Valued or Sidelined? Exploring Supervisors’ Perception and Treatment of Elite-Educated Newcomers

Drawing on self-enhancement theory, this study investigates how newcomers’ elite educational backgrounds influence their career development through supervisors’ psychological responses. We propose a dual-pathway model wherein newcomers’ elite education triggers supervisors’ ego expansion and ego threat, in turn, influences their willingness to assign critical tasks to newcomers, and supervisors’ core self-evaluations play a moderating role. Using time-lagged data from 223 supervisor-newcomer dyads across multiple organizations, we found that supervisors’ core self-evaluations moderated the relationships between newcomers’ elite education and both supervisors’ ego expansion and ego threat, respectively. Specifically, supervisors with higher core self-evaluations experienced stronger ego expansion, which was positively related to critical task assignment. In contrast, supervisors with lower core self-evaluations experienced stronger ego threat, which was negatively related to critical task assignment. These findings extend our understanding of how elite educational backgrounds influence graduates’ developmental opportunities in the workplace.