Doctoral Dissertation Research: Status and Authority in Small Organizations

我们知道，地位，或者人们对彼此的顺从程度，以及权威，或者一个人是否给另一个人下命令，在组织中是分开运作的。然而，许多学术研究将这两种社会结构结合在等级制度的概念下，很难发现它们之间的独特之处。我们也不知道每个结构如何随时间变化。本项目通过询问组织地位和权力等级如何共同发展来解决这些差距。该项目调查更高的地位是否与行使权力有关；行使权力是否会改变一个人的相对地位；这些变化的时间模式告诉我们它们之间的联系机制。该项目在近三年的时间里研究了1700个组织的9万多名员工的用户行为。这些发现有助于我们理解工作中不平等的演变，重点关注权力如何在较小的组织中运作，美国三分之二的净新工作岗位是在较小的组织中创造的。在此过程中，它将为如何组织较小的工作场所以减少社会不平等提供政策指导。这个项目通过询问地位和权力等级在小型组织中如何共同演变来分析运动中的等级制度。为了衡量这些层次结构，该项目使用了项目和任务管理软件系统中50亿个用户操作的唯一详细的匿名元数据。这些数据使人们能够在近三年内将1700个组织中的9万人的权力行使与其他行为区分开来。这些数据结合了在其中一个组织进行的三个月的参与性观察，以及对该组织和其他八个组织的经理和员工的采访。该项目提供了对期望状态理论以及关于地位、权威、等级及其演变的组织理论的见解。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

We know that status, or how much people defer to one another, and authority, or whether one individual gives orders to another, operate separately in organizations. However, much scholarship combines these two social structures under the notion of hierarchy, making it difficult to detect how each might be unique. We also do not know how each structure may change over time. This project addresses these gaps by asking how organizational status and authority hierarchies co-evolve. The project investigates whether higher status is associated with exercising authority; whether exercising authority changes a person's relative status; and what the temporal patterns of these changes tell us about the mechanisms linking them. The project studies user actions from over 90,000 workers in 1700 organizations over nearly three years. These findings help us understand the evolution of inequality at work, with a focus on how authority operates in smaller organizations, where two thirds of net new jobs in the United States are created. In doing so it will provide policy guidance regarding how smaller workplaces can be organized to reduce social inequality. This project analyzes hierarchies in motion by asking how status and authority hierarchies co-evolve in small organizations. To measure these hierarchies, the project uses uniquely detailed anonymized metadata from five billion user actions taken in a project-and-task-management software system. These data make it possible to separate the exercise of authority from other actions for 90,000 individuals in 1700 organizations over nearly three years. These data are combined with three months of participant observation at one of these organizations and interviews with managers and employees at it and eight other organizations. The project provides insights into expectation states theory as well as organizational theory regarding status, authority, hierarchy and their evolution.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.