ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes how clusters of informal factors affect promotions among people with equivalent skills. It indicates that these informal factors are made viable criteria for promotion through sponsorship. In New England factory individuals must be ethnically qualified to hold certain jobs, a circumstance which has resulted in the development of a pattern of ethnic job expectations, sponsorship, and rejection. The chart indicates not only that certain jobs were held by the ethnically acceptable but that large areas of the plant hierarchy are almost completely occupied by members of one ethnic group. Jobs of managerial type are held by individuals of native or Yankee stock, and jobs of supervisory nature are held almost exclusively by Irish. Since members of both management and labor have learned to recognize this system of ethnic job expectations and know fairly well how to adapt themselves to it, promotions are made year after year without, in the majority of cases, conflicts developing.
