Thriving as a Younger Boss

Decades of research have shown the positive impact of highly perceived fairness in the workplace on worker productivity and morale. One such cause of this perceived fairness is known as status incongruence, or when an employee's supervisor lacks traditional signifiers of higher status, such as being more advanced in age, education, or tenure at the company.

Such status incongruence has been on the rise in the workplace for a while, thanks in part to the growing tech industry, which is dominated by young workers, as well as the aging workforce.

“Many people are working longer,” says Joel Brockner, the Philip Hettleman Professor of Business at Columbia Business School. “People who would have retired—and therefore been out of the workforce—stick around, so you have more older people in the workplace and more of a likelihood of status incongruence.”

In a study, Brockner and a team of co-researchers—Huisi (Jessica) Li of the University of Washington; Xiaoyu (Christina) Wang of Tongji University; Michele Williams of Iowa University; and Ya-Ru Chen of Cornell University—closely examined this status incongruence by looking beyond the impact of each status characteristic on its own. In their resulting paper, the researchers found that workers with a boss they perceive as competent overcome the impression of unfairness prompted by status incongruence.

That is because, according to Brockner, workers with a less competent boss are more likely to look to status indicators like age, education, and tenure to justify the boss’s position. This is an example of system justification theory, whereby people attempt to reconcile the psychological discomfort of being in a flawed system by searching for ways to justify it.

This effect was particularly pronounced in instances where workers had few alternatives for employment—in other words, they were pretty much stuck with their current positions. “If I have a boss who’s not that competent, psychologically, that’s kind of distressing to me,” Brockner says. “But if I have no escape, I better come to terms with it. I better make the best of that bad situation.”

While the status indicators of age, education, and tenure lead to a perception of competence, Brocker says that is not always the case. “We were trying to do something different,” Brockner says. “Rather than asking, ‘How do status characteristics lead to perceptions of competence?’ we asked, ‘What if we separated these two factors and examined their joint effects on a worker’s perception of fairness?’”

For field data, the researchers used a collection of Chinese HR surveys that asked employees questions including how competent they thought their boss was at performing their job.

They also conducted laboratory experiments in which they asked US workers to consider various workplace scenarios—including an older versus younger boss and a more competent versus less competent boss—and asked them to respond to questions about the fairness of the organization’s promotion system.

The researchers found that employers looking to promote or hire employees with status incongruence should emphasize their competence in the role to avoid perceptions of unfairness; employees should try to be aware of their reactions to status incongruence—otherwise, they may fall prey to justifying an unfair system. If workers viewed their boss as competent, regardless of whether the boss was status incongruent, they perceived the promotion system in their workplace as fair.

“The status characteristics didn’t matter when people were seen as competent,” Brockner says. “Regardless of status congruence or incongruence, as long as the boss is seen as competent, then people will perceive the promotion system as fair.”

When a supervisor was considered less competent, however, status indicators had more of an effect on workers’ perception of fairness, as they looked for ways to explain the boss’s promotion. In these scenarios, “the more status characteristics a boss had, the fairer the promotion system was considered,” Brockner says.

As status incongruence becomes more prevalent, Brocker and his co-researchers’ work becomes only more applicable. Higher-ups, knowing how status incongruence impacts workers, can be proactive about ensuring employees that status-incongruent supervisors are competent and therefore were fairly promoted into their roles. Newly promoted young supervisors can take heart that if they show their competence in the role, subordinates are more likely to accept their status.

As for employees, they should be aware of their reactions to status incongruences, including the possibility that they will attempt to justify a flawed system while working under an incompetent boss to avoid the psychological discomfort of remaining in  that flawed system. This can have long-term disadvantages, like causing a worker to stay in an unfair work environment, according to Brockner. As the researchers note in their paper, “Acknowledging one’s system as unfair may be a trigger for psychological discomfort but can also be a catalyst for change.”

Key Takeaways for Business Leaders

1. Businesses promoting younger managers should highlight those manager's distinct capabilities to reduce perceptions of unfairness.
2. Encourage a culture that values skills over status, and give younger managers the tools to build trust and credibility with their teams.