Why Not Ascription? Organizations’ Employment of Male and Female Managers

By B. Reskin, Debra Branch McBrier. American Sociological Review, 2000

502 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We examine the effects of organizations’ employment practices on sex-based ascription in managerial jobs. Given men's initial preponderance in management, we argue that inertia, sex labels, and power dynamics predispose organizations to use sex-based ascription when staffing managerial jobs, but that personnel practices can invite or curtail ascription. Our results—based on data from a national probability sample of 516 work organizations—show that specific personnel practices affect the sexual division of managerial labor. Net of controls for the composition of the labor supply, open recruitment methods are associated with women holding a greater share of management jobs, while recruitment through informal networks increases men's share. Formalizing personnel practices reduces men's share of management jobs, especially in large establishments, presumably because formalization checks ascription in job assignments, evaluation, and factors that affect attrition. Thus, through their personnel practices, establishments license or limit ascription.

Subfields: Gender Studies, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/5ad737b50072dbdbd479c008d7ada964b518938e

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Citations in the corpus

A Sociological Perspective on Gender and Career Outcomes (2005, background): “Analysis of a national survey of employers showed that the higher women's share of jobs in an establishment, the higher the proportion of female managers (Reskin and McBrier, 2000).”
An institutional logics approach to social entrepreneurship: Market logic, religious diversity, and resource acquisition by microfinance organizations (2016, background): “…many challenging social problems like poverty have their roots in deeply ingrained religious differences that unfairly marginalize people based on group membership and hinder cross-group communications and interactions (Reskin and McBrier, 2000; Ridgeway, 2011; Thornton et al., 2012; Yenkey, 2015).”
Best Practices or Best Guesses ? Assessing the Efficacy of Corporate Affirmative Action and Diversity Policies (2007, unknown): “The negative effect of formal per- sonnel policies is not consistent with the idea that bureaucracy impedes cronyism or bias in promotion decisions (Reskin and McBrier 2000), but is consistent with the argument that formalization leads to the needless inflation of educational prerequisites (Collins…”
The Link Between Diversityand Equality ManagementPractice Bundles and RacialDiversity in the ManagerialRanks: Does Firm Size Matter? (2013, background): “…& Brown, 2006; Yang & Konrad, 2011), and organization stratification research (e.g., Goodman, Fields, & Blum, 2003; Ka- lev, Dobbin, & Kelly, 2006; Reskin & McBrier, 2000) studying the association between broad-based HR practices (e.g., recruitment) and percentages of women and minority groups…”
Language Matters: Status Loss and Achieved Status Distinctions in Global Organizations (2013, background): “In their study of personnel practices, Reskin and McBrier (2000) likewise show how organizations can mitigate tendencies carrying over from extant macro-status beliefs that have led to the inequitable hiring of women.”
Inside the Black Box of Organizational Life: The Gendered Language of Performance Assessment (2020, background): “Managers also perceive evaluation procedures as ambiguous, poorly defined, and difficult to use (Gorman 2006; Reskin and McBrier 2000).”
Women Inventors in Context (2008, background): “Using a national sample, Reskin and McBrier (2000) find women workers do better in larger, more bureaucratic organizations; they conclude that women are more likely to become managers when hiring practices are more formalized.”
What Can You Do with That Degree?: College Major and Occupational Status of College Graduates over Time (2010, background): “One possible explanation for these patterns is that men fare better in less formalized contexts, while women benefit from reliance on formal employment channels (Drentea 1998; Reskin and McBrier 2000).”
The Paradox of Meritocracy in Organizations (2010, background): “…has shown that personnel practices that allow managerial discretion have the potential to increase bias toward women and minority groups (e.g., Reskin and McBrier, 2000; Elvira and Graham, 2002), study 3 indirectly suggested that organizational values that emphasize managerial discretion…”