Firms and Careers: How the Workplace Structures Career Inequality

Objective

Over the past decades, economic inequality has increased in most societies, threatening social cohesion and limiting opportunities for many. Recent studies highlight the workplace—or firm—as a core arena where this inequality is generated. However, our understanding of the mechanisms by which firms affect inequality remains limited. Moreover, research that examines this relationship compares workers at one point in time, neglecting how firms shape careers. FIRMS addresses these critical gaps. It moves beyond snapshot comparisons of inequality and is the first to take a dynamic perspective: how do workplaces shape careers and move individuals up and down the wage and job ladder? By integrating a life course perspective, it studies how firms structure career trajectories—looking at wages and job desirability (i.e., positions of authority). It examines the lasting effects of firms on working lives, using its career perspective to explore how firms create and reinforce inequalities along two key axes of labor market inequality: gender and ethnicity. FIRMS is groundbreaking in its focus on mechanisms. It studies how firms can serve as career resources (e.g., firms as status markers, adoption of new technologies) or career obstacles (e.g., gatekeepers, toxic workplace culture and its health effects). FIRMS is a comparative project and studies Germany, the Netherlands,Norway, and the USA. It combines high-quality longitudinal data from linked employer-employee registers with firm-level data and unique health registers to achieve its objectives: (1) map how firms affect career trajectories, (2) explain how firms contribute to career inequality across gender and ethnic/racial groups, (3) understand the mechanisms by which the workplace impacts careers, and (4) account for cross-national variation. By examining how and why workplaces have lasting career effects, FIRMS will not only advance our knowledge of inequality but also provide insights into how firms can mitigate it.