Executives and Supervisors: Informal Factors in Differential Bureaucratic Promotion

Abstract

In a comprehensive investigation of career patterns and vertical occupational mobility, fifty executives and fifty supervisors were asked to evaluate the relative importance of several informal factors in bureaucratic promotion. Both groups agreed that national origins, religion, political activity, and membership in secret societies are presently of much less universal importance in career advancement than such factors as family social standing and connections; membership in social, civic, and professional organizations; recreational activities and hobbies; judicious consumption; the influence of wives; the acquisition of the attitudes, values, and behavior patterns of successful superiors; and the establishment of higher-level friendships while retaining lower-level ones. The results are compared with previous findings concerning the influence of informal factors in career advancement. The general conclusions are that in complex, other-directed, human-relationsminded bureaucracies, it is becoming increasingly difficult to measure individual job performance on the basis of merit alone. Particularly when formal criteria for promotion are either indistinct or not universally understood, informal factors associated with social conformity and congeniality tend to supplement or replace formal criteria.'