Professor Scott concludes that people relatively deprived of status

Professor Scott concludes that people relatively deprived of status are not always

adversely affected by the system. Others go further and suggest that among

managers with jobs primarily defined in terms of performance, differences in

responsibilities and status may be psychologically and motivationally unimportant.

The foregoing pages indicate that the theories on the effects of status differentials are

numerous and often contradictory. Some of this confusion may be due to the

general use of the word status or to the confused manner.

in which individual people ascribe status. In industry top management has a lot of say in

establishing status levels through their power to assign VaI10US grades of the visible

symbols of status.

Power

The effects of desire for advancement on individual communication when status is the

main variable are even more clearly seen when power differentials are substituted for

prestige or status differentials. Psychologist Cohen made this substitution in a

replication of Kelly’s laboratory study. Group members were dependent upon those

above them for advancement. Significantly fewer messages critical of those in higher

power positions were passed upward by low-power members, who believed they had a

chance of promotion, than by 19w-power members who did not. Zander and his

colleagues uncovered similar fmdings in their study of professional relationships among

mental health teams. They found that low-power persons who wished either to advance

or improve on their present level communicated less freely with their superiors, and were

more likely to tell superiors, about their successes

than were low..:power per,Sons with no ambition to move

upward. .