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Purpose: This chapter applies and integrates theories of status and stigma to better understand the mechanisms that drive the combined effects of the status of race and the stigma of criminal record in the context of the labor market. Using these social psychological theories of status and stigma, I propose and test two potential mechanisms – moral expectations and performance expectations – that might explain the compound or “double disadvantage” observed among Black job seekers with a criminal record. Within this synthetic application, I also seek to bridge and extend the literatures on status and stigma processes.

Methodology/Approach: To examine the relationship between race and criminal record and the potential mediating role of moral and performance expectations, I use a laboratory experiment consisting of a hiring scenario where participants evaluate mock, but ostensibly real job applicants who vary on the characteristics of interest. Participant evaluations consist of rankings along a series moral and performance-related scales as well as a set of workplace outcomes.

Findings: Findings suggest that race and criminal record aggregate to intensify disadvantage, with Black applicants who have a criminal record faring worse than other applicants on each workplace outcome. Results also support moral expectations, but not performance expectations, as a key mechanism driving this status-stigma intensification process.

Implications: This study has important implications for studies of race, crime, and employment as well as for theories of status and stigma. Future research should attend more closely to the role of perceived morality both in substantive work on race and criminal record and in bridging work on status and stigma processes. Pinpointing moral expectations as a mechanism of bias related to race and criminal record also opens new avenues for targeted intervention efforts.

This chapter seeks to theoretically answer the question: under which circumstances do groups succeed under female leadership? Further, is it possible to conceptualize the engineering of groups such that group success under female leadership is a likely outcome?

In this chapter, I draw on identity control theory (Burke & Stets, 2009; Stets & Burke, 2005) and role congruity theory (Eagly, 2003) to discuss the implications for female leaders of the discrepancy between the female gender identity and the leader identity. Next, I draw upon status characteristics theory (Berger et al., 1972) to further illustrate the negative consequences of being a female leader. Then, drawing on group processes research, I make the explicit link between the negative expectations for female leaders on group performance through the endorsement of group members. Finally, I utilize innovative research using institutionalization of female leadership to propose a possible solution for improving group performance.

I present nine testable hypotheses ready for empirical test.

I propose that training materials underscoring the skills that females have as leaders can subvert the development of conflictual expectations facing female leaders, thus removing the deleterious effects on group performance. That is, if group members receive training that emphasizes the competencies and skills women bring to the group’s task and to the leadership role, then group performance will not be threatened.

Expectation states theories linking status and behavior enhance our understanding of how social structures organize behavior in a variety of social settings. Efforts to extend behavioral explanations anchored in state organizing processes based on emotions and sentiments have proceeded slowly. This chapter presents a theory of how emotions organize observable power and prestige orders in groups. Emotions are conceptualized as transitory, intense expressions of positive and negative affect communicated from one actor to another by interaction cues. These cues become the basis of long-lasting sentiments conceptualized as liking and disliking for other actors. Sentiments become the foundation for differentiated social structures and hence, performance expectations. This chapter describes how such a process may occur and develops theoretical principles that link emotions, sentiments, and performance expectations.

The importance of alignment between users’ and providers’ expectations of accounting services has long been recognized as paramount in the auditing profession. The importance of expectations, and especially expectations gaps, is even more compelling for new assurance services, where the importance of marketing the service is pronounced. This paper develops the Assurance Gaps Model, which describes expectations gaps in general, defining these holistic differences between users’ and providers’ perceptions of assurance services as assurance gaps. The model suggests that assurance gaps really have a number of components – expectations, evaluations of performance and disconfirmation – all of which impact users’ satisfaction with the service. The magnitude of each of these components, as well as the emphasis placed on each one, is important in describing the nature of the gap. This model is consistent with previous research in auditing as well as a large body of research in marketing studying expectations and the satisfaction process (Oliver, 1997). To illustrate potential applications of the Assurance Gaps Model, hypotheses are developed and tested using an online simulation of the ElderCare assurance service proposed by the AICPA/CICA. Results indicate that users and providers demonstrate similar magnitude of each of the factors in the model, but differ in that users emphasize performance in forming satisfaction judgments while providers emphasize expectations. The study and results illustrate the usefulness of the model for performing detailed analysis of assurance gaps and for suggesting appropriate courses of action to manage the factors that contribute to them.

This paper works at the intersections of affect control theory, expectation states theory, and social influence network theory. First, we introduce social influence network theory into affect control theory. We show how an influence network may emerge from the pattern of interpersonal sentiments in a group and how the fundamental sentiments that are at the core of affect control theory (dealing with the evaluation, potency, and activity of self and others) may be modified by interpersonal influences. Second, we bring affect control theory and social influence network theory to bear on expectation states theory. In a task-oriented group, where persons’ performance expectations may be a major basis of their interpersonal influence, we argue that persons’ fundamental sentiments may mediate effects of status characteristics on group members’ performance expectations. Based on the linkage of fundamental sentiments and interpersonal influence, we develop an account of the formation of influence networks in groups that is applicable to both status homogeneous and status heterogeneous groups of any size, whether or not they are completely connected, and that is not restricted in scope to task-oriented groups.

We survey and organize over fifty years of theoretical research on status and expectation state processes. After defining some key terms in this theoretical approach, we briefly describe theories and branches in the program.

We also focus on a few theories that illustrate distinct patterns of theory growth, using them to show the variety of ways in which the research program has grown.

The program structure developed from a single set of theories on development and maintenance of group inequality in the 1960s to six interrelated branches by 1988. Between 1988 and today, the overall structure has grown to total 19 different branches. We briefly describe each branch, identifying over 200 resources for the further study of these branches.

Although the various branches share key concepts and processes, they have been developed by different researchers, in a variety of settings from laboratories to schools to business organizations. Second, we outline some important issues for further research in some of the branches. Third, we emphasize the value of developing new research methods for testing and applying the theories.

These theories have been used to explain phenomena of gender, racial, and ethnic inequality among others, and for understanding some cases of personality attributions, deviance and control processes, and application of double standards in hiring.

Status and expectation state processes often operate to produce invidious social inequalities. Understanding these processes can enable social scientists to devise more effective interventions to reduce these inequalities.

Status and expectation state processes occupy a significant segment of research into group processes. This chapter provides an authoritative overview of ideas in the program, what is known, and what remains to be discovered.

Basic science, sometimes called “curiosity-driven research” at the National Science Foundation and other places, starts with a question that somehow stays in the mind, nagging for an answer. Such questions really are “puzzles”; they arise in an intellectual field or context, asking someone to fit pieces to an improving but incomplete picture of the social world. What makes a worthwhile puzzle is a missing part in understanding the picture, or a new piece of knowledge that does not seem to fit among other parts. Sometimes creative theorists can imagine a solution to one of the holes in the puzzle. If they are also empirical scientists, they devise ways to get evidence bearing on their ideas, and some of those ideas survive to give more complete and detailed pictures of the world. This chapter is the story of puzzles and provisional solutions to them, developed by dozens of men and women investigating status processes and status structures, using a coherent perspective, for over half a century.¹

This chapter focuses on the implications of both the descriptive and prescriptive aspects of gender stereotypes for women in the workplace. Using the Lack of Fit model, we review how performance expectations deriving from descriptive gender stereotypes (i.e., what women are like) can impede women's career progress. We then identify organizational conditions that may weaken the influence of these expectations. In addition, we discuss how prescriptive gender stereotypes (i.e., what women should be like) promote sex bias by creating norms that, when not followed, induce disapproval and social penalties for women. We then review recent research exploring the conditions under which women experience penalties for direct, or inferred, prescriptive norm violations.

Gender inequality in paid work persists, in the form of a gender wage gap, occupational sex segregation and a “glass ceiling” for women, despite substantial institutional change in recent decades. Two classes of explanations that have been offered as partial explanations of persistent gender inequality include economic theories of statistical discrimination and social psychological theories of status-based discrimination. Despite the fact that the two theories offer explanations for the same phenomena, little effort has been made to compare them, and practitioners of one theory are often unfamiliar with the other. In this article, we assess both theories. We argue that the principal difference between the two theories lies in the mechanism by which discrimination takes place: discrimination in statistical models derives from an informational bias, while discrimination in status models derives from a cognitive bias. We also consider empirical assessments of both explanations, and find that while research has generally been more supportive of status theories than statistical theories, statistical theories have been more readily evoked as explanations for gender inequalities in the paid labor market. We argue that status theories could be more readily applied to understanding gender inequality by adopting the broader conception of performance favored by statistical discrimination theories. The goal is to build on the strong empirical base of status characteristic theory, but draw on statistical discrimination theories to extend its ability to explain macro level gender inequalities.

Purpose – The integration of librarians and technologists to deliver information services represents a new and costly organizational challenge for many library administrators. To understand how to control the costs of integration, this study uses structural contingency theory to study the coordination of librarians and technologists within the information commons.

Design/methodology/approach – This study tests the structural contingency theory expectation that an organization will achieve higher levels of performance when there is a positive relationship between the degree of workflow interdependence and the complexity of coordinative structures necessary to integrate these workflows. This expectation was tested by (a) identifying and collecting a sample of information common; (b) developing and validating survey instruments to test the proposition; and (c) quantitatively analyzing the data to test the proposed contingency theory relationship.

Findings – The contingency theory expectations were confirmed by finding both a positive relationship between coordination and interdependence and a positive relationship between perceptions of performance and degree of congruency between interdependence and coordination.

Limitations – The findings of this study are limited to both the context of an information common and the structures tested. Future research should seek to both broaden the context in which these findings are applicable, and test additional structural relationships as proposed by contingency theory

Practical implications – This study contributes to the library profession in a number of ways. First, it suggests that managers can improve IC performance by matching coordination structures to the degree of interdependence. For instance, when librarians and technologists are strictly co-located, managers should coordinate workflows using less resource-intensive policies rather than meetings. Second, the instruments developed in this study will improve the library manager's ability to measure and report unit interdependence and coordination in a valid and reliable manner. Lastly, it also contributes to the study of structural contingency theory by presenting one of the first empirical confirmations of a positive relationship between interdependence and coordination.

Originality/value – This study represents one of the first empirical confirmations of the structural contingency theory expectations of both a positive relationship between workflow interdependence and coordination, and a positive relationship between performance and coordination's fit to workflow interdependence. These findings are of value to both organizational theorists and to administrators of information commons.