Firms increasingly offer employees the opportunity to participate in firm-sponsored social impact initiatives expected to benefit the firm and employees. We argue that participation in such initiatives hinders employees’ advancement in their firms by reducing others’ perceptions of their fit and commitment. Because social impact work is more congruent with female than male gender role stereotypes, promotion rates will be lower for participating men, and male evaluators will be less likely than female evaluators to recommend promotion for male participants. Using panel data on 1,379 employees of a consulting firm, we find significantly lower promotion rates for male participants relative to female participants, female non-participants, and male non-participants. A vignette experiment involving 893 managers shows that lower promotion rates are due to lower perceptions of fit, but not commitment, and greater bias against male participants by male evaluators. Taken together, the results of the two studies suggest that the negative effect of participation on promotion is conditional upon participant and evaluator gender, underscoring the role of gender in evaluation of social impact work. In settings in which decision makers are predominately male, gender beliefs may limit male employees’ latitude to contribute to the firm’s social impact agenda.

公司越来越多地为员工提供参与公司发起的社会影响计划的机会，这些计划有望使公司和员工受益。我们认为，参与此类举措会降低其他人对其适合性和承诺的看法，从而阻碍员工在其公司中的进步。由于社会影响工作更符合女性而非男性的性别角色刻板印象，参与的男性的晋升率会更低，并且男性评估者比女性评估者更不可能为男性参与者推荐晋升。使用咨询公司 1,379 名员工的面板数据，我们发现男性参与者的晋升率明显低于女性参与者、女性非参与者和男性非参与者。一项涉及 893 名经理的小插曲实验表明，较低的晋升率是由于较低的适合度而非承诺感，以及男性评估人员对男性参与者的更大偏见。综上所述，两项研究的结果表明，参与对晋升的负面影响取决于参与者和评估者的性别，强调了性别在社会影响工作评估中的作用。在决策者主要是男性的环境中，性别信仰可能会限制男性员工为公司的社会影响议程做出贡献的自由。两项研究的结果表明，参与对晋升的负面影响取决于参与者和评估者的性别，强调了性别在社会影响工作评估中的作用。在决策者主要是男性的环境中，性别信仰可能会限制男性员工为公司的社会影响议程做出贡献的自由。两项研究的结果表明，参与对晋升的负面影响取决于参与者和评估者的性别，强调了性别在社会影响工作评估中的作用。在决策者主要是男性的环境中，性别信仰可能会限制男性员工为公司的社会影响议程做出贡献的自由。