Status makes us behave in different (and sometimes unexpected ways)

Striving for status is a fundamental human need. During this talk, I will present two papers that seemingly document divergent effects of status on generally ‘positive’ behaviors, namely generosity (Paper 1) and managers’ creativity recognition of their employees (Paper 2). In paper 1, we focus on how a “jolt” - defined as novel, disruptive, critical organizational-level events that require members to invest their personal resources (e.g., time, energy) to make work adjustments –differentially affects lower vs. higher status group members in terms of generosity behaviors towards others in the group (and implications for subsequent status conferral). We show that it is those high status group members who withdraw generosity from the group following jolt. In paper 2, we focus on how low vs. high status managers differentially react to novel ideas raised by one of their employees and show that it is low status managers who tend to react more territorially and be less willing to implement the novel idea raised by their employee. Following discussion of the two papers I will discuss insights gained from these papers on how status makes us behave.

Zoom link:  https://eur-nl.zoom.us/j/94526151078  

Meeting ID: 945 2615 1078