How and When Can Employees with Status Motivation Attain Their Status in a Team? The Roles of Ingratiation, OCBI, and Procedural Justice Climate

Abstract

Despite research having identified two major routes to status: dominance and competence, both routes seem inadequate to capture the “whole picture” of how people get ahead in organizations. Building on social exchange theory and social status literature, we identify two novel paths and their important boundary conditions by which employees with status motivation can achieve status. Specifically, we propose that employees with status motivation obtain status (operationalized as other-perceived status and promotability) by engaging in ingratiation toward their supervisors and organizational citizenship behavior directed toward individuals. In addition, these relationships are weakened in teams where the procedural justice climate is high. Results from four studies conducted in China and the United States, which consist of three experiments (Study 1: N = 240; Study 2: N = 180; Study 4: N = 309) and one field study of 427 employees from 74 teams (Study 3), provide support for most of the propositions we proposed. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.