Organizational Inequality in Job Promotions

Abstract

In this study I explore the distribution of promotion opportunities between jobs in a general sample of Australian organizations. Most empirical studies of promotion have focused on a single firm, a single occupation, or used an individual level analysis. Past studies often examine which types of workers are promoted, most often using human capital models or social closure explanations. Using ordinal logistic regression, I use data from the 2002 Australian National Organization Survey (AusNOS) and extend previous studies by examining which jobs are on job ladders, by analyzing the mechanisms associated with the probability of promotions, and by investigating if these mechanisms become stronger or weaker depending on organizational context. My argument is that promotion probability is a function of human capital investment, vacancy chains, status differentials, and organizational context. What I found is that these factors have different effects on promotion probability depending on organizational level.