2025 Theses Doctoral

Will I succeed here? The impact of management racial representativeness and manager sponsorship on racial minorities’ workplace expectations and attitudes

Sohn, Hyun Jin

Despite their increased presence in entry-level and junior roles in the professional workforce in the U.S., individuals with marginalized racial identities continue to be significantly underrepresented in managerial and executive roles in the upper echelons.

The first goal of this paper was to conceptualize such prevalent hierarchical representation gaps with the construct of management racial representativeness—which refers to the level of congruence in racial compositions among entry-level employees vis-à-vis upper management within the same organization—and investigate how perceived management racial representativeness influences underrepresented racial group members’ workplace expectations and attitudes.

The second goal was to explore the extent to which sponsorship behaviors—which refer to a specific set of instrumental behaviors aimed at amplifying employees’ chances for advancement—enacted by individual managers may moderate the impact of perceived management racial representativeness on underrepresented racial group members.

The study findings demonstrate that perceived lack of management racial representativeness led underrepresented racial group members to hold negative expectations regarding their own advancement prospects in their organization, and that these negative expectations, in turn, resulted in negative workplace attitudes (e.g., low levels of job satisfaction and organizational identification). Moreover, while manager sponsorship behaviors did not serve to mitigate the negative impact of low management racial representativeness, they independently positively influenced underrepresented racial group members’ expectations of advancement and subsequently their attitudes.

These findings illustrate that there exist two independent—and equally impactful—levers for fostering an organizational environment in which upward job mobility is perceived as accessible to all racial groups and is intentionally pursued at multiple levels. On the one hand, management racial representativeness functions as a contextual signal that provides a general idea regarding the extent to which advancement may be achievable within the organization. On the other hand, manager sponsorship affects underrepresented racial group members at a more proximal level in a more relational and direct way, as it takes place within interpersonal manager-employee relationships and involves targeted behaviors that tangibly support employees’ career progression. Accordingly, it is critical for organizations to engage in a two-pronged approach for diversity management by implementing long-term systemic diversification efforts aimed at reducing hierarchical representation gaps, coupled with proactive sponsorship enacted by individual managers in the interim in employees’ local work unit environment.