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8 Social Hierarchy: The Self‐Reinforcing Nature of Power and Status

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Abstract

Hierarchy is such a defining and pervasive feature of organizations that its forms and basic functions are often taken for granted in organizational research. In this review, we revisit some basic psychological and sociological elements of hierarchy and argue that status and power are two important yet distinct bases of hierarchical differentiation. We first define power and status and distinguish our definitions from previous conceptualizations. We then integrate a number of different literatures to explain why status and power hierarchies tend to be self‐reinforcing. Power, related to one’s control over valued resources, transforms individual psychology such that the powerful think and act in ways that lead to the retention and acquisition of power. Status, related to the respect one has in the eyes of others, generates expectations for behavior and opportunities for advancement that favor those with a prior status advantage. We also explore the role that hierarchy‐enhancing belief systems play in stabilizing hierarchy, both from the bottom up and from the top down. Finally, we address a number of factors that we think are instrumental in explaining the conditions under which hierarchies change. Our framework suggests a number of avenues for future research on the bases, causes, and consequences of hierarchy in groups and organizations.
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Chapter 8: Social Hierarchy: The Self-Reinforcing Nature of Power and Status
Joe C. Magee
a
; Adam D. Galinsky
b
a
Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, New York University,
b
Kellogg School of
Management, Northwestern University,
First Published on: 01 August 2008
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The Academy of Management Annals
Vol. 2, No. 1, 2008, 351–398
351
ISSN 1941-6520 print/ISSN 1941-6067 online
© 2008 Academy of Management
DOI: 10.1080/19416520802211628
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8
Social Hierarchy:
The Self-Reinforcing Nature of Power and Status
JOE C. MAGEE
*
Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, New York University
ADAM D. GALINSKY
Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University
Taylor and FrancisRAMA_A_321329.sgm10.1080/19416520802211628Academy of Management Annals1941-6520 (print)/1941-6067 (online)Original Article2008Taylor & Francis21000000August 2008BrooksHoltombch6@msb.edu
Abstract
Hierarchy is such a defining and pervasive feature of organizations that its
forms and basic functions are often taken for granted in organizational
research. In this review, we revisit some basic psychological and sociological
elements of hierarchy and argue that status and power are two important yet
distinct bases of hierarchical differentiation. We first define power and status
and distinguish our definitions from previous conceptualizations. We then
integrate a number of different literatures to explain why status and power hier-
archies tend to be self-reinforcing. Power, related to one’s control over valued
resources, transforms individual psychology such that the powerful think and
act in ways that lead to the retention and acquisition of power. Status, related
to the respect one has in the eyes of others, generates expectations for behavior
*
Corresponding author. Email: joe.magee@wagner.nyu.edu
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and opportunities for advancement that favor those with a prior status advan-
tage. We also explore the role that hierarchy-enhancing belief systems play in
stabilizing hierarchy, both from the bottom up and from the top down. Finally,
we address a number of factors that we think are instrumental in explaining the
conditions under which hierarchies change. Our framework suggests a number
of avenues for future research on the bases, causes, and consequences of hier-
archy in groups and organizations.
Introduction
Hierarchy, in its various forms, is prevalent in so many groups and organiza-
tions that it appears to be one of the most fundamental features of social
relations. Leaders of groups naturally emerge from interactions, a few central
individuals gather the majority of status in groups, resources are unequally
distributed across individuals and groups, and positions and roles are granted
different amounts or sources of power which are then conferred upon the
individuals who occupy them. Like both human and non-human primate
societies more generally, most, if not all, organizations have a stratified struc-
ture, a pyramid shape with fewer people at the top than at the bottom. Even
when one considers the heterogeneity of organizational forms (Carroll &
Hannan, 2000; Powell, 1990) and organizational practices and cultures that
are intended to dodge or suppress hierarchy (Morand, 2001; Rothschild-
Whitt, 1979), what is most noticeable is that hierarchy relentlessly rises up
against these pressures (Leavitt, 2005; Tannenbaum, Kav
[ccaron]
i
[ccaron]
, Rosner, Vianello,
& Wieser, 1974). Most striking, in other words, is that hierarchy is present
across all the diverse forms that populate the world of organizations. Even
when hierarchy is minimized by different models of social organizing (A. P.
Fiske, 1992), it is never absent, inevitably emerging both between and within
groups (Leavitt, 2005; Sidanius & Pratto, 1999).
The pervasiveness of hierarchy suggests that there are a number of individ-
ual, group, and organizational factors that create, shape, and support it across
myriad domains. Yet, when we set out to search for research on hierarchy in
the field of management, we were surprised by the paucity of recent work on
the topic. Hierarchy, it seemed, had faded to the background, so much so that
one might think that the field no longer considered it a topic of great import.
Perhaps organizational structure was too stiff of a topic; a set of intercon-
nected boxes too boring to even look at. But we increased our aperture and
explored an interdisciplinary collection of literature from organizations, psy-
chology, sociology, and other disciplines that we thought might have insights
about hierarchical life in organizations. What we saw was a vast field of
research on
social hierarchy
, with a great many lessons for researchers of and
managers in organizations. This review is our attempt to frame just a piece of
what those before us have found and to offer our own empirical and theoreti-
cal contributions to the discussion. We focus on the individual as the unit of
cˇcˇ
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analysis within group and organizational hierarchies, but our framework is
designed to apply to research investigating hierarchical differentiation
between social groups, departments within organizations, and organizations
within industries, fields, or sectors.
The review is divided into five sections. In the first section, we define
social hierarchy, discuss how it is formally instituted in organizations as well
as how it informally develops in groups and organizations, and then describe
its functions. We next turn to what we argue are the two foundational bases
of hierarchy in organizations: status and power. We define these terms, dis-
tinguish our definitions from previous conceptualizations, and place them in
the context of extant research. In the third section, the heart of the review,
we explore the self-reinforcing nature of social hierarchies, focusing on the
consequences of high rank and low rank as mechanisms of hierarchy rein-
forcement; here we describe a range of findings that demonstrate that power
and status activate and accentuate a number of psychological and interper-
sonal processes that serve to maintain hierarchies. We then acknowledge in
the fourth section that there are countervailing forces and conditions under
which hierarchies can become unstable and eventually undergo change. In
the fifth and final section, we conclude by encouraging scholars of manage-
ment and organizations to pursue answers to some important, though com-
plicated, research questions.
The Types and Functions of Social Hierarchy
We begin this section by providing a definition of social hierarchy to lay the
theoretical groundwork for the remainder of the review. We then discuss the
types of hierarchy, formal and informal, that are typically found in organiza-
tions. As one way of explaining the prevalence of hierarchy, we then outline
two functions that hierarchy serves: (a) establishing order and facilitating
coordination; and (b) motivating individuals.
In constructing our definition of social hierarchy, we reviewed research on
power (e.g., Emerson, 1962; Pfeffer, 1992), status (e.g., Berger, Rosenholtz, &
Zelditch, 1980; Podolny, 2005), inequality (e.g., Baron & Pfeffer, 1994; Marx,
1844/1964), stratification (e.g., Baron, 1984; Stinchcombe, 1986), social struc-
ture (e.g., Burt, 1992; Weber, 1946), social exchange (e.g., Blau, 1964; Flynn,
2005), influence (e.g., Brass, 1984; Cialdini, 1993), authority (e.g., Etzioni,
1959; Weber, 1946), and hierarchy (e.g., Laumann, Siegel, & Hodge, 1970;
Tannenbaum et al., 1974); and research on human groups, organizations, and
societies as well as non-human primate groups (e.g., Sapolsky, 2005). We
were surprised by how many of these works took the meaning of hierarchy as
given and how few of them explicitly defined hierarchy or even directly
addressed it. Across these varied research enterprises, however, we inferred
widespread agreement about the necessary and sufficient components of
social hierarchy.
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Definition of Social Hierarchy
Social hierarchy is an implicit or explicit rank order of individuals or groups
with respect to a valued social dimension. We use the words
implicit
and
explicit
to capture the range of awareness that people have of the hierarchies in
which they are embedded. Hierarchies can be delineated by rules and consen-
sually agreed upon, or they can be subjectively understood and taken for
granted. We use the phrase
rank order
to indicate that at least one individual
or group must be subordinate to at least one other individual or group (Blau &
Scott, 1962). We use the phrase
valued social dimension
because there must be
some specification and understanding of the dimension along which people
are rank ordered, that dimension must have subjective value to the individuals
or groups, with higher rank possessing more of the valued dimension than
lower rank. One important implication of this definition is that there could be
multiple valued dimensions in play at any one time, and context will deter-
mine which dimension is most relevant for hierarchical differentiation at any
given moment.
To arrive at a hierarchical form of social relations, members of social
groups must either engage in creating a formal system with rank-ordered roles
or take part in a process of informal interaction where rank ordering of
individuals or groups organically develops on at least one valued social
dimension. Regardless of how it takes shape, we call this process
hierarchical
differentiation
, and next we articulate how it results in formal and informal
hierarchies in groups and organizations.
Formal hierarchy.
As groups and organizations grow, and their work
becomes more complex, they tend to increase the formalization of their hier-
archies. The signs of hierarchy formalization include job titles, reporting
structures, and organization charts. The organization chart, for example, is
simply a visual representation of the hierarchically differentiated structure of
roles; it typically depicts a relatively small top management team, at least one
layer of middle management, and a large number of lower-level employees
responsible either for day-to-day operations or for the support of manage-
ment (Mintzberg, 1979). Within the boundaries of the organization, greater
value inheres in positions of higher formal rank. Although the sources of value
that increase from low to high rank are not always explicit, they include
control over resources (critical to our definition of power to follow) and defer-
ence from subordinates (critical to our definition of status to follow). There is
also a presumption that, if effective human resource procedures are in place,
individuals of higher rank possess a greater combination of skills, ability, and
motivation to accomplish the work of the organization than do lower-ranking
individuals, giving the formal hierarchy a high degree of legitimacy to its
members. The sorting of individuals into appropriate roles and ranks,
however, is a dynamic problem. As individuals gain experience, the allocation
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355
and matching of people to positions needs to be adjusted. Despite this fluid
nature, with some people entering and some departing the organization, some
moving laterally, and others being promoted to higher ranks, the hierarchi-
cally differentiated structure itself outlasts these changes. This is one sense in
which we argue that hierarchy is stable. Once set up, formal hierarchies tend
to be relatively inert because it is costly to change their structure.
Informal hierarchy.
Hierarchy is not only established formally but also
develops informally in groups (Blau & Scott, 1962). Indeed, a large body of
research studying small groups demonstrates that informal hierarchical differ-
entiation within groups tends to develop spontaneously and rapidly (e.g.,
Anderson, John, Keltner, & Kring, 2001; Bales, Strodtbeck, Mills, & Rosebor-
ough, 1951; Berger et al., 1980; Eagly & Karau, 1991; Hollander, 1985; Schmid
Mast, 2002). One reason for this incipient hierarchical differentiation is that
individuals form inferences and make judgments of others’ competence and
power based on only seconds of observation (Ambady & Rosenthal, 1993;
Magee, in press; Todorov, Mandisodza, Goren, & Hall, 2005). Therefore,
differences in task participation, which emerge within minutes of interaction
(Fisek & Ofshe, 1970), can produce hierarchical differentiation that shapes the
entire group experience. There also tends to be high agreement between group
members about the rank of each individual (e.g., Schmid Mast & Hall, 2004),
suggesting that the process of hierarchical differentiation is meaningful to
group members, even when the rank ordering is based on a feature as subtle as
nonverbal behavior (for a review, see Hall, Coats, & LeBeau, 2005).
Although hierarchy tends to develop across individuals in social groups
and organizations, the basis for informal hierarchical differentiation varies
widely. As soon as one dimension—a characteristic or a resource—is judged
more important in a group or organization, individuals will naturally and
spontaneously differentiate hierarchically along that dimension. Hogg (2001)
describes this process as one in which individuals achieve higher rank in a
group to the extent that they represent the defining (i.e., prototypical) features
of that group. Numerous examples highlight how the particular dimension of
differentiation varies by group or organization. For example, conscientious-
ness predicts hierarchical rank better than extraversion in task-oriented
organizations, such as an engineering firm, but extraversion predicts rank in
more socially-oriented organizations, such as a consulting firm (Anderson,
Spataro, & Flynn, 2008) Similarly, in groups that require little coordination
amongst their members, individuals with assertive speaking styles are con-
ferred more status than individuals with tentative speaking styles, but the
opposite is true for high-coordination groups (Fragale, 2006). Informal hier-
archy also emerges from stereotype-based expectations that individuals have
of others before they have had a chance to meet (Berger, Fisek, Norman, &
Zelditch, 1977; Ridgeway & Berger, 1986). Race, ethnicity, gender, and class,
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for example, have widespread value connotations, which permeate social
interactions among group members and emerge as significant dimensions of
within-group hierarchical differentiation (Berger et al., 1977; Berger &
Zelditch 1985; Ridgeway, 1991; Ridgeway, Boyle, Kuipers, & Robinson, 1998).
The distinction between formal and informal hierarchy provides the
backdrop for an important way in which individuals work within multiple,
simultaneous hierarchies. We will revisit the notion that individuals typically
belong to multiple hierarchies in the final section of the review, but until
then our framework is designed to apply primarily to informal hierarchy and
its interrelationship with formal hierarchy in organizations.
The Functions of Social Hierarchy in Organizations
The pervasiveness of hierarchy suggests that it serves important social and
organizational functions. Although a functional account is not necessary to
explain some aspects of hierarchy, we argue that, by identifying the functions
that hierarchy serves, one may be able to explain not only a wide range of hier-
archical features but also the genesis of those features and the many forces that
sustain them. Further, a functional account explains why hierarchy exists not
only when collectives encourage differentiation, but also when they explicitly
believe in trying to suppress it. In articulating functions of hierarchy, we note
that hierarchies also can, and do, have unintended and dysfunctional conse-
quences (Leavitt, 2005). For example, hierarchy creates conditions of compli-
ance that can institutionalize amoral reasoning and corruption (Brief, Buttram,
& Dukerich, 2001; Kelman & Hamilton, 1989). We also do not mean to suggest
that theories of hierarchy focusing on domination, conflict, or identity, in
contrast to our functional account, are not helpful in explaining many
phenomena in groups and organizations, such as whose interests have priority
and when the hierarchical order is challenged (Bachrach & Baratz, 1962;
Gaventa, 1980; Hardy & Clegg, 1999; Lukes, 1974; Marx, 1844/1964; Simon &
Oakes, 2006; Weber, 1946). Rather, we find that the functions that we discuss
are broadly appealing, especially for task-oriented groups and organizations, in
trying to explain why hierarchy exists regardless of whose interests dominate
and why the
status quo
order is not challenged more often.
We discuss two functions of social hierarchy in organizations for which we
found evidence across a range of literatures related to organizations. We imag-
ine that there are other functions in addition to the ones that we describe, but
those that we describe are particularly important within groups and organiza-
tions. First, hierarchy establishes social order and facilitates social coordination.
Hierarchical order is appealing psychologically because it helps resolve
individual needs for stability, and organizationally because it is effective for the
coordination of activity. Second, hierarchy provides incentives for individuals
in groups and organizations. Individuals are motivated to obtain higher rank
to satisfy material self-interest and their need for control, and, in turn, this
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serves the organization’s interests as long as rank is determined by a dimension
that is related to organizational or group performance.
Social order and coordination.
Hierarchical arrangements provide solu-
tions to problems inherent in organizing collections of people working toward
a common goal. As a mechanism of social governance, hierarchy provides a
powerful antidote to uncertainty and chaos (Durkheim 1893/1997; Hogg,
2001; Marx, 1844/1964; Parsons, 1961). By providing social order, hierarchy
helps fulfill an important cluster of human needs characterized by the desire
for order, structure, and stability (e.g., Frenkel-Brunswik, 1949; Neuberg &
Newsom, 1993; Sorrentino & Roney, 1986). Although hierarchy is psychologi-
cally appealing because it establishes order, this does not explain why hierarchy
is
more
appealing than other forms of social relations. After all, egalitarian,
balanced social structures can provide order as well (Heider, 1958; Krackhardt
& Kilduff, 1999). The reason that people prefer hierarchical order, as opposed
to other types of order, is that hierarchy is particularly effective at facilitating
coordination within social groups.
As a mechanism of coordination, hierarchy provides clear lines of direction
and deference that maximize the coordination of action for many kinds of
tasks, especially in comparison to more egalitarian structures. Weber’s (1946)
description of bureaucracy suggests that hierarchy is a functional response to
work in the modern world. Bureaucracies divide labor amongst employees
(Stinchcombe, 1974), with each specialized role in the division of labor con-
nected through hierarchical relations. These hierarchically differentiated roles
prescribe behavior both for superiors and subordinates (Biggart & Hamilton,
1984; Dornbusch & Scott, 1975), and these role prescriptions facilitate coordi-
nated action. When roles and hierarchical relations are not clear, work tends
to become confusing, inefficient, and frustrating, and, thus, coordination suf-
fers (Greer & Caruso, 2007; Overbeck, Correll, & Park, 2005). In fact, even
when the average task-related ability is high, but clear differentiation is absent
(i.e., when a group is composed of many stars), the coordination aspect of hier-
archy is disrupted, making groups less effective and less efficient (Groysberg,
Polzer, & Elfenbein, 2007).
Not only does some degree of hierarchy increase group performance, but
also hierarchical differentiation between people fosters more satisfying work-
ing relationships. Research on the dominance–submissiveness (i.e., control/
agency) dimension of social relationships (Wiggins, Trapnell, & Phillips, 1988)
illustrates that in task-related contexts individuals prefer to coordinate with
each other when one individual is dominant and the other is submissive
(Tiedens & Fragale, 2003; Tiedens, Unzueta, & Young, 2007). Dominance and
submissiveness are complementary in that dominant behavior reciprocated
by submissive behavior facilitates social coordination (Tiedens, Chow, &
Unzueta, 2007). It is perhaps surprising that submissive individuals actually
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prefer dominant work partners to similarly submissive partners, but consider
how dominant and submissive interpersonal behavior might begin to clarify
roles and facilitate coordination in task contexts. A dominant individual
directs submissive individuals, helping crystallize who does what and assisting
in the group’s progress toward its goal.
Individual incentives.
Hierarchy also serves a motivational function,
providing incentives for individuals to try to ascend to higher positions in
their groups and organizations because higher rank affords greater material
and psychological rewards and comfort (Tannenbaum et al., 1974). Not only
does hierarchy provide order and stability, but also achieving high rank brings
greater opportunity than low rank to satisfy another set of desires that could
be described as control-related needs—autonomy (Deci & Ryan, 1987; Porter,
1962), internal control (Rotter, 1966), and power (McClelland, 1975; Winter,
1973).
The motivational function of hierarchy generally benefits organizations.
Weber (1946) discussed how bureaucratic organizations provide career ladders
to their employees by offering opportunities for promotion to successive for-
mal hierarchical levels over time. Research on these career ladders, or internal
labor markets, highlights that the prospect of achieving higher rank provides
an incentive for people of lower rank to increase their effort toward accom-
plishing organizational goals (e.g., Baron, Davis-Blake, & Bielby, 1986; Pfeffer
& Cohen, 1984). Thus, when the rationale for promoting people from lower
rank to higher rank is closely coupled with organizational goals, individual self-
interest is aligned with organizational interest, and the motivational effects of
formal hierarchy benefit the organization.
Summary
The above review demonstrates that social hierarchy is prevalent and serves
two basic functions. Hierarchy provides a psychologically appealing kind of
order that clarifies roles and facilitates coordination. The structure of hierar-
chy also provides opportunities for individuals to achieve higher rank, which
is more rewarding than lower rank for most people. Thus, hierarchy offers
individual incentives, and if these incentives are aligned with the goals of the
organization, the organization realizes benefits from this motivational func-
tion. By understanding these functions of hierarchy, it becomes clear why
hierarchy has emerged as a dominant mode of social relations: it helps groups
and organizations survive and prosper.
The Bases of Social Hierarchy: Status and Power
In this section, we define status and power as the two most important bases of
social hierarchy (Blau, 1964; Mannix & Sauer, 2006; Thye, 2000) and discuss
the conceptual roots of our definitions by connecting them to previous
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definitions and theory. A status hierarchy is characterized by a rank ordering
of individuals or groups according to the amount of respect accorded by
others. In a power hierarchy, individuals are rank ordered with respect to the
amount of resources each controls. Our definitions of power and status are
designed to be sweeping in their coverage of hierarchical relations so that
they can be used to investigate hierarchical dynamics of all kinds. We inten-
tionally leave out of these definitions a number of variables that have some-
times been conflated in previous conceptualizations of status and power (e.g.,
influence), and we discuss each of these variables in detail. We do not mean
to suggest that these variables are not related to social hierarchy or that they
are not of substantive interest, rather that they must be treated separately to
understand the true, and potentially most interesting, effects of status and
power.
Definition of Social Status
We define
social status
as the extent to which an individual or group is
respected or admired by others (e.g., Ridgeway & Walker, 1995). Like all bases
of hierarchy, status can be either an intragroup or an intergroup phenome-
non. Individuals within a social group can be arrayed according to the amount
of respect they receive from other group members, and social groups can be
arrayed according to the respect that members of other social groups have for
them. It is important to note that status hierarchies are primarily subjective
(Blau, 1964; Foa, 1971; Goldhamer & Shils, 1939; Hollander, 1958; Podolny,
1993); however, there tends to be a high degree of consensus about individu-
als’ and groups’ positions in status hierarchies (Anderson, Srivastava, Beer,
Spataro, & Chatman, 2006; Devine, 1989).
Although this definition of status is consistent with research on hierarchical
differentiation in many kinds of groups, it is particularly useful for understand-
ing the development of hierarchy in task-oriented groups and organizations,
where respect forms around judgments of expertise and competence among its
members. Information about an individual’s expertise or competence can come
from direct or observed interpersonal interaction (Berger et al. 1977; Berger &
Zelditch 1985; Blau, 1964; Ridgeway, 1991; Ridgeway et al., 1998), from a
stereotype (e.g., Cuddy, Fiske, & Glick, 2008), or from reputation (Anderson
& Shirako, 2008; Gould, 2002). Status hierarchies change only as people’s
respect for target individuals or groups changes. An individual or group might
achieve an important accomplishment, but if nobody notices or updates their
level of respect for the target individual or group, then the status hierarchy will
not be altered. Put another way, objective accomplishments are translated into
status only through subjective interpretations.
Connections to previous theory.
Our conception of status as a basis for
hierarchy is consistent with a number of theoretical definitions and empirical
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operationalizations of status among individuals in social groups (e.g., Anderson
et al., 2001; Gould, 2002) and organizations in industries (e.g., Podolny, 1993).
In understanding status as a basis of hierarchical differentiation, we are partic-
ularly influenced by the expectation states program of research (Berger, Cohen,
& Zelditch, 1972; Berger & Zelditch 1985) and status characteristics theory
(Berger et al., 1977), which have contributed immensely to the articulation of
how status develops in small groups. These connected areas of research have
found that status emerges from expectations that individuals have for their own
and each others’ performance. These performance expectations can be based
on past task performance, or on various professional and demographic quali-
ties, so-called “status characteristics”, which exist prior to any interaction.
Individuals’ status characteristics may bear some relationship to their ability to
make valuable contributions to a group’s tasks (e.g., education, functional back-
ground), or they may be only loosely related at best to their ability to contribute
effectively (e.g., race, gender). Crucial to understanding the self-reinforcing
nature of status hierarchies, all of these characteristics contribute to the status
conferral process in organizations (Bunderson, 2003).
Differences from previous definitions and theory.
Although there is rather
widespread agreement across fields about the meaning of social status, we
think that some previous definitions have been unnecessarily complicated by
two related concepts: attention and influence. Anderson et al. (2001) argue
that status is multi-dimensional and that one important dimension is differen-
tial
attention
(or prominence), with low-status individuals paying more atten-
tion to high-status individuals than
vice versa
.
Influence
has also been
described as a dimension of status (Anderson et al., 2001; Berger et al., 1977;
Ridgeway & Correll, 2006). For example, in their study of the personality
predictors of social status, Anderson et al. (2001) asked group members to rate
each other on their visibility and influence in the group, and Ridgeway and
Correll (2006) measured perceptions of influence as well as whether individu-
als’ choices conformed to the opinions expressed by another group member.
Although attention and influence are certainly related to status, we think it is
worth treating them separately. Under some circumstances, such as when they
are solo or token minorities in organizations, low-status actors receive an
abundance of attention (Kanter, 1977). Furthermore, attention and the related
process of person perception are more basic phenomena than status, and
influence is a downstream effect of status. Particularly in trying to pin down
the origins and reinforcement processes of status hierarchies—two historic
and contemporary burning issues in the field of sociology—separating these
concepts offers an opportunity to achieve conceptual clarity. Are some actors
accorded more respect in part because they have received more attention? Or
do actors with more status receive more attention, and does this attention, in
turn, open the door for them to exert more influence? These are just two
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important questions that are difficult to answer with conceptualizations that
conflate attention and influence with status.
We turn next to a more contested basis of hierarchy, social power. As we
have done for status, we will define power and then disentangle related defini-
tions and theories to help provide conceptual and operational clarity. Along
the way, we will attempt to deal with the distinction between status and power,
pointing out where we think past research might have confused the two.
Definition of Social Power
We define
social power
as asymmetric control over valued resources in social
relations (Blau, 1964, 1977; Dépret & Fiske, 1993; Keltner, Gruenfeld, &
Anderson, 2003; Pfeffer and Salancik, 1978; Thibaut & Kelley, 1959). We use
the word
asymmetric
and define power as existing in
social relations
because
those features capture the relative state of dependence between two or more
parties (individuals or groups) (Emerson, 1962). The low-power party is
dependent upon the high-power party to obtain rewards and avoid punish-
ments (Emerson, 1962). The high-power party, in contrast, is less dependent
on the low-power party. However, to the extent that the low-power party can
access the resources in an alternative relationship (i.e., the high-power party is
substitutable), the high-power party has less power (Blau, 1964). We use the
term
valued
because the resource must be important or consequential to at
least one of the two parties. As in our definition of social hierarchy, value is
subjectively determined. For example, in organizations, a manager who has
discretion to assign employees to a high-profile project only has power over
those employees who want to be part of that project. These
resources
also can
have a positive or negative value. Positively valued resources include rewards
and any resource that one would want more of. Negatively valued resources
include punishments and any resource that one would want less of. Thus, an
individual may have power because he or she possesses or has access to a posi-
tively valued resource and/or the capacity to distribute a negatively valued
resource, such as undesirable tasks or hazardous waste, to others. Similarly,
the powerful may be able to withhold or provide positive resources to others
(Pfeffer & Salancik, 1978), or they may be able to take away or administer
negative resources. In our framework of social hierarchy, we define power as
more objective than status. Once one understands the sources of value for
each party—the resources that are experienced as benefits and burdens—one
can measure each party’s power.
A number of examples illustrate that parties’ relative position of power
depends critically on the specific resource. A government institution can have
control over whether legitimacy (a valued resource) is conferred upon a finan-
cial company, but, over time, the financial company can also have power over
the government via lobbying and campaign contributions. A manufacturing
company can have power over its suppliers, but that same company can
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become dependent on the supplier if that supplier develops a monopoly. A
community organization can have power over a real estate developer and
vice
versa
. And some sources of power are only loosely correlated with, indepen-
dent of, or in conflict with the formal hierarchy, leading formally low-ranking
members to hold more power than their position would suggest (Mechanic,
1962). A supervisor can control a subordinate’s career advancement, but a
subordinate can have technical expertise on which her supervisor depends.
Employees that are responsible for critical and non-substitutable core proce-
dures can hold power over middle managers, whose performance depends on
the successful completion of various procedures by their employees (Kotter,
1977).
Connections to previous theory.
Our definition of power fits neatly into
the lineage of research on power. Some of French and Raven’s (1959) bases of
power—reward, coercive, information, and expert power—relate directly to
control over valued resources. Two exceptions—legitimate power and referent
power—are worth discussing in more detail. In our framework, we conceptu-
alize the legitimacy of one’s power as a separate variable, independent of
actual power; however, we agree with French and Raven (1959) that in organi-
zations, position in the formal hierarchy is a standard source of legitimacy.
Formal position can be a source of not only power but also status. To the
extent that one’s formal position provides control over resources that others
care about, one has power. To the extent that one’s formal position garners
respect in the eyes of others, one has status. Referent power, or the extent to
which others want to associate with an individual, overlaps more with our
definition of status than with our definition of power.
Resource dependence theory (Pfeffer & Salancik, 1978), which emerged
from insights on power by Emerson (1962) and Hickson, Hinings, Lee,
Schneck, and Pennings (1971), is also consistent with our definition of power.
This theory states that power resides among a set of interdependent subunits
or organizations that exchange resources with each other. The value of the
resources that a subunit/organization controls and the extent to which those
resources can be obtained elsewhere (i.e., the subunit/organization’s substitut-
ability in the exchange relationship) determine the terms of exchange, and
thus the power in relation to other subunits/organizations. If the value that a
subunit/organization provides can be replaced (i.e., substituted), then there is
little dependence on that subunit/organization, which consequently has little
power in that social relationship.
Differences from previous definitions and theory.
Our definition of power,
though consistent with many, does not include three concepts that have been
layered on other definitions and operationalizations of power: influence, resis-
tance, and conflict (for similar distinctions, see Fiske & Berdahl, 2007). These
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concepts are just as important as power, but they tend to be downstream
consequences of power and should be treated as such in causal models. For
empirical and theoretical reasons, power should not be equated to the
capacity
to influence
, as power has been defined before (Cartwright, 1965; French &
Raven, 1959). Empirically, measuring “capacity to influence” appears intracta-
ble because one cannot measure “capacity” without actually measuring the
outcome (in this case, influence).
Power does not require behavior of any kind by either party as has been
required by some previous definitions (Dahl, 1957; Russell, 1938; Weber,
1914/1978): the high-power party does not need to
influence
the low-power
party, and the low-power party does not need to
resist
the high-power party
for power to operate in social relations. Defining power as influence conflates
the independent with the dependent variable and amounts to tautology
(Simon, 1953). We agree that power, influence, and resistance are related in
that power is a social force (Lewin, 1951/1997) that can bring about acts of
influence and corresponding resistance; however, we think there are impor-
tant conceptual and theoretical reasons to separate these constructs. Power,
influence, and resistance are conceptually distinct and potentially, but not
necessarily, related through a causal path. However, the direction of this
causal path is not even clear. Power can lead to influence attempts, which can
meet resistance; alternatively, influence attempts that overcome resistance can
lead to resource acquisition and thus increase power. Another crucial issue is
moderation of the relationship between power and influence. That is, what are
the conditions under which power does not lead to successful influence and
the conditions under which resistance by the low-power party is effective?
Research that conflates power and influence cannot analyze these conditions.
If influence and resistance are not necessary components of the definition
of power, then
conflict
cannot be a requirement either (Brass, 2005). Although
power has typically been studied in competitive environments where parties
have conflicting interests, power as we define it does not necessarily produce
conflict or derive from it (see Bachrach & Baratz, 1962; Lukes, 1974). Theoret-
ically, resources can be exchanged or provided free of conflict, and, in this
way, power can facilitate coordination and task performance as well as coop-
eration and charitable behavior (Galinsky, Gruenfeld, & Magee, 2003). Once
again, our theoretical interest is in simplifying the definition of power, which
will be crucial to uncovering moderators of the downstream effects of power.
The conditions under which power does not produce, and even reduces,
conflict are surely of interest to scholars of conflict and power alike.
The Differences and Relationships between Power and Status
Power and status are related but distinct constructs. They are related in that
both are relational variables that are bases of hierarchical differentiation. They
are distinct in that power is based in resources, which belong to an actor,
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whereas status exists entirely in the eyes of others; conferred by them. Power,
more than status, therefore, is a property of the actor. Status, more than
power, is a property of co-actors and observers.
Power and status can be causally related and mutually reinforcing: power
can lead to status, and status can lead to power. Going from power to status,
powerful individuals also have high status if and only if respect is conferred on
them for having asymmetric control over valued resources. These sources of
power that inspire respect can then translate to the granting of status outside
the province of the specific resource or context. Status can also lead to the acqui-
sition of power via two routes. First, individuals who are respected are often
entrusted with valued resources. For example, an employee who is perceived
as competent could be given control over a budget. Thus, status can lead to the
explicit granting of power. Second, whatever resources a high-status individual
possesses often take on greater value through their simple association with a
highly respected individual. Thus, high-status individuals can accrue power
both by accumulating more resources and also by an increase in the value of
the resources over which they already have control (Thye, 2000).
Although power often begets status, and status can turn into power, there
are times when one has status without power or power in the absence of sta-
tus. In organizations, we expect that the former case is more difficult for
actors to cope with, and the latter case is more distressing for observers. Indi-
viduals with a great deal of status but little power are likely to run into some
difficulty in exchange-oriented contexts (e.g., negotiations) in which the value
of one’s resources are more important than the extent to which one is
respected. In contrast, those with high power but low status might be seen as
undeserving of their power and judged harshly because their position in the
hierarchy appears illegitimate. The relationship between status and power can
be understood not just through analysis of ascendance to high status or the
acquisition of resources but also through thinking about how status and
power are lost (which we describe in more detail in the fourth section of the
review). The implications for actors with high status and high power are clear:
if they abuse their power, their respect will decrease as will the trust others
have in those individuals that control important resources. Similarly, when
one loses access to or control over important resources, respect for the person
might diminish.
Summary
Social hierarchy exists as long as there is differentiation across individuals or
groups on any valued dimension. In sorting through the history of research on
hierarchy, our analysis has revealed a focus on status and power as the
primary dimensions of hierarchical differentiation, even if those terms were
not always used. We hope that our framework is useful for researchers and
that our definitions orient future research at any level of analysis. Although we
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have explicitly laid out where our definitions of power and status diverge from
previous conceptualizations, we have tried to be theoretically consistent with a
large body of prior work conducted at multiple levels of analysis. In compar-
ing our definitions with this prior research, we found remarkable consistency
in the research on status and a relative lack of consensus around the meaning
of power and how it is measured. This lack of clarity might have prevented
some researchers in each area, including us, from seeing the connections
between each others’ work and how their work fits into a broader story about
social hierarchy.
The Self-Reinforcing Nature of Power and Status
Organizational researchers have cast a wide net in their work on how hierar-
chical rank predicts cognitive, motivational, and behavioral variables at the
individual level, such as the job satisfaction (Porter, 1962), support for the
organization (Tannenbaum et al., 1974), goal setting (Mintzberg, 1983), and
the use of influence strategies in relationships (Kipnis, Schmidt, & Wilkinson,
1980; Kotter, 1977). A review of this vast literature is outside the scope of this
review. Instead, we put the spotlight on mechanisms of hierarchy mainte-
nance; in particular, we focus on the processes emerging from power and
status that are self-reinforcing. Does the way that power-holders process
information, approach goals, and make decisions help them to maintain or
even increase their control over resources? How does the experience of power
color social perception? Once status has been conferred upon certain people
or groups and not on others, how does this status differentiation affect both
task performance itself and evaluations of the work that high and low status
individuals subsequently produce? And how does status affect who is selected
for opportunities for advancement in organizations?
As our review will show, once a hierarchy gets established, a number of
organizational and psychological processes conspire to create different
degrees of opportunity to maintain and even acquire more power and status.
We argue that these processes affect all members of a given hierarchy in ways
that perpetuate the established order. Although low-ranking members are
disadvantaged relative to high-ranking members, many of the functions of
hierarchy that we have described provide motivation for even low-ranking
members to invest in its continuation. The tendency for hierarchy to satisfy
individual needs for order and stability, for example, provide some justifica-
tion for all members of the hierarchy, regardless of rank within it, to reinforce
and increase the stability of a hierarchy. We are neither the first to make such
a claim (see, for example, Jost & Banaji, 1994; Marx, 1844/1964) nor trying to
suggest that low-ranking individuals always conspire to reinforce hierarchy.
We are simply highlighting an interesting facet of hierarchy: even those indi-
viduals and groups who stand the most to gain by disrupting hierarchy have
some reason to forego any attempt to change the existing rank order.
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We have organized this section around three mechanisms that help
reinforce hierarchical arrangements: the effects of power on psychological
processes, how expectations reinforce status hierarchies, and hierarchy-
enhancing belief systems. Each of these forces supports hierarchical differen-
tiation and makes it difficult for people to challenge the
status quo
once
hierarchy has been established.
How the Psychology of Power Reinforces Hierarchies
Power has long been suspected of transforming how people act and live their
lives (Russell, 1938). Indeed, an exploding body of recent research has
confirmed that power, as one of the two most important bases of hierarchy,
fundamentally transforms how an individual construes and approaches the
world. The notion that power originates and is defined in social relations, but
that it transforms basic psychological processes, is crucial to understanding
the implications of rank shaping social life and the role it plays in the
reinforcement of hierarchy. Kipnis (1976; see also Kipnis, Castell, Gergen, &
Mauch, 1976) was one of the first to argue that power has metamorphic
consequences, leading those with high power to roam in a very different
psychological space than those with low power. In an organizational simula-
tion, for example, Kipnis (1972) found that most high-power supervisors
wanted to maintain psychological distance from their subordinates, whereas
low-power supervisors typically wanted to create a social bond with their
subordinates.
Keltner et al. (2003) reviewed the vast literature on power and came to the
same conclusion that Kipnis reached: possessing or lacking power fundamen-
tally transforms individuals’ psychological states. They argued that possessing
power affects the relative activation of two complementary neurobiological
systems—the behavioral approach and inhibition systems—which combine to
drive behavior and cognition. In particular, their Power-Approach Theory
(Keltner et al., 2003) claims that possessing power increases the tendency to
focus on and approach attractive aspects of situations. This theory is based on
two features of power dynamics. First, elevated power is associated with
increased access to rewards. Second, power-holders encounter less interfer-
ence from others when pursuing those rewards. For complementary reasons,
low-power individuals are subject to more social and material threats,
especially the threat of losing favor among higher-ranking individuals, and
they are acutely aware of the constraints that these threats place upon their
behavior (Keltner et al., 2003). These reward/threat asymmetries for individu-
als in power relations lead high-power individuals to possess a primary
“approach” response and low-power individuals to have a primary “inhibit”
response in their cognition and behavior. Whereas the powerful see mostly
opportunity dancing in front of them, the powerless are more likely to see
potential hazards lurking about.
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This power-induced transformation of psychological processes partially
occurs because rank in a power hierarchy determines the type and strength of
pressures that some individuals impose and others face. Social psychological
studies of obedience to authority and conformity (Guinote, Judd, & Brauer,
2002; Hollander, 1958; Jetten, Hornsey, & Adarves-Yorno, 2006; Milgram,
1974; Zimbardo, Haney, Banks, & Jaffe, 1975) set the stage for how different
positions in social hierarchies create different situational pressures on behavior.
People in positions of power are able to set agendas, norms for discussion, rules
for behavior, and standards for thought and opinion, all of which constrain the
psychological freedom experienced by individuals lower in the hierarchy and
help maintain the current power hierarchy. Low-power individuals obey the
explicit demands of high-power individuals (Milgram, 1974) and are also easily
influenced by their more subtle attempts at persuasion (Petty & Cacioppo,
1986). In contrast, high-power individuals are free to engage in a wide range
of behaviors and display greater interpersonal variability than those in positions
of low power (Guinote et al., 2002). The world of those who have little power
is filled with real and psychological shackles, whereas possessing power is often
equated with freedom (Hollander, 1958).
We next turn our attention to empirical research on how power transforms
psychological states and behavior. Before beginning that review, it is impor-
tant to note the methods that have been used to study the psychological effects
of power. Numerous studies have measured power using hierarchical rank in
an organization (e.g., Finkelstein, 1992; Hambrick, 1981), resource control
(e.g., Burt, 1992; Pfeffer & Salancik, 1978), or asking people to report how
much power they subjectively feel (Anderson & Berdahl, 2002). These studies
have gone a long way toward demonstrating the relationships between power
and a variety of important variables; however, because they are often correla-
tional in nature, the causal role of power has been unclear.
To pinpoint this causal role more effectively, some research on power in the
last decade has relied on experimental paradigms conducted predominantly in
laboratory settings. These studies have used a variety of methods to manipu-
late power. One manipulation involves giving participants differential control
over important resources or allows some participants to direct and evaluate
other participants during a group task (e.g., Anderson & Berdahl, 2002). This
type of manipulation attempts to approximate the experience of power in the
real world. A second manipulation, created by Galinsky and colleagues (2003),
asks participants to recall a situation in which they either possessed power
over someone else or someone else possessed power over them. This experien-
tial priming procedure—remembering a personally relevant experience with
power—allows researchers to prime power in a way that is meaningful to
participants. Because power is such a central feature of social life, people are
able to describe themselves in terms of power relations very easily (Galinsky
et al., 2003). A third manipulation is designed to simply activate power at a
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conceptual level in participants’ minds and typically involves asking partici-
pants to fill out incomplete words related to power (e.g., “P O W _ _” is com-
pleted as “P O W E R”) (e.g., Chen, Lee-Chai, & Bargh, 2001). This priming
task activates the concept of power non-consciously and removes participants’
idiosyncratic personal experiences with power from the equation.
What is remarkable about these different methods is that, regardless of the
manipulation of power, the same basic effects of power tend to emerge.
Ultimately, this research suggests that power not only resides within social
relationships, as a basis of hierarchy, but also that the concept of power is
embedded within individuals’ minds (Bargh, Raymond, Pryor, & Strack, 1995;
Chen et al., 2001; Galinsky et al., 2003). As a result, the tendencies associated
with different levels of power are stored in memory, available for activation
whenever one’s power is made salient in a given situation. The following
review relies heavily on the assumption that the empirical evidence using
these methods reflects the way that power operates in organizations.
Group participation and influence.
One way to demonstrate how different
levels of power affect behavior is by looking at group participation and attitude
expression. Power is positively associated with speaking time and speaking out
of turn (Brown & Levinson, 1987; DePaulo & Friedman, 1998). Similarly, those
with greater power are more likely to express their private opinions and true
attitudes (Anderson & Berdahl, 2002; Berdahl & Martorana, 2006; Briñol,
Petty, Valle, Rucker, & Becerra, 2007; Galinsky, Magee, Gruenfeld, Whitson, &
Liljenquist, in press). For example, high-power individuals are more likely than
those without power to openly express their opinions during a group discus-
sion (Anderson & Berdahl, 2002; Berdahl & Martorana, 2006), and they are
unfazed by the expressed attitudes or persuasion attempts of others (Briñol
et al., 2007; Galinsky et al., in press). In contrast, low-power individuals’ own
attitudes and opinions are shaped by their high-power counterparts. Even
when subordinates try to engage in overt acts of upward influence to improve
their own situation and thus reduce the gap in power, they are likely to feel that
their voice has fallen on deaf ears. This research makes clear that, in terms of
understanding whose thinking sets the tone in organizations and whose inter-
ests rule the day, the notion of hierarchical organizations as directed from the
“top down” (Leavitt, 2005) is accurate.
Confidence and action.
High-power individuals’ immunity to external
pressures on their attitudes is only one factor in hierarchy maintenance. Argu-
ably more important is evidence that high-power individuals tend to be more
optimistic, more confident about their choices, and more action-oriented
(Anderson & Galinsky, 2006; Briñol et al., 2007; Galinsky et al., 2003). When
there are inhibiting forces in the environment, power-holders act as if those
forces were invisible (Galinsky et al., in press) and take more goal-directed
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action (Galinsky et al., 2003). In the upper echelons of organizations, this plays
out with more powerful CEOs leading their organizations through more
strategic change than less powerful CEOs (Greve & Mitsuhashi, 2007). In
bargaining contexts, those higher in power are also more likely to initiate a
negotiation and to make the first offer (Magee, Galinsky, & Gruenfeld, 2007).
Negotiating and making first offers have both been shown to lead reliably to the
accumulation of more resources and thus more power (e.g., Galinsky &
Mussweiler, 2001). For example, Babcock and Laschever (2003) found that
masters of business administration (MBA) students who negotiated their
starting salaries earned, on average, an additional $5000 in their first year on
the job. Although a $5000 difference may not seem like a huge sum, given a
conservative rate of 3% in both raises and interest, by age 60 those who chose
to negotiate would have $568,834 more! Magee et al. (2007) found that high-
power negotiators were more than twice as likely to make a first offer than were
their low-power counterparts and that making the first offer led to a distinct
bargaining advantage. We believe this is a broader phenomenon in organiza-
tions: the powerful often appropriate more resources for themselves thereby
reinforcing their hold on power. In other words, power begets more power
because the powerful directly capture additional resources for themselves.
High-power individuals are also more optimistic and confident than low-
power individuals (Anderson & Galinsky, 2006; Briñol et al., 2007). For
example, the powerful feel more optimistic about possibilities for career
advancement than do individuals without power (Anderson & Galinsky,
2006). These effects of power are important mechanisms of hierarchy main-
tenance because confidence and optimism are predictive of achievement and
success across a range of tasks (Bandura, 1977; Steele & Aronson, 1995;
Taylor and Brown, 1988). This increase in optimism also affects attraction to
risk, with high-power individuals showing greater risk preferences and mak-
ing riskier choices than low-power individuals (Anderson & Galinsky, 2006;
Maner, Gailliot, Butz, & Peruche, 2007).
Information processing and social perception.
Scholars of communication
in organization have repeatedly found that information tends to become
distorted as it travels from low-power employees up to senior managers
(Lee, 1993; Milliken, Morrison, & Hewlin, 2003). This research argues that
these distortions are due to characteristics of the low-power senders of
communication (Athanassiades, 1971). However, research on power and the
construal of information suggests a different explanation. Managers may
process information at a different level than their employees, extracting the
gist and abstracting away from the specific details (Trope and Lieberman,
2003; Vallacher & Wegner, 1987). In fact, laboratory experiments have
established a causal connection between power and abstract construal, with
high-power individuals generating more abstract representations of stimuli
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than low-power individuals (Smith & Trope, 2006). As a result, the powerful
focus less on the details and more on the “big picture”, the gist of informa-
tion (Smith & Trope, 2006; see also Guinote, 2007). These effects on infor-
mation processing have been replicated in the field as well. In an analysis of
quotations appearing in the media during the days after Hurricane Katrina
hit land, Milliken, Magee, Lam, and Menezes (2008) showed that high-power
individuals in the federal, state, and local governments described the events
in the Gulf Coast region of the USA in more abstract terms than did the less
powerful first responders or powerless victims. These differences in
construal and communication, Milliken et al. (2008) argue, might have
contributed to what appeared to be an ineffective and inefficient response to
a devastating disaster. Extrapolating from this research, power-holders’ high-
level, abstract construal of the world around them likely obscures the specific
interests of subordinates, which helps perpetuate the
status quo
hierarchical
arrangements. This power-induced abstraction can also be a mechanism of
hierarchy maintenance because people have a higher sense of their own
power when they think abstractly (Smith, Wigboldus, & Dijksterhuis, 2008).
Beyond the processing of information, power can also have dramatic
effects on social perception. Generally, power tends to reduce awareness of
others and their individuating features, unless those features are instrumental
for power-holders to accomplish their goals. In negotiations, high-power
parties typically respond less to their counterparts’ emotional displays than do
low-power parties (Van Kleef, De Dreu, Pietroni, & Manstead, 2006). In
another type of conflict—a debate over which books should be included in the
canon of English literature—tenured professors were less accurate in inter-
preting the views of their untenured opponents, but untenured professors did
not suffer the same deficits in accurately representing the views of the profes-
sors with tenure (Keltner & Robinson, 1997). In an experimental context,
Galinsky, Magee, Inesi, and Gruenfeld (2006) found that high-power individ-
uals are less likely to spontaneously adopt another’s visual perspective, less
likely to take another person’s background knowledge, and less accurate in
judging others’ facial expressions of emotion. That is, power affects the ten-
dency to appreciate what others see, think, and feel. Overbeck and Park
(2006) found that, when they were assigned goals related to achieving an effi-
cient workplace, the powerful recalled less correct information about their
subordinates and were less able to distinguish their unique characteristics.
These negative effects of power on perspective-taking and individuation are
important because perspective-taking reduces stereotyping and derogation
(Batson et al., 1997; Galinsky & Moskowitz, 2000), and the possession of
power has been associated with an increased reliance on stereotypes and the
derogation of subordinates (S. T. Fiske, 1993; Georgesen & Harris, 1998, 2000;
Goodwin, Gubin, Fiske, & Yzerbyt, 2000; but see also Overbeck & Park, 2001).
As we detail later, these processes of stereotyping and derogation by high-
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ranking individuals are instrumental in keeping subordinates in their place
and reinforcing the hierarchical order.
Despite these apparent deficits in social perception, high-power individuals
are especially attentive to those features of others that are instrumental for
accomplishing the power-holders’ goals. In particular, power-holders show
remarkable focus when attending to individuals who possess characteristics
that would be useful for the power-holder (Gruenfeld, Inesi, Magee, & Galinsky,
2008). Gruenfeld and colleagues (2008) describe this phenomenon as an asso-
ciation between power and objectification—the tendency to view others
through an instrumental lens, as a means to an end. As a result, the powerful
attend to and approach others only to the extent that they are useful, regardless
of their other human qualities (Gruenfeld et al., 2008). For example, when the
powerful are armed with achievement goals they focus on colleagues’ compe-
tence, but when they have sex on their mind they are more likely to seek attrac-
tive colleagues, even if those colleagues are only moderately competent (Bargh
et al., 1995; Gruenfeld et al., 2008).
The organizational consequences of this instrumental attention depend
partly on whether the power-holder is pursuing personal or organizational
goals. When the powerful are working to further the organization’s goals, they
are more effective at focusing on aspects of individuals that would help
accomplish those goals relative to individuals without power (Gruenfeld et al.,
2008, Experiment 2). In organizations, superiors are expected to use subordi-
nates to complete important tasks, and therefore the relationship between
power and instrumental focus can improve efficiency. When the powerful are
focused on their own personal goals, however, the organization’s interests can
be compromised. Regardless of whether the powerful are focused on their
personal goals or those of the organization, the relationship between power
and objectification can reinforce hierarchy. By increasing efficiency, the pow-
erful likely will be given disproportionate credit for the organization’s success
and thus granted more power. When they use others to achieve their personal
ambitions, they can increase their own access to important resources as well.
In this section we have articulated how possessing or lacking power funda-
mentally alters psychological processes. Through these processes, power
begets more power as individuals accumulate more valued resources. Status
also tends to beget more status but through different mechanisms, which we
describe next.
How Expectations Reinforce Status Hierarchies
In defining status as respect and admiration accorded by others to a target
individual, we have suggested that the basis of respect in organizations is
competence, or more precisely, judgments about a target individual’s compe-
tence. To the extent that judgments of competence, and thus status, are posi-
tively related to individuals’ actual contributions to the goals of the
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organization, an organization’s status hierarchy will be reinforced in a way
that is beneficial for the success of the organization. In brainstorming groups
at the design firm IDEO, for example, Sutton and Hargadon (1996) found that
employees who demonstrated the most technical competence were conferred
status by their peers for their contributions over time. As a result, these high-
performers were asked to contribute to, and helped IDEO successfully
complete, future projects. An issue for organizations, however, is that employ-
ees’ status can be inflated or deflated by factors that are not necessarily indica-
tive of true performance.
For a wide variety of reasons, people develop expectations of each others’
task performance, and these expectations have direct and indirect effects on
the amount of status they confer to colleagues. Performance expectations can
derive from an employee’s job title or position in the formal organizational
hierarchy, or from past task contributions. For example, there are expecta-
tions for the tasks that individuals in different roles should accomplish (Sande,
Ellard, & Ross, 1986) and for the types of emotions that people are expected to
express at different levels of the formal hierarchy (Tiedens, Ellsworth, &
Mesquita, 2000). Expectations can also emerge from stereotypes about demo-
graphic characteristics that are not predictive, in and of themselves, of perfor-
mance on the job (Berger et al., 1977; Fiske & Lee, 2008; Ridgeway & Berger,
1986). These stereotype-based performance expectations make it clear that,
although hierarchical rank can be determined in part by objective task perfor-
mance, it is also biased against members of demographic groups who are ste-
reotyped as incompetent in the domain in which they work (Cohen & Zhou,
1991).
Regardless of where these expectations emerge from, they drive a number
of important interpersonal processes including how high- versus low-status
individuals are evaluated on their performance (expectancy confirmation),
how others’ expectations can constrain and even determine the behavior of
high- and low-status individuals (behavioral confirmation), how individuals
whose behavior is inconsistent with expectations for someone of their status
are confronted with negative reactions (backlash), and how high-status indi-
viduals accrue more and better opportunities than low-status individuals
(opportunity accumulation). As we detail in the following sections, these four
processes contribute to reinforcing status hierarchies in organizations.
Expectancy confirmation.
Status hierarchies are self-reinforcing in part
because the status of an individual determines how others evaluate his or her
behavior. In a direct test of the effects of expectations on evaluations within a
formal hierarchy, Humphrey (1985) assigned participants to manager and
clerk roles in an organizational simulation and found that clerks rated manag-
ers as more competent than fellow clerks even though they knew the roles
were randomly assigned. Even without actually watching task interaction
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373
between supervisor and subordinate, observers tend to presume that supervi-
sors are more competent than subordinates (Sande et al., 1986).
Ratings of a target’s abilities and performance can also be affected by
stereotypes (for a review, see Roese & Sherman [2007]). Darley and Gross
(1983) found that observers who watched a young girl take a test thought that
she was smarter and achieved a higher score when they believed she was from
a higher than lower socioeconomic background, even though they saw the
same girl take the same test in both conditions. In their study, observers inter-
preted different levels of performance because they held different performance
expectations for people from different socioeconomic backgrounds. These
studies demonstrate that expectancies, whether determined by role or by
demographic background, provide observers with an interpretive frame
through which to process subsequent information and form impressions. In
work contexts, the most important stereotypes relate to competence, and if an
individual’s group is stereotyped as incompetent, his or her work will likely be
evaluated less positively than equivalent work produced by a member of a
group that is stereotyped as competent.
Behavioral confirmation.
Along with expectancy confirmation, the
process of behavioral confirmation contributes to the maintenance of
hierarchies. Social interaction can shape individuals’ behavior in a hierarchy-
reinforcing manner by guiding behavior so that it conforms to and becomes
consistent with status-based expectations. Once expectancies are formed,
people often treat targets in an expectancy-consistent manner and, as a result,
elicit expectancy-consistent responses from these targets, leading to the
unwitting fulfillment of those expectations. In the classic Pygmalion in the
classroom study (Rosenthal & Jacobson, 1968), teachers were led to believe
that some students would show dramatic intellectual growth during the
course of the year while others (who were equally capable) would not. By the
end of the year, those students that teachers expected to improve did in fact
improve: their average increase in IQ was twice as large as the increase in IQ
for the control group of students. Rosenthal and Jacobson hypothesized that
teachers’ expectancies contributed significantly to this difference; teachers
gave more attention and support to the students who they expected would
blossom, and this encouragement helped them develop more rapidly than the
control group. These Pygmalion effects translate to adults in organizations as
well. In military training programs, Eden and Shani (1982) have demonstrated
that instructors’ expectancies can elicit expectancy-consistent performance in
their trainees.
Similarly, demographic stereotypes lead to behavioral confirmation, with
performance increments for groups that are stereotyped as competent and
decrements for those stereotyped as incompetent. Word, Zanna, and Cooper
(1974) found that white interviewers treated black applicants with “colder”
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nonverbal behaviors (e.g. less eye contact, further interpersonal distance) and
asked them fewer grammatically correct questions compared with white
applicants. When white interviewers were trained to treat white applicants in
the same manner in which the black applicants had been treated, the perfor-
mance of white applicants suffered. These white applicants responded less
eloquently and confidently, making more grammatical errors themselves. In
this case, white interviewers only noticed the poor interview performance of
the black applicants and inferred that they must be less competent than the
white applicants, without noticing that it was their own distancing behaviors
and questions that contributed to the poor performance.
Not only do observers’ expectancies color their interpretations of targets’
performance and even shape their performance itself, but targets’ awareness
of observers’ expectations also create self-expectations that drive behavior.
Eden and Ravid (1982) demonstrated that supervisors’ expectancies shaped
subordinates’ expectancies of their own performance, which turned out to be
self-fulfilling (also see Eden, 1984, 1988). Similarly, targets of stereotyping are
often aware of what others think of them, and this awareness of stereotypes
about one’s group can cause them to see themselves through the stigmatizing
eyes of others (Ridgeway et al., 1998) and produce actual decrements in per-
formance. This performance-reduction phenomenon, labeled stereotype
threat by Steele and Aronson (1995), occurs when individuals are concerned
with being judged in terms of a negative performance-based stereotype about
their group in a particular context; the irony is that it is this concern with con-
firming a stereotype that produces the performance decrements, and, conse-
quently, confirms the very stereotype they would have liked to avoid. The
phenomenon of stereotype threat appears robust across a wide variety of
demographic groups and performance contexts, including African Americans
in intellectual domains (Steele & Aronson, 1995), women in negotiations
(Kray, Galinsky, & Thompson, 2002), and Caucasian athletes (Stone, Lynch,
Sjomeling, & Darley, 1999). Stereotype threat concerns make it difficult to
interpret and incorporate feedback in the workplace; a survey of African
American managers found that those who experienced more stereotype threat
in the workplace tended to discount supervisors’ evaluations of their perfor-
mance more than those who experienced less threat (Roberson, Deitch, Brief,
& Block, 2003).
Backlash against individuals who disconfirm others’ expectations.
Expec-
tations can take on a more prescriptive flavor as people not only expect that
individuals
will
behave a certain way but also that they
should
or
should not
act
in specific ways. Individuals whose behavior deviates from such prescriptive
expectations are often evaluated negatively and even punished, a phenomenon
described by Rudman (1998) as backlash against individuals who act “out of
place”. This plays out in groups, where each member is expected to act in ways
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375
that are consistent with their status. Those who misperceive their own status
and engage in actions that others deem inappropriate are socially rejected
(Anderson et al., 2006; Anderson, Ames, & Gosling, 2008).
The consequences for violating expectancies are more severe for low-status
than high-status individuals, especially when low-status individuals act above
their rank. In general, high-status members appear to be afforded some pro-
tection from this type of backlash: they are allowed greater latitude in behavior
that is less constrained by others’ expectations (Brauer, 2005; Hollander, 1958).
But even a prince who acts like a king suffers from acting above his station. A
memorable instance of this phenomenon from 1981 demonstrates that even
high-ranking individuals are constrained by the expectations that others have
for what they can say and do. At a press conference after the shooting of
President Reagan, Alexander Haig uttered the famous phrase, “As of now, I am
in control here in the White House”. It turns out that as Secretary of State,
Mr. Haig was only fourth in succession to take over executive authority. The
press ridiculed him extensively, and some of his colleagues even excluded him
from daily interactions (Anderson et al., 2006; Weisman, 1981).
Society also develops widely held prescriptive stereotypes for demographic
groups, which limit the opportunity for men and women, whites and non-
whites to express specific types of emotions, behave in certain ways, and to
comfortably hold some types of jobs (Fiske & Lee, 2008). Men who engage in
stereotypically female behavior or who work in stereotypically female profes-
sions, such as nursing (Heikes, 1991) can be the victims of bullying and ostra-
cism (Erikson & Einarsen, 2004). Women who express anger are conferred
less status than men who express anger because anger is a stereotypically
masculine emotion (Brescoll and Uhlmann, 2008). Similarly, in negotiations,
women who act assertively (a counter-stereotypic trait) are treated less favor-
ably than men who engage in the same behavior (Bowles, Babcock, & Lai,
2007). The backlash against women for behaving assertively extends to a wide
range of circumstances and appears to be a potent mechanism in limiting the
hiring of women and in stifling their careers (for a review, see Rudman &
Phelan, in press).
Overall, status-based expectations not only guide perceptions and shape
behavior but also serve as limits on the range of acceptable behavior for
individuals. The consequences of violating expectations are more severe for
low-status individuals, and the backlash they experience serves to preserve
hierarchical order. As we discuss next, individuals’ hierarchical rank not
only sets expectations for their behavior but also determines their access to
a range of desirable opportunities in organizations.
Opportunity accumulation.
The ultimate result of the various expectation
processes that we have described is that individuals who are most respected—
whether because of their demonstrated competence, their position, or
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stereotypes—are given higher quality opportunities than those who are less
respected (Merton, 1968; Ospina, 1996). Because people expect high-status
individuals to do well, they facilitate high performance by creating conditions
that enable success. In the research-oriented academic profession, for exam-
ple, landing a position at a highly ranked school often translates into a lower
teaching load with more teaching assistants, which, in turn, results in greater
research productivity. Another example comes from the legal profession in
which first associates from more prestigious schools may be given the oppor-
tunity to try more consequential cases than lawyers who graduate from low-
status schools. Similar processes occur when managers compose teams for
new projects. Individuals who are perceived as more competent are more
likely to be placed on teams tackling new, high-profile problems than are indi-
viduals perceived to be less competent (Hinds, Carley, Krackhardt, & Wholey,
2000; Sutton & Hargadon, 1996). Often, low-status members of organizations
are mired in the tedium of undesirable jobs, sometimes under dangerous
working conditions, making it difficult for them to rise in the ranks (Ashforth
& Kreiner, 1999). These examples illustrate one sense in which high-status
members have better opportunities than low-status members.
As with the expectations processes reviewed thus far, opportunities differ
across demographic groups within organizational hierarchies; whites and
men tend to have greater opportunity than non-whites and women. In one
experimental field study, applicants with common white names received
50% more callbacks for interviews than applicants with common black
names, even though their qualifications were held constant with identical
resumes (Bertrand & Mullainathan, 2004). Compared with women, men are
given responsibility for more complex tasks requiring firm-specific skills
(Bielby & Baron, 1986), and this sorting of women into jobs that are less
valuable to the organization (England, 1992; Petersen & Morgan, 1995)
appears to involve gendered job descriptions or the creation of different (and
differently valued) job titles within the same occupation (Baron & Newman,
1990; Bielby & Baron, 1986). Not only do women have less opportunity than
men to accomplish critical work for the organization, but research on inter-
nal labor markets also shows that they have limited opportunities for promo-
tion: jobs with disproportionate numbers of women tend to exist on rungs of
shorter promotion ladders than do male-dominated jobs (Baron et al., 1986;
DiPrete & Soule, 1988). In addition, the performance appraisal process in
many organizations is biased against women and non-whites (for a review,
including bias based on age and disability, see Roberson, Galvin, & Charles
[2007]); in-depth analyses of performance reviews demonstrate that, within
work units in an organization, women and non-whites receive lower pay
increases on average than equally performing men and whites (Castilla, in
press). One reason is that women and non-whites are held to higher
performance standards than men and whites (Biernat & Kobrynowicz, 1997).
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Social Hierarchy 377
In organizations, where the rational response would be to construct
hierarchies and offer opportunity based on demonstrated performance,
demographic characteristics that are ascribed different value in the broader
society continue to creep into determinations of who is given the most and
best opportunities to advance.
This section has summarized one reason why low-ranking members rarely
overtake high-ranking members in a hierarchy; they tend to have worse oppor-
tunities available to them. Despite these different opportunities, low-ranking
individuals continue to be invested in current hierarchical arrangements
(Ellemers & Barreto, 2008). We turn next to the ideological forces—the
hierarchy-enhancing belief systems—that reinforce hierarchy both from the
top down and from the bottom up.
Hierarchy-Enhancing Belief Systems
A number of ideological belief systems reinforce hierarchical arrangements.
These belief systems both support the existence of hierarchy as a legitimate
way of organizing social relations and serve to reinforce particular hierarchi-
cal arrangements once they have been established. We highlight two of these
hierarchy-enhancing belief systems out of the panoply of non-egalitarian and
anti-egalitarian attitudes, beliefs, and ideologies that have been discussed at
length elsewhere (e.g., Ellemers & Barreto, 2008; Glick & Fiske, 2001; Jost,
Glaser, Kruglanski, & Sulloway, 2003; Sidanius & Pratto, 1999). One is a
theory of group-based power called social dominance theory (Pratto, Sida-
nius, Stallworth, & Malle, 1994). The other is the psychological tendency to
rationalize the status quo social structure, described in detail by system justifi-
cation theory (Jost & Banaji, 1994).
Building on the work of Marx and Engels (1846/1970), both social domi-
nance theory and system justification theory discuss the attitudes and beliefs
that purportedly play a major role in the process of hierarchy reinforcement.
Because of the functions that hierarchy provides, there is a fundamental need,
even among those disadvantaged by a hierarchy, to “imbue the status quo with
legitimacy and to see it as good, fair, natural, desirable, and even inevitable”
(Jost, Banaji, & Nosek, 2004, p. 887). People support the notion that they exist
in a legitimate system by endorsing hierarchy as an appropriate method of
social organization and rationalizing each individual’s or group’s position,
including their own, in the hierarchy. The very existence of hierarchy is
supported by an ideological acceptance of inequality—that differential levels
of status and power across groups are legitimate—and a belief that people get
what they deserve (Lerner & Miller, 1978), and both of these beliefs serve to
justify individuals’ hierarchical positions. Even though members of high-
ranking groups endorse inequality more than members of low-ranking groups
(Sidanius, Liu, Shaw, & Pratto, 1994), low-ranking groups generally show an
internalization of inequality that depresses feelings of entitlement for more
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power and status (Jost, Banaji, & Nosek, 2004). In addition, the pervasive
assumption that individuals at the top of formal hierarchies are more compe-
tent than individuals at the bottom (Haines & Jost, 2000; Humphrey, 1985;
Sande et al., 1986) helps to maintain perceptions that hierarchies are fair.
Although social dominance theory and system justification theory take dis-
tinct approaches with respect to their emphasis on high- versus low-ranking
individuals in the maintenance of hierarchy, they make a number of the same
basic predictions. With respect to the self-reinforcement of hierarchy,
evidence from both programs of research has supported the contention that
low-ranking individuals do not always show in-group favoritism, an otherwise
robust phenomenon (Tajfel, 1982). Low-ranking individuals, especially those
who strongly endorse the legitimacy of inequality across groups, show out-
group favoritism (e.g., Umphress, Smith-Crowe, Brief, Dietz, & Watkins,
2007) and sometimes make decisions to serve the interests of high-ranking
individuals at the expense of their own (Jost et al., 2004). Ultimately, these
hierarchy-enhancing belief systems imbue highly ranked groups with greater
respect, which allows them to institute hierarchy-reinforcing policies.
Summary
In this section, we have detailed some important ways in which the two primary
bases of social hierarchy in organizations—power and status—are self-rein-
forcing. We reviewed research demonstrating that those who possess power
experience a very different psychological world than those who are powerless.
High-power individuals process information more abstractly, perceive other
people in more instrumental terms, and are more goal-focused, confident, and
proactive than low-power individuals. We argued that these metamorphic
effects of power help power-holders maintain control over resources on which
others depend. Next, we outlined how status, because of its connection to
perceptions of competence in organizations, is intimately related to the expec-
tations that people have for others’ performance. These expectations can
emerge from past performance, an employee’s position in the formal organiza-
tional structure, or stereotypes related to demographic characteristics. The
inter-related processes of expectancy confirmation, behavioral confirmation,
backlash against individuals whose behavior disconfirms expectancies (espe-
cially for low-status individuals who act above their rank), and the accumula-
tion of superior opportunities for advancement by high-status individuals, all
reinforce status hierarchies over time. Finally, we highlighted two hierarchy-
enhancing belief systems that help explain how both high- and low-ranking
individuals in power and status hierarchies legitimize hierarchical differentia-
tion as a means of social organization and uphold the hierarchy’s current rank
order. The psychological processes of power, the interpersonal consequences
of status, and the ideological, hierarchy-enhancing beliefs all conspire to
reinforce current hierarchical arrangements.
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Social Hierarchy 379
Forces of Hierarchy Attenuation
In the previous sections we have documented how hierarchy develops easily
and effortlessly and, once established, persists through various self-reinforcing
psychological and interpersonal mechanisms. Taken to its logical extreme, the
framework we have presented implies that all hierarchies would ultimately end
in winner-take-all scenarios, with one person possessing all the power and
status. If our proposed self-reinforcing mechanisms operated perfectly all the
time, power would beget more power, status would beget more status, and even-
tually every hierarchy would have one absolute ruler. Yet, hierarchies rarely
produce an all-encompassing winner. New leaders get elected to office, hiring
and promotion decisions lead individuals to enter or rise in the ranks of orga-
nizations, and revolutions can completely upend current hierarchical arrange-
ments. Aside from structured, intentional changes in formal hierarchy, we also
suspect that not all psychological and interpersonal processes lead to the reten-
tion and accumulation of power and status by high-ranking individuals. Indeed,
some of the very psychological processes that we have claimed as mechanisms
of hierarchy reinforcement, when taken too far, might make individuals vulner-
able to loss of rank. For example, assertiveness and leadership share a curvilinear
relationship; assertive individuals are seen as effective leaders up to a point, but
when assertiveness gets too high, their behavior is seen as rash and domineering
(Ames & Flynn, 2007). Similarly, power-holders whose confidence turns into
overconfidence can take extreme risks that bring their organizations to the prec-
ipice. Disasters resulting from power-holders’ overconfidence could force them
to relinquish their control over important resources.
In this section we discuss a number of important countervailing forces that
lead to hierarchical change. We call these “hierarchy-attenuating forces”
because they can reduce status and power differences in the short term, even
though they may produce a new hierarchy, with different individuals or
groups of high and low rank, in the long term. This discussion is a conceptual
challenge to our thesis and to the field, which we hope will inspire future
researchers to create more dynamic models of power and status hierarchies.
Through theoretical refinement and empirical research, organizational schol-
ars will be in a position to explain not only the persistence and amplification
of hierarchies but also their attenuation and even reversal.
External Change
When groups or organizations experience a dynamic environment, or an exter-
nal shock, hierarchies can change substantially. One straightforward example
is when there is a reduction in demand for the resources controlled by high-
power individuals. If low-power people cease to value the resources in the
possession of high-power individuals, then those high-power individuals will
suddenly experience a dramatic drop in their power. For example, Burkhardt
and Brass (1990) showed how a technological innovation in an organization
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380 The Academy of Management Annals
altered power dynamics by shifting the most valuable knowledge to new indi-
viduals, rendering those with the devalued knowledge dispossessed of power.
Certain types of events can change not only the dynamics within a hierarchy
but the structure of the hierarchy itself. One study by Hambrick and Cannella
(1993) capitalized on an event that necessarily triggers reshuffling of status and
power hierarchies: a merger between two organizations. By bringing two
previously independent organizational hierarchies together, mergers and
acquisitions typically force some individuals to lose power and status in the
new organization relative to what they had before. These authors found that
CEOs who lost status following their company’s merger were more likely to
leave the merged organization than were CEOs whose status was left intact
(Hambrick and Cannella, 1993). We hope these studies, over 15 years old, will
influence a new generation of researchers exploring the consequences for those
who gain and those who lose status or power.
Fairness and Legitimacy of Hierarchical Differences
When rewards become too generous for the highest ranking members of a hier-
archy, various corrective psychological forces come into play. One of the
primary forces that constrain differences in power and status is the inclination
toward fairness (Diekmann, Samuels, Ross, & Bazerman, 1997). Even when they
possess system-justifying beliefs, low-ranking members prefer constraining the
dispersion of rewards between the top and bottom of hierarchies. For example,
overpayment of top executives negatively affects employees in an organization:
one study involving more than 120 firms over a 5-year period found that when
wage dispersion is perceived to be too high, low-level employees are more likely
to leave the organization (Wade, O’Reilly, & Pollock, 2006). Experimental data
suggest that when low-ranking individuals in an organization feel their oppor-
tunities are unfairly limited and their rewards are unjust, they try to take correc-
tive action (Greenberg, 1990; Martorana, Galinsky, & Rao, 2005).
Building on these ideas about fairness, perceptions of the hierarchy’s
legitimacy also affect the extent to which it is supported and perpetuated.
Hierarchies are more stable when they are steeped in legitimacy (Tajfel,
1982), when individuals feel that their rank has been determined by appropri-
ate, agreed-upon means (e.g., equitably, meritocratically) and high-ranking
individuals are not abusing their position. Under conditions of legitimacy,
low-ranking individuals defer to higher-ranking individuals and subordinate
their own desires to promote order and stability. Illegitimate hierarchies,
however, upset this stable state. Lammers, Galinsky, Gordijn, and Otten
(2008) found that when individuals perceived that their hierarchy was
illegitimate, low-power individuals became oriented toward taking action and
risk. This action orientation, typically possessed by high-power rather than
low-power individuals (Galinsky et al., 2003), appeared to be motivated by a
desire to restore legitimacy.
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Social Hierarchy 381
One pressing question for future research is to try to identify the factors
that cause members of hierarchies to sense that legitimacy has eroded in their
social system. One possibility is the behavior of high-ranking members, par-
ticularly their treatment of low-ranking members. For power-holders, the
process of objectifying others may be an efficient path toward goal completion
(Gruenfeld et al., 2008), but, from the perspective of the objectified, low-rank-
ing members, it can inspire perceptions that power-holders are using their
power illegitimately. Another possibility, potentially very important in organi-
zations, involves the consistency between power and status hierarchies. For
example, if the people who have employees’ highest respect (i.e., have high sta-
tus) are not the same people who control important resources (i.e., have high
power), employees might begin to wonder whether promotions are deter-
mined by meritocratic methods or by other illegitimate means.
Competition
One process by which current hierarchical arrangements are often altered is
through competition for higher rungs on the ladder, which is a direct conse-
quence of the incentive function of hierarchy. People can increase their effort
and commitment in organizations to raise their ranking, to improve their own
position compared to others’ positions. This competition naturally occurs
because power and status, as two important social currencies, encourage
people to pay particular attention to their relative standing, with employees
motivated to focus on the self in comparison to others in terms of their wages,
their status, and their power (Baron & Pfeffer, 1994; Festinger, 1954). When
individuals or groups make comparisons upward in the hierarchy, toward the
more desirable positions of higher rank, they often react by competing for
those positions, whether for status (Huberman, Loch, & Önçüler, 2004; Loch,
Huberman, & Stout, 2000) or power (Pfeffer, 1992). Indeed, if such compari-
sons were unimportant and infrequent, there would be scant logic to support
the existence of social hierarchies at all (Frank, 1985).
If people choose to compete by exerting extra effort on the job to try to dis-
play their expertise and gain status, then the organization can benefit. Sutton
and Hargadon (1996) documented these “status contests” at IDEO, where
respect is gained or lost based on jockeying to make sure that one’s technical
contributions are implemented on key projects. Status contests such as these
provide opportunity for low-status members to prove their worth to the orga-
nization and move up the hierarchy.
Increased competition may not always bode so well for organizations,
however. People sometimes resort to nefarious methods, such as sabotage and
breaking rules, to climb the ranks of organizations, especially when the top
rank gets a disproportionate share of the rewards (Sivanathan, 2008). Also,
organizational hierarchies in which control of resources is the predominant
method of ranking individuals and groups may engender confrontational
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attempts by low-power parties to force a redistribution of the critical resources
resources (Deutsch, 1973; Kabanoff, 1991). For example, a resource-impover-
ished department in an organization can engage in a protracted battle with a
resource-rich department to try to claim a larger share of the organization’s
budget. Political battles along these lines within an organization often do not
contribute to its overall welfare.
Status Constraints: Reciprocity and Leakage
Other aspects of social interaction that are less fraught with conflict can also
serve as constraints on individuals’ abilities to maintain or increase status.
Gould (2002) has suggested that the norm of reciprocity (Gouldner, 1960) is
the main reason that “runaway status hierarchies”, which produce a winner-
take-all result, are so rare. According to Gould’s (2002) reasoning, people
prefer to associate with higher-status individuals, but they also want these
people to reciprocate their attention. These desires are at odds because high-
status individuals do not have enough attention to give to the many lower-
status individuals who crave their company. When low-status individuals fail
to receive sufficient attention from higher-status others, they may stop admir-
ing and respecting them. As a result, the status of those at the top of the hierar-
chy will stop rising and can even start to diminish.
A separate process called “status leakage” (Podolny, 2005), similar to
Goffman’s (1963) notion of “courtesy stigma”, also can cause individuals and
groups to lose status. Podolny (2005) has argued that observers who see a
high-status party associate with low-status parties begin to wonder whether
the high-status party is really worthy of the respect conferred to them. The
empirical research by Podolny has focused exclusively on the firm level of
analysis; thus, the process of status leakage may be a fruitful intra-organiza-
tional area of research in the future. The process of status leakage focuses on
how high-status actors suffer status decrements (Podolny, 2005), though it
seems equally plausible that low-status actors can experience status incre-
ments from associating with high-status others. In fact, there may even be an
asymmetry in status leakage: that is, perhaps high-status actors do not suffer
from associating with low-status actors as much as low-status actors gain.
Observers might think that a low-level employee who has a close bond with a
senior manager is someone worthy of more respect than his or her position
implies. Experimental studies and dynamic social network analyses over time
might be especially effective at tackling the true direction of changes in status
across individuals due to what could be called “mere association”.
Unanswered Questions and New Directions
In the previous section, we pointed out various forces that operate as exceptions
to the rule that hierarchy is self-reinforcing. A number of these hierarchy-
attenuating forces present opportunities for future research. In this final
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Social Hierarchy 383
section, we extend our discussion of new directions for research by focusing on
three topics that have received remarkably little attention, but which we think
would be particularly rewarding for current and future scholars of social hier-
archy to tackle.
The Relative Importance of Absolute Rank and Changes in Rank
In the previous section, we highlighted a number of countervailing forces that
can attenuate and alter, rather than reinforce, social hierarchies. The possibil-
ity of hierarchical change raises the question of whether people are more
sensitive to the absolute value of or relative changes to their power and status.
If people are particularly sensitive to changes in their hierarchical standing,
this would imply a reference-point model of hierarchy in much the way that
people are sensitive to other types of relative gains and losses (Kahneman &
Tversky, 1979). Typically the self-reinforcing nature of social hierarchy would
produce more gains for those already highly ranked and losses for those of low
rank. But, if people are sensitive even to subtle changes in rank, then a high-
ranking person who suffers a small loss of power or status may act, think, and
feel like a low-ranking individual. Similarly, individuals who make small steps
up a hierarchy may be invigorated to make steeper climbs upward. Future
research would do well to explore whether a reference-point model of hierar-
chy offers increased value in explaining the consequences of power and status.
Status and Power Inconsistencies
Throughout our analysis, our claims have rested on the assumption that only
one main hierarchy is in play at any one time. However, no hierarchy exists in
isolation; groups and organizations often have multiple valued dimensions on
which people can be rank ordered. This multiplicity creates the potential for
contradictions or inconsistencies in hierarchical rank, and organizational
settings provide especially fertile opportunities to study “hierarchical rank
inconsistencies”, their causes as well as their consequences.
The concept of “status inconsistency”, whereby individuals have high status
on one valued dimension, or in one domain, but low status on another dimen-
sion/domain (Lenski, 1954; Stryker & Macke, 1978), has been used to try to
explain some variables (e.g., political preferences) but has had little impact on
research in organizations. However, in a theoretical paper, Bacharach,
Bamberger, and Mundell (1993) argue that an individual’s status inconsistencies
lead others to hold conflicting expectations for the individual’s behavior, which
causes stress for the status-inconsistent individual. Out of this theoretical back-
ground, an interesting empirical question emerges: Is it more challenging for
employees to have low status in two domains in an organization (i.e., high status
consistency) or to have high status in one domain and low status in another
(i.e., low status consistency)? We think that a notion of power inconsistency
would be useful for future research as well. For example, a manager could have
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384 The Academy of Management Annals
great power to make an important decision on a cross-functional task force but
have little power within the specific department responsible for implementing
the outcome of that decision. In addition, as we acknowledged earlier, individ-
uals can experience inconsistencies between their level of status and their level
of power (i.e., high-status/low-power and low-status/high-power).
These status and power inconsistencies across hierarchical dimensions are
further complicated by the fact that individuals are typically nested within
multiple collectives—they exist within groups, which are nested within
organizations, which are nested within industries or fields (see Blau’s [1964]
distinction between microstructures and macrostructures). As a result, there
can be inconsistencies between one’s rank in a local hierarchy (i.e., an organi-
zation) and in a more global hierarchy (i.e., a field). One form of “local/global
status inconsistency” could occur in organizations in which someone has
firm-specific skills that give him or her respect within an organization but that
have little value within the organization’s industry. Alternatively, high global
status and low local status could occur for someone who has gained broad
respect over a lifetime of accomplishments but whose recent contributions at
an organization have not met his or her colleagues’ expectations. It would take
time for this information to leak out of the organization, so one’s global status
might persist even as one’s local status has diminished. Thus, whether an
individual’s status is local or global is important in thinking about how status
affects his or her career opportunities and outcomes.
Related to the distinction between local and global status, Frank (1985) has
argued that individuals actively consider whether to seek local or global status
in considering their employment opportunities. In this decision, people face
the following critical trade-off: whether to work for a higher-status organiza-
tion where one’s individual status is low relative to other employees, or a
lower-status organization where one is accorded high local status. Because
local comparisons (i.e., within an organization) are more psychologically
potent than global comparisons (i.e., within a field), many people choose the
opportunity to rise quickly through the ranks of low-status firms (Phillips,
2001). Little is known, however, about other factors, especially those outside of
the individual’s control, that influence this local versus global status trade-off.
The causes and consequences both for targets and for perceivers of these
inconsistencies—within power and status, across power and status, locally and
globally—constitute an impoverished area of knowledge about social hierarchy.
Although it would take some methodological sophistication, we would like to
see the field shift its attention to understanding how these inconsistencies play
out in dynamic ways to produce individual, group, and organizational behavior.
The Relationship between Hierarchy and Performance
We began this review by discussing the functions of hierarchy that make it
such a pervasive feature of organizational and social life. We suggested that
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Social Hierarchy 385
hierarchy offers social order, facilitates coordination, and provides an incen-
tive function to motivate productive work. If this is true, it would suggest that
groups and organizations that are structured with a greater degree of hierar-
chical differentiation should have an advantage relative to those groups and
organizations with less hierarchical differentiation. One frontier that future
research could explore is whether the performance of work groups and
departments depends in part on their levels of hierarchical differentiation
(e.g., Groysberg et al., 2007).
Hierarchical differentiation might not only have a direct effect on perfor-
mance but could also play a legitimizing role, inspiring confidence from
institutional observers. Hierarchical differentiation may be especially likely to
confer legitimacy when organizational performance is difficult to measure, as
in nascent industries, or in strong institutional environments, such as the
public, cultural, and health-care sectors (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983; Meyer &
Rowan, 1977; Tolbert & Zucker, 1983). In their discussion of coercive institu-
tional forces, DiMaggio and Powell (1983) indicate that some nonprofit orga-
nizations find it is easier to attract capital if they are organized hierarchically
because hierarchy confers legitimacy to the state and other external
constituents (Baron et al., 1986). Even when organizations prefer a more egal-
itarian structure (Rothschild-Whitt, 1979), they might yield to pressure from
hierarchically organized external stakeholders that desire similarly structured
organizations. Investors find comfort in knowing where authority and
accountability reside, with an ordered ranking of roles at the top of the hier-
archy highlighting for constituents how labor and authority are divided to
achieve organizational goals (Baron & Bielby, 1986). For example, as start-up
firms attempt to secure funding from venture capitalists, they tend to flesh
out the hierarchical structure of their management teams, clarifying who is in
charge of what (Baron, Burton, & Hannan, 1999). Future research could
explore whether or not organizations in strong institutional environments
that have greater hierarchical differentiation, particularly within their top
management teams, hold a competitive advantage relative to organizations
with less differentiation.
Conclusion
Integrating research from psychology, sociology, and organizations, we have
explored a number of fundamental aspects of social hierarchy. We started with
the observation that hierarchies are both pervasive and a particularly effective
means of organizing social relations. We then made the case that status and
power are important and distinct bases of hierarchy and emphasized the need
to isolate these concepts from related upstream and downstream variables. We
hope that this conceptual clarification, as well as our discussion of power and
status inconsistencies, will help guide research in the future. Our main focus
was on various self-reinforcing aspects of hierarchy—the psychological effects
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386 The Academy of Management Annals
of power, status-based expectations, and hierarchy-enhancing ideologies—
though we also considered some countervailing forces that can attenuate these
reinforcing processes. More work from diverse perspectives using multiple
methods is needed to capture fully the many forces involved in maintaining as
well as transforming social hierarchies.
Acknowledgements
We thank Cameron Anderson, Frank Flynn, and Jennifer Overbeck for their
generosity in providing feedback on a previous draft of this manuscript. We
are also indebted to the editors of this volume, Art Brief and Jim Walsh, for
their patience, encouragement, and insight in the development of this review.
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... In practice, there may exist an uneven distribution of status in Chinese organizations because China is characterized by high-power distance, that is, an uneven distribution of power (Brockner et al., 2001;Farh, Hackett, & Liang, 2007). Moreover, status and power are both sources of influence over others (Hays et al., 2022;Magee & Galinsky, 2008). Therefore, we propose status differentiation as the key contextual factor that determines whether new status holders experience authentic pride or hubristic pride, which in turn affects their behaviors. ...
... Moreover, individuals stand to gain several advantages from the status they acquire. For example, positive status change often brings individuals self-esteem, opportunities, promising careers, and even good health (Hardy & Van Vugt, 2006;Keltner, Gruenfeld, & Anderson, 2003;Magee & Galinsky, 2008;Ouyang, Xu, Huang, Liu, & Tang, 2018). ...
... Higher status differentiation is observed in teams where status is concentrated in one or two members, whereas lower status differentiation is observed in teams where status is relatively evenly distributed among all members (Hays et al., 2022). Furthermore, since status shares similar characteristics with power as a form of influence (Hays et al., 2022;Magee & Galinsky, 2008), the distribution of status could raise significant concerns for organizations operating in China. ...
Article
Prior research on status has focused primarily on the cognitive perspective, exploring the effects of status and offering a limited understanding of the impact of positive status change and its emotional mechanisms. This study draws upon the two-facet model of pride to examine how positive status change influences the behaviors of new status holders. Specifically, we propose that when status differentiation is low, positive status change enhances new status holders' prosocial behavior through their authentic pride, while in cases of high status differentiation, it increases their self-interested behavior through their hubristic pride. To test our hypotheses, we conducted a series of studies, including a laboratory experiment, a scenario experiment, and a time-lagged multilevel and multisource field study. Our multilevel analyses of the data provided strong support for our hypotheses. Our findings shed light on when and why positive status change triggers different behaviors among new status holders, offering important insights into the emotional mechanisms that underlie the effects of status change.
... Social hierarchy, the implicit or explicit rank order of individuals with respect to a valued social dimension, is a fundamental feature of social relations (Magee & Galinsky, 2008). Social hierarchy has two functions in organizations: 1) to establish order and coordination, and 2) to motivate employees to strive for promotion (Magee & Galinsky, 2008). ...
... Social hierarchy, the implicit or explicit rank order of individuals with respect to a valued social dimension, is a fundamental feature of social relations (Magee & Galinsky, 2008). Social hierarchy has two functions in organizations: 1) to establish order and coordination, and 2) to motivate employees to strive for promotion (Magee & Galinsky, 2008). Hierarchy provides clear social governance in groups by allowing leaders to assign tasks or allocate resources (Durkheim, 1997;Magee & Galinsky, 2008), and it provides incentives for individuals to climb the organizational ladder to obtain greater compensation and comfort (Magee & Galinsky, 2008;Tannenbaum, Kavcic, Rosner, Vianello, & Wieser, 1974). ...
... Social hierarchy has two functions in organizations: 1) to establish order and coordination, and 2) to motivate employees to strive for promotion (Magee & Galinsky, 2008). Hierarchy provides clear social governance in groups by allowing leaders to assign tasks or allocate resources (Durkheim, 1997;Magee & Galinsky, 2008), and it provides incentives for individuals to climb the organizational ladder to obtain greater compensation and comfort (Magee & Galinsky, 2008;Tannenbaum, Kavcic, Rosner, Vianello, & Wieser, 1974). ...
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Power and status, two forms of social hierarchy, are fundamental feature of social relations, and they have two functions that are especially important for teams that lack formal hierarchy: 1) to establish order and coordination, and 2) to motivate employees to strive for promotion. Hierarchy provides clear social governance in groups by allowing leaders to assign tasks or allocate resources, and it provides incentives for individuals to climb the organizational ladder to obtain greater compensation and comfort. Individuals with high power and/or high status are more likely to perform leadership behaviors in teams. However, they may also cause conflict by activating threat and distrust when other team members perceive that aspirants’ leadership behaviors are misaligned with their power and/or status. This misalignment can be complex because social hierarchy has multiple forms such as status and power and multiple levels such as team and organizational levels. The current study investigates (1) how the inconsistency between power and status of a team member affect conflict with other team members and (2) how team member’s needs for power and needs for status moderate the power-status inconsistency and conflict relationship. Data was collected from a sample of MBA student teams at a large mid-western university in the United States. In the results the study found no evidence of the power-status inconsistency and conflict relationship, yet found the moderating effect of needs for power on that relationship.
... Previous studies have presented two different views concerning the utility of power disparity. One is the constructive view of power functionalism, which believes that power disparity can benefit teams by enhancing role clarity among team members, promoting internal division of labor, unifying divergent opinions, improving interaction and coordination within the team [9][10][11]. The other is the destructive view of power conflict theory, which posits that power disparity can lead to power struggles within the team, trigger internal conflict, generate negative emotions such as perceived unfairness, and worsens interpersonal relationships, thereby harming the team [2,[12][13][14]. ...
... From the perspective of power functionalism, team coordination is the main process variable associated with power disparity utility [17]. Specifically, power disparity can clarify team members' roles and positions, support the division of labor within the team, help independent members reach consensus on different opinions, and facilitate interaction and collaboration among team members [9,13]. It also allows team members to understand their power hierarchy within the team and clarify expectations regarding norms, roles, and behaviors based on their power hierarchy [15,18,24]. ...
Article
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Power disparity, as an important form of internal team hierarchy, presents a "double-edged sword effect". To reconcile the inconsistent effects and systematically explore the different mechanisms of power disparity, this study constructs a comprehensive theoretical model based on power functionalism and power conflict theory, with team coordination and team conflict as dual mediators, and power legitimacy as moderator. By collecting valid questionnaires from 76 teams across 27 different types of companies in various regions, statistical analysis and hypothesis testing were conducted on the data. The results conclude that power disparity positively influences team innovation performance through the team coordination path and negatively affects it through the team conflict path. However, under the moderating effect of power legitimacy, the negative effect of the team conflict path is suppressed, and the positive effect of the team coordination path is strengthened, thus ensuring that power disparity has a positive effect on team innovation performance. This study provides a useful reference for designing the power hierarchy within enterprises, and offers profound insights into effective organizational structure and decision-making processes.
... They found that power posing influenced participants' neuroendocrine profile, with high-power posers experiencing elevations in testosterone levels and decreases in cortisol while low-power posers experienced the opposite pattern. Smith and Galinsky [14] suggested that because power is a dominant aspect of social relationships [15], power cues -and not necessarily actual experience with power -might activate the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors associated with the power concept. They further suggested that power unconsciously modifies basic psychological states. ...
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Background The current study attempted to replicate the original findings regarding the effects of power posing on testosterone and cortisol levels, risk-taking behavior, and perceived power. We further extended the investigation by testing the effect of power posing on estradiol and progesterone levels. Methods A sample of 92 young adults (30 males; 32 females taking oral contraceptives; and 30 females not taking oral contraceptives who were in their midluteal phase) were randomly assigned to high-power-pose or low-power-pose conditions and asked about their feelings of power. They completed a risk-taking task, and their neuroendocrine levels were measured both at baseline and following the power manipulation. Results Power posing was not found to replicate the original results regarding effects on testosterone levels or feelings of power; however, our findings partially supported the original results regarding effects on cortisol levels and risk-taking. Among high-power posers, a decrease in cortisol levels was associated with risk tolerance. Power posing was not found to influence progesterone levels. However, among females taking oral contraceptives, high-power posing increased estradiol levels. Conclusions These preliminary findings suggest that estradiol is influenced by short-term exposure to social cues under specific hormonal profiles.
... At a personal level, ACE accuracy involves agentic ways of perceiving others (Kafetsios et al., 2024;Magee & Galinsky, 2008) and this agentic nature of engaging with the social world can account for higher personal and social well-being. Conversely, bias involves more stereotypical, culturally shared, less accurate representations of the social world (Hess et al., 2016), and such biases have shown to increase loneliness (Wols et al., 2015) in line with a sociocognitive skills theory of loneliness (Cacioppo & Hawkley, 2009). ...
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... At a personal level, ACE accuracy involves agentic ways of perceiving others (Kafetsios et al., 2024;Magee & Galinsky, 2008) and this agentic nature of engaging with the social world can account for higher personal and social well-being. Conversely, bias involves more stereotypical, culturally shared, less accurate representations of the social world (Hess et al., 2016), and such biases have shown to increase loneliness (Wols et al., 2015) in line with a sociocognitive skills theory of loneliness (Cacioppo & Hawkley, 2009). ...
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Emotion Recognition Accuracy (ERA) is vital for social functioning and social relationships, yet empirical support for a positive link with well-being has been sparse. In three studies, we show that the Assessment of Contextualized Emotions (ACE) which distinguishes between accurately perceiving intended emotions and bias due to perceiving additional, secondary emotions, consistently predicted personal and social well-being. Across thirteen world cultures, accuracy was associated with higher well-being and life satisfaction, and bias linked to loneliness. A social interaction study in Czech Republic found accuracy (bias) was positively (negatively) associated with social well-being. The effects of accuracy and bias on well-being were partially mediated by social interaction quality in a third study. These findings further our understanding of ERA's social functions.
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