Call for Papers - Attaining, Maintaining, and Experiencing in Organizations and Markets: Deadline: February 28, 2009

Status issues permeate social and organizational life. As sociologists and anthropologists have long noted, whenever social actors gather, a status hierarchy among these actors emerges, and through that process, some actors are afforded higher esteem and prestige than others. The impact of these status differences cuts across all levels of analysis, from the individual actor’s position within a group to an organization’s network and status position in an industry or a market. In each case, the actor’s status influences the opportunities and constraints that the actor experiences. For this reason, most domains of organizational research are directly related to the status concerns that individuals, groups, and organizations share in their social contexts. For individuals, status concerns are foundational to issues of inclusion and exclusion; one’s standing in the group, and the resources that the individual is able to marshal in aid of a favored cause. For organizations, the concern of being viewed as a legitimate or prestigious actor in their industry or market leads decision makers to strategically display and react to status-related signals that affect their legitimacy and market standing. Despite its prevalence and importance in individual, organizational, and market dynamics, and its long-standing prominence in disciplinary domains such as sociology and social psychology, the notion of status has only recently begun to receive attention in organizational research. Group, organizational, and market contexts are all settings in which status-related concerns are central to the social dynamics that take place. Each of these settings operates as a stage upon which the construction (and reconstruction), maintenance, and experience of social standing and status are played out on a daily basis. For this reason, research on status in these settings should not only inform organizational theory and research but also contribute to existing perspectives and research on status in disciplines. This special issue aims at invigorating the concept of status in organizational research by both extending as well as integrating perspectives in basic disciplines that have provided important knowledge and insights on status dynamics.