Despite the abundance of past research that has been conducted on various antecedents leading to promotability - "the favorability of an employee's advancement prospects" (Greenhaus, Parasuraman & Wormley, 1990), there is a paucity of research on the role that work proximity plays in determining an employee’s promotion into leadership positions. This research study looks to understand what role work proximity plays in the ability for a subordinate to be promoted into a leadership role. Leader member Exchange Theory and Signaling Theory all point to trust, perceived similarity and upward impression management as the antecedents having the most effect on the subordinate’s ability to be promoted into a leadership role when they do not physically work from the same location as their manager. The first phase of this research study aims to validate and refine those antecedents in a single case study using a qualitative and exploratory approach. As a result of the pilot study, trust was moved to control variable, informal interaction was added as a new antecedent and work proximity was changed from a moderating variable to a main effect variable. Additionally, perceived similarity and perceived positive impression were also identified as possible mediating variables. The results of this research study have shown that the extent to which a manger can physically “see” or “notice” their subordinate regardless of their physical work location, being co-located or not, is related to the manager’s assessment of the subordinates promotability. This finding answers the research question: What role does work proximity to one’s manager play in employees being promoted into leadership roles? / Business Administration/Human Resource Management

This study aims to explore how the gendered allocation of tasks within political parties influences the career path for male and female politicians through a case study of the Swedish Center party. A gendered allocation of tasks has earlier been observed in the context of academia and business, where women tend to perform more tasks with low promotability and men more tasks with high promotability. According to the existing research, this contributes to the enduring work place inequality. A survey was conducted among leading politicians in the Center party to determine which tasks have high and low promotability. A parallel survey was then administered among members of the party’s youth organization to determine which tasks male and female members perform. The results show that men are significantly more interested than women in pursuing a political career and perform a significantly larger amount of tasks. The study provides no evidence that female members of the Center party youth organization in general perform more tasks with low promotability than their male colleagues, and more research is required to determine if and why that is so.