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It's Not What You Do, But Who You Are: Informal Social Control, Social Status, and Normative Seriousness in Organizations

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Sociological Forum

Abstract

This paper analyzes the impact of managerial social status on the normative evaluation of managerial acts in organizational contexts. We test several propositions on the relationship between social status and normative evaluation derived from Donald Black's theoretical framework on social control. The research design consists of a factorial survey of 200 managers. Each respondent evaluated the seriousness of a normatively questionable managerial act. In each vignette, the perpetrator's social status was systematically manipulated in either a high or a low condition. The results generally support the argument that the higher a manager's social status the less vulnerable that individual is to unfavorable normative evaluations, holding constant the act. The paper closes with discussion of our findings in light of social structural and rational choice perspectives on informal social control in organizations. Additionally, we discuss methodological issues related to experimental research on informal social control in organizations, the consistency of our findings with those from previous studies of social control across diverse settings, potential theoretical applications and extensions of Black's framework in organizational contexts, and practical implications for the implementation of corporate codes of conduct and corporate dispute resolution systems.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sociology, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, 85721

    Calvin Morrill

  2. Abt Associates, Inc., Chicago

    Ellen Snyderman

  3. Department of Communication, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, 85721

    Edwin J. Dawson

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  1. Calvin Morrill
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  2. Ellen Snyderman
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  3. Edwin J. Dawson
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Morrill, C., Snyderman, E. & Dawson, E.J. It's Not What You Do, But Who You Are: Informal Social Control, Social Status, and Normative Seriousness in Organizations. Sociological Forum 12, 519–543 (1997). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1022170606380

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