Journal
SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY
Volume 30, Issue 3, Pages 149-166Publisher
SAGE PUBLICATIONS INC
DOI: 10.1177/0735275112457912
Keywords
status; collective action; coordination; hierarchy; public goods
Categories
Funding
- Direct For Social, Behav & Economic Scie
- Divn Of Social and Economic Sciences [1058236] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Most work on collective action assumes that group members are undifferentiated by status, or standing, in the group. Yet such undifferentiated groups are rare, if they exist at all. Here we extend an existing sociological research program to address how extant status hierarchies help organize collective actions by coordinating how much and when group members should contribute to group efforts. We outline three theoretically derived predictions of how status hierarchies organize patterns of behavior to produce larger public goods. We review existing evidence relevant to two of the three hypotheses and present results from a preliminary experimental test of the third. Findings are consistent with the model. The tendency of these dynamics to lead status-differentiated groups to produce larger public goods may help explain the ubiquity of hierarchy in groups, despite the often negative effects of status inequalities for many group members.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available