The psychology of status competitions within organizations: Navigating two competing motives

Status hierarchies, which represent how individuals stack up based on the amount of influence and respect they have relative to others, develop quickly as group members make judgments and inferences about others' competencies or expected contributions to the group. While quick to emerge, one's place in the hierarchy is not entirely fixed. Because occupying higher status offers a number of rewards and benefits, people vie with others to achieve the higher status positions, and seek to maintain them by engaging in behaviors that have downstream effects on group and individual outcomes. Scholars have directed increasing attention to the unique psychology associated with status seeking to understand the consequences of hierarchical competitions. This emerging body of work highlights the dual concerns (i.e., self-oriented and other-oriented concerns) inherent in the pursuit of status and offers new insights to aid our understanding of status competitions. In this chapter, the authors first review the literature that explores the mixed-motive psychology of status striving, noting the potentially beneficial and destructive behavioral outcomes that status competitions can elicit within workgroups. Next, the authors detail some of the structural, temporal, relational, and individual properties that may exacerbate people's self-interested status concerns. The chapter concludes by discussing some of the organizational implications of this body of work and reviewing potentially rich opportunities for future research on status competitions.