David Marsden Best Paper Prize 2025
Jury members: Uschi Backes-Gellner, Wenzel Matiaske, Héloïse Petit
Preliminary remarks
We would like to start by saying that this year’s call for entries for the Best Paper Prize in memory of David Marsden was once again very successful with a total of 38 submissions. Following last year’s reform of the application process, entrants were asked to include a short covering letter explaining explicitly how their research relates to the work of David Marsden, specifying which aspects of his work influenced their own or how their work built upon his fundamental ideas. Submissions that were not complete were not considered.
After preselecting the remaining submissions with careful considerations of their thematic focus and relevance to the call, we were left with 11 very good submissions that, in our opinion, were thematically appropriate and closely related to David Marsden’s work. It should be noted that there were also high-quality research papers among the contributions that we did not include in the shortlist because their thematic alignment was insufficient. We would like to particularly acknowledge Karen Shire’s work in the first step, who was a great help in compiling the shortlist with her assessment of the reference to the call text.
All jury members carefully read all remaining 11 papers, exchanged their assessments, and consolidated the results. After a second reading round, the jury discussed again the shortened list of papers in an online meeting. In view of the high quality and originality of the papers, the selection was not easy. We would like to sincerely thank all participants for their contributions and for giving us the opportunity to engage with their work. We have learnt a great deal.
The studies covered a broad spectrum of topics: trade union policy and employee ownership, barriers to labor market access, discrimination in organisations with regard to gender inequality, and new forms of platform-based work — keywords that illustrate the wealth of topics. Methodologically, too, the entire range of social science methodology can be found: standardised and unstandardised data, case studies and large-scale surveys, qualitative and quantitative data analyses.
However, we observed that occasionally the methodological sophistication overshadowed the theoretical work or research question. The methodological standards, particularly in data analysis, were consistently high and should be welcomed by the academic community. However, when such methodological sophistication comes at the expense of theoretical depth and conceptual developments of research questions — when research is not only inspired but driven by data — this development deserves critical reflection.
The prize
Ultimately, a decision had to be made. This year’s prize goes to a researcher who investigates alternative career paths beyond formal academic education and titles, on the one hand, and employer recruitment criteria of employers on the other. It is Mariana Oseguera’s (University of Toronto) paper on “Tearing the paper ceiling? Alternative Routes in Contemporary Labor Markets.”
Against the backdrop of economic barriers limiting access to academic education, this topic is particularly relevant for countries whose higher education systems involve substantial — both direct and indirect — educational costs for students. In addition, in labour markets facing skill shortages, employers would benefit from enlarging their pool of potentially suitable candidates and thereby reduce the false negatives in the selection process. Labour markets, education and organisations — the central topics in David Marsden’s work as well as in SASE Network G, of which David was a founder — are effectively combined and examined in a contemporary setting.
Mariana Oseguera’s paper studies alternative routes in contemporary labour markets through an innovative field experiment. Such alternative routes to higher education and the signal of a formal degree are characterised by aspects such as on-the-job learning, training programs, or micro-credentials (short, skill-specific certifications). Based on profiles from specialised social networks and job portals, the author constructs CVs that vary systematically in the duration of on-the-job learning, the status of the supposed employer and the micro-credentials earned. The stereotypes of gender and race are also taken into account.
Almost 18,000 applications for jobs in software engineering and marketing were then submitted via online job boards (Indeed, Monster, and company boards). The “callback rates” for these hypothetical candidates to the job openings were subsequently measured. On average, candidates with alternative routes received about 28% fewer callbacks than those with a formal educational title as a signal. This finding is moderated by varying characteristics such as the duration of on-the-job training. Interestingly, discrimination based on gender and race (measured by lower callback rates) is significantly lower for applicants coming from alternative routes.
Beyond this specific research question, Mariana Oseguera’s research also highlights key aspects of digital HRM that will become increasingly relevant in the future, and her innovative research design provides valuable methods for measuring the permeability of application processes and the value of educational capital, offering fruitful avenues for further research.
In sum, this paper embodies the core aims of the David Marsden Prize: it addresses a topic of high contemporary relevance at the intersection of labour markets, education, and organizational practices; it is grounded in rigorous empirical analysis; and it connects back meaningfully to the intellectual legacy of David Marsden by advancing our understanding of how institutional structures shape individual labour market opportunities. As such, it stands as a model of the kind of scholarship this prize was established to honour.
We warmly congratulate Mariana Oseguera.