סמינר בהתנהגות ארגונית

Prof. Kelly Raz University of Western Ontario

Prior research suggests that individuals’ pursuit of status in the workplace has mixed consequences. This is, in part, because individuals choose different behavioral strategies to acquire status.  For example, some adopt behaviors that create value for their group, such as working hard and developing relevant expertise.  Others make efforts to appear valuable, or to project value, often through deceptive or manipulative behaviors (e.g., misrepresenting one’s contributions), which can be especially damaging to organizational outcomes.  There is little in the existing status literature that explains how individuals select between these two strategies, despite the significant consequences that these can have for organizational outcomes.  In this paper, we take a closer look at this issue by using the theoretical lens of self-determination theory.  The key finding of study 1 is that status, as conventionally defined and operationalized in the literature, encompasses both intrinsic and extrinsic goal pursuits.  Extrinsic status goals relate to external validation concerns and do not fulfill individuals’ core psychological needs.  In contrast, intrinsic status goals are associated with respect and esteem and are closely aligned with the psychological needs.  Our second study shows that extrinsic status goals are strongly associated with value-projecting behavior and that this relationship is exacerbated by opportunities for public recognition.  In contrast, intrinsic status goals are not associated with value-projecting behaviors.  Overall, our findings offer insight into how status seekers direct their efforts in work-related settings and help to explain why these behaviors have been difficult to detect in the past.