Illusions of Opportunity: Employee Expectations and Workplace Inequality

by Sonia Margarita Ospina

Employees expect organizations to offer an equitable distribution of rewards in promotion, compensation, and job challenge to those who work hard. According to Sonia Ospina, the realities of the workplace confound that expectation, since organizational practices of labelling and ranking individuals create inequality. For this reason, Ospina suggests that an appreciation of how employees experience and resolve the contradiction between expectation and reality is prerequisite to understanding work attitudes in contemporary organizations.

270 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 1996