Power, Status, and Learning in Organizations

By C. Bunderson, Ray E. Reagans, J. Stuart Bunderson, John M. Olin, Linda Argote, John Millar Carroll, Amy C. Edmondson, Frank Flynn, Adam D. Galinsky, Kyle Lewis and 4 more. Organ. Sci., 2011

338 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This paper reviews the scholarly literature on the effects of social hierarchy---differences in power and status among organizational actors---on collective learning in organizations and groups. We begin with the observation that theories of organization and group learning have tended to adopt a rational system model, a model that emphasizes goal-directed and cooperative interactions between and among actors who may differ in knowledge and expertise but are undifferentiated with respect to power and status. Our review of the theoretical and empirical literatures on power, status, and learning suggests that social hierarchy can complicate a rational system model of collective learning by disrupting three critical learning-related processes: anchoring on shared goals, risk taking and experimentation, and knowledge sharing. We also find evidence to suggest that the stifling effects of power and status differences on collective learning can be mitigated when advantaged actors are collectively oriented. Indeed, our review suggests that higher-ranking actors who use their power and status in more “socialized” ways can play critical roles in stimulating collective learning behavior. We conclude by articulating several promising directions for future research that were suggested by our review.

Subfields: Gender Studies, Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/2ccdb3ccf48420b985e67328ec2839074342c7cc

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Citations in the corpus

Who Defers to Whom and Why? Dual Pathways Linking Demographic Differences and Dyadic Deference to Team Effectiveness (2015, background): “…and scientific problems of our time, ranging from developing environmentally sustainable electricity grids to mapping the human genome, are increasingly being addressed by teams that bring together people with diverse expertise and knowledge (Fiore, 2008; Paruchuri, 2010; Wuchty et al., 2007).”
Voice Flows to and around Leaders (2013, background): “We also controlled for the branch managers’ informal status in the credit union, as their status may influence learning-related outcomes such as voice and associated branch performance (Bunderson and Reagans, 2011).”
Language Matters: Status Loss and Achieved Status Distinctions in Global Organizations (2013, background): “…by an explicit socialization plan, one that actively involves the organization, nonnative speakers, and even native lingua franca speakers to avoid the kind of performance detriments known to accompany conflict around symbolic hierarchies (Bendersky and Hays 2012, Bunderson and Reagans 2011).”
Lighting the way or stealing the shine? An examination of the duality in star scientists' effects on firm innovative performance (2015, background): “However, this transfer may also potentially undermine the star’s expert status (French & Raven, 1959), which may reduce the star’s motivation to train and enable others to lead research (Bunderson & Reagans, 2011).”
Collaborative learning practices: teacher and student perceived obstacles to effective student collaboration (2018, background): “The third obstacle, competence status, confirms the finding by Bunderson and Reagans (2011) showing that competence status suppresses collective learning in such a way that low-status students are inhibited in participating actively and are often underestimated, whereas high-status peers have more…”