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Building on relational inequality theory, this paper incorporates social capital as a device to trace the flow of resources through relationships originating within and beyond organizations. I draw on a survey of over 1,700 lawyers to evaluate key dynamics of social capital that shape earnings: bridging and bonding, reciprocity exchanges and sponsorship, and boundary maintenance. The findings show social capital lends a lift to law graduates through bridges to professional careers and sponsorship following job entry. Racial minorities, however, suffer a shortfall of personal networks to facilitate job searches, and once having secured jobs, minorities experience social closure practices by clients and colleagues that disadvantage them in their professional work. A sizeable earnings gap remains between racial minority and white lawyers after controlling for human and social capitals, social closure practices, and organizational context. This earnings gap is particularly large among racial minorities with more years of experience and those working in large law firms. The findings demonstrate the importance of identifying the interrelations that connect social network and organizational context to impact social inequality.

After multiple decades stumbling in the status attainment wilderness, the sociological study of inequality is now cultivating a new garden: the workplace generation of inequalities. While our theories have long focused on contextually embedded social relations – often in production – as generating inequality, our methods have lagged, focusing instead on individual status attainment, abstracted from social relations including those at work. In this chapter, we outline first how we got into this mess, and then advocate a principled comparative methodological framework for studying the organizational generation of durable inequalities. We highlight the particular contribution of Randy Hodson to the original critique of individualistic status attainment research and his role in developing alternative methodologies, some of which we think should be further developed today.

Old boy networks are exclusive elite networks of white males that afford inside information, facilitate advancement, and provide support to each other. Understanding old boy networks is important because it represents a culturally specific form of cronyism that has significant negative consequences for international business. As a corrective to more optimistic scholarship on the benefits of social networks in organizations – and in line with critical assessments of other network phenomena, such as guanxi – we explore the generic social processes that give rise to old boy networks in society using Social Closure Theory and consider the consequences of old boy networks in organizations through the lens of Relational Inequality Theory. Specifically, we highlight research on network membership and gender, race, and class inequality in hiring, socialization, and assessment. We conclude by discussing the implications of old boy networks for international business.

Methodological traditions are like any other social phenomena. They are made by people working together, criticizing one another, and borrowing from other traditions. They are living social things, not abstract categories in a single system.– Andrew Abbott (2004, p. 15)

In Chapter 1, we critically reviewed the foundations of the free enterprise capital system (FECS), which has been successful primarily because of its wealth and asset accumulation potentiality and actuality. In this chapter, we critically argue that this capacity has been grounded upon the profit maximization (PM) theories, models, and paradigms of FECS. The intent of this chapter is not anti-PM. The PM models of FECS have worked and performed well for more than 200 years of the economic history of the United States and other developed countries, and this phenomenon is celebrated and featured as “market performativity.” However, market performativity has not truly benefitted the poor and the marginalized; on the contrary, market performativity has wittingly or unwittingly created gaping inequalities of wealth, income, opportunity, and prosperity. Critical thinking does not combat PM but challenges it with alternative models of profit sharing that promote social wealth, social welfare, social progress, and opportunity for all, which we explore here. Economic development without social progress breeds economic inequality and social injustice. Economic development alone is not enough; we should create a new paradigm in which economic development is the servant of social progress, not vice versa. Such a paradigm shift involves integrating the creativity and innovativity of market performativity and the goals and drives of social performativity together with PM, that is, from market performativity to social performativity.