing employees. Overall, decredentialed jobs are a promising route to upward mobility for disadvantaged workers, but only when employers follow through beyond job posting language.
Collectives of hybrid organizations have emerged with the aim of promoting the plural goals and values embodied by their member organizations. Doing so, however, often requires simultaneous conformity and opposition to dominant institutional norms, such as those underlying mainstream market activity. We examine how hybrid collectives navigate this ‘conform-and-oppose’ tension as they seek to promote their members’ hybrid form through quantification – i.e., the use of numbers to label, count, and describe members. Analyzing the case of the International Cooperative Alliance, we identify four interrelated dimensions (valorization, validity, reactivity, and retroaction) through which a hybrid collective can harness quantification to manage differing commitments to market and social goals and values within and beyond the collective – a process we name formative quantification. Core to this process are two filtering mechanisms – validity searching and values queuing – through which a hybrid collective integrates stakeholder perceptions of truth (validity) and value (valorization) to navigate hybrid tensions. Our work extends theory on hybrid tension management to the inter-organizational level, while shifting the view of organizational quantification from a tool of conformity-enhancing evaluation towards a collective search for numbers that both conform to and oppose taken-for-granted norms.
Published version → open accessWorking Papers
Drafts available on request — email me.
Whether the complexity of a job's tasks, and the autonomy workers hold over them, shape what the job pays.
Whether a private equity buyout changes employees' sense of what their organization is for.
How a leveraged buyout reshapes the careers of the workers employed at the acquired firm.
How employee-owned firms adjust employment and pay through an economic crisis, compared with conventionally owned firms.