ITS NOT WHAT YOU DO, BUT WHO YOU ARE - INFORMAL SOCIAL-CONTROL, SOCIAL-STATUS, AND NORMATIVE SERIOUSNESS IN ORGANIZATIONS

This paper analyzes the impact of managerial social status on the norm ative evaluation of managerial acts in organizational contexts. We tes t several propositions on the relationship between social status and n ormative;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 normat ively questionable managerial act. In each vignette, the perpetrator's social status was systematically manipulated in either a high or a lo w condition. The results generally support the argument that the highe r 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 organiz ations. Additionally, we discuss methodological issues related to expe rimental research on informal social control in organizations, the con sistency of our findings with those from previous studies of social co ntrol across diverse settings, potential;theoretical applications and extensions of Black's framework in organizational contexts, and practi cal implications for the implementation of corporate codes of conduct and corporate dispute resolution systems.