Research Findings

The gendered consequences of informal coaching in Silicon Valley


September 29, 2024
Image: Olia Danilevich via Pexels (CC0 1.0)

For the past decade, major technology companies have grappled with the underrepresentation of women in their industry, especially in technical roles like software engineering. Much of the conversation surrounding gender inequality in the tech industry focuses on the educational pipeline: specifically, the relatively low proportions of women graduating with computer science degrees.

In a new article in the American Journal of Sociology, I argue that women are not only underrepresented in these technical roles because they lack educational credentials but because they are not given the same opportunities as men to learn relevant skills on the job. 

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New book, Research Findings

Class power, partisan linkages, and labor policy reform


September 9, 2024

Neoliberalism has profoundly transformed industrial relations systems—most notably, the implementation of pro-business labor policies aiming at decentralizing collective bargaining and restricting unions’ bargaining power.

In the last decades, neoliberalism has been publicly contested by labor unions and social movements across the globe. However, neoliberal labor policies have proven resilient against reform. In most countries progressive governments have been unable to implement policies to restore the institutional power resources unions used to have during the “golden age” of welfare capitalism.

Why is it so difficult to reform neoliberal, pro-business labor laws? How, in the context of highly globalized societies, can workers overcome the constraints progressive governments face in promoting pro-labor policies? How, in these contexts, can organized labor influence the policymaking process?

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New book, Research Findings

Studying the state through the movements of bureaucrats: China and its economic policy paradigms


August 21, 2024

In times of geopolitical tension generated by great power rivalry, ordinary politics and policies are often attributed to “grand strategy,” a centrally coordinated master plan for achieving hegemonic aims. This is especially so if the policymaker in question is an authoritarian country with significant economic and military might, such as China. For instance, Made in China 2025, an industrial policy that aims to enhance the international competitiveness of China’s manufacturing sectors , is widely seen as a top-down industrial strategy driven by China’s supreme leaders and embodying the national will.

My book, Markets with Bureaucratic Characteristics, traces the origin of economic  policies that have propelled China’s economic growth. It reveals the meso-level genesis of what are taken as “grand strategies”: they are formulated by ministry- and bureau-level bureaucrats who have a stake in developing policies that advance their careers in a competitive bureaucracy. Without understanding this bureaucratic source of modern politics, we fail to appreciate the backstage machinations that explain what policies emerge on the front stage.

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Research Findings

For Gig Workers, Resistance Against Digital Bosses Is Not Futile

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August 4, 2024

In the gig economy, the customer isn’t king. They’re the emperor.

Workers on Uber, Lyft, TaskRabbit, Instacart, Fiverr, Upwork, and other labor platforms are at the mercy of algorithms that funnel jobs their way based on customer ratings. The better ratings, the better the assignments. By using customers for control, the platforms have ditched traditional management and gained tremendous efficiencies for themselves and for their customers. Who doesn’t love the ease of calling a rideshare to their exact location with a few taps on a cellphone, compared with standing on a street corner to hail a cab?

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Research Findings

Institutional sieves: How elite colleges filter student applicants

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June 24, 2024

A large share of higher education media attention focuses on selective colleges and universities, from Congressional hearings featuring “Ivy-plus” university presidents to the “operation varsity blues” scandal. These institutions represent only a small subset of higher education, yet attention to them is well warranted. Enrollment at a high-status undergraduate institution is often a passport to lucrative careers or a prestigious graduate education.

Historians, sociologists and higher education scholars have called attention to the role of highly selective institutions as bastions of privilege. Two former presidents of such universities, William G. Bowen and Derek Bok, traced the flow of racially minoritized students through these institutions in their classic book The Shape of the River.

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Research Findings

When do women succeed in women’s jobs? It depends on the workplace!

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June 4, 2024

The paradoxical promotion advantages of men in jobs dominated by women

Management promotions come with pay raises and a voice in workplace decisions. It is well-known that men receive promotions more often than women – but men’s promotion advantages relative to their female colleagues grow with the share of women in jobs. Therefore, men ride an invisible “glass escalator” that fast-tracks them into managerial promotions, especially in jobs that employ more women.

In a recently published paper, we ask: Is the glass escalator the same in all workplaces, or does it slow in workplaces predominantly employing women?

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Research Findings

Polyoccupationalism: The unexplored world of workers’ occupational identities.

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April 10, 2024

Occupations are a key source of identity in modern social life. But what exactly do contemporary occupational identities look like? In the heyday of Western industrialization, sociologist Émile Durkheim conceived of occupations as cohesive social groupings, or “small classes,” whose rooting in the division of labor meant that they provided workers with exclusive and powerful identities – as miners, nurses, or professors. In recent decades, however, the rise of postindustrial forms of work has transformed the Durkheimian landscape. As employment becomes more contingent and labor is increasingly project-based, workers’ ties to their jobs are not as strong as they used to be. It is unclear, however, how this shift away from the industrial regime has transformed occupational identities. How do workers identify with occupations in the postindustrial era?

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Research Findings

Do criminal record questions on job applications prevent people with records from applying?

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March 18, 2024

Getting a job can be a challenge for anyone, especially in a tough economy. But for people with criminal records, the task of finding a job is particularly difficult. Experiments show that job applicants with criminal records have lower chances of getting an interview or job than those without records, and that the chances are even lower for people of color. While 8% of adult men have a felony criminal record, that number is 33% for Black men. Thus, many employers’ unwillingness to provide a second chance by hiring those with criminal records is especially impactful for Black people.

Employers often obtain criminal record information about applicants during the application process. Some ask criminal record questions on job applications or request formal criminal background checks, with a warning of a background check typically stated right on the application. Thus, when an applicant with a criminal record goes to apply for a job, they often see on the application itself that their record will become known to the employer.

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Research Findings

Are millennials worse off than baby boomers? That’s the wrong question.

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December 28, 2023

The question of whether Millennials are doing better or worse than previous generations remains a highly debated subject. Millennials are often positioned as the victims of changes in American society that have made employment and family life less stable, rendering them, according to some observers, “the first generation that is worse off than their parents”. A recent article challenged the “myth of the broke Millennial”, however, claiming that they are actually thriving.

Framing the question in this way is somewhat misleading. It suggests that there is a typical or average Millennial, who we can compare to the average Baby Boomer. Millennials are so different from one another, however, that it is not particularly meaningful to talk about the ‘average’ Millennial experience. There are some Millennials who are doing extremely well—think Mark Zuckerberg and Sam Altman—while others are struggling.

The Baby Boomers are similarly internally divided: those who went to university and found middle class jobs had very different experiences and life outcomes compared to those in working class occupations. Comparing generations in terms of their average economic outcomes overlooks the vast discrepancies within generations. Instead, we should ask which Millennials were better or worse off than previous generations.

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Research Findings

It takes more than a ‘body count’ to make diversity matter on corporate boards


December 21, 2023

Corporate boards shape strategy and decision-making, rendering their composition highly consequential. Such boards have been, and still are, predominantly composed of individuals from similar demographic backgrounds – notably white men. This is an issue, as homogeneity is known to lead to groupthink, and suggests that some needed talent is excluded from the board room.

Calls for diversity, notably gender diversity, grow louder, and some countries have legal targets or quotas. Corporate boards, not least in large, publicly-traded firms in the Global North where power and money concentrate, are thus in the hot seat. However, research findings are mixed when it comes to the outcomes of having more diversity on boards.

In a recent study of corporate board diversity, our starting rationale was that simply adding more ‘diverse directors’ to the mix wouldn’t necessarily translate into them having influence – and indeed, we found that increasing the ‘diversity count’ by adding women or foreign directors doesn’t inherently reshape the power dynamics in the corporate elite.

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