Project description
How workplaces shape inequality over careers
Rising economic inequality threatens social cohesion, and firms are increasingly recognised as key arenas where inequality is generated. However, most research captures only momentary differences between workers, overlooking how workplaces shape careers over time. The ERC-funded FIRMS project takes a dynamic, life-course perspective to examine how firms move individuals up or down wage and authority ladders and how they create or reinforce gender and ethnic inequalities. It will investigate firms as career resources, through status and technology adoption, or obstacles such as gatekeeping and toxic cultures. Comparing Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, and the USA, the project integrates longitudinal employer-employee and health data to map career trajectories and identify how firms might mitigate 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.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
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CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
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Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
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Topic(s)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
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Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
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Call for proposal
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Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) ERC-2025-COG
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Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
1012WX Amsterdam
Netherlands
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