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Communication and Group Culture 145

occupation, personal fame, or position in the group’s parent organization. For exam-
ple, a committee composed of a company CEO, the vice president of manufacturing,
a senior accountant, two employees from the marketing division, and a college student
intern in marketing will initially have that order of ascribed status. However, earned
status is achieved on the basis of a member’s individual contributions to the group. Earned Status
The intern who conducts considerable research on behalf of the group and is a key Status earned by a
contributor will have higher-earned status than the senior accountant who completes member’s valued
no assignments. contributions to the
Although status hierarchies are affected by ascribed characteristics such as sex group, such as
and race, they are also affected by the type of task. Alexander et al. found that working hard for the
open-structured tasks, wherein several solutions are possible and group members are group, providing
encouraged to develop an array of options, give lower-status members more opportu- needed expertise,
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nities to break through the status barriers. Such tasks encourage divergent thinking being especially
and allow lower-status members to provide indirect influence regarding the solutions. communicatively
competent, and so
Moreover, members need to be careful about violating the group’s status hierarchy. forth.
Youngreen and Moore found that members who do not behave according to their
status in the group (e.g., a high-status member who acts in a deferential or noncom-
mittal way) violates the group’s unstated moral code and may lose status and influence
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in their groups. Furthermore, once a member has lost status, it can be difficult to
regain it.
One of the assumed benefits of computer-mediated communication (CMC) in a
group is that status differences are minimized because in many CMC groups, mem-
bers remain anonymous; thus status cues aren’t visible. However, Scott’s review of
communication technology and its effects questions this assumption. For one thing,
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in organizational groups members are not anonymous—they know with whom they
work. Influence from the face-to-face context carries over to the CMC context. True
anonymity, however, can minimize ascribed-status social cues.
Ideally, a group’s relationships and relative status differences are somewhat flexi-
ble so that different members can become more influential as their particular knowl-
edge and skills are pertinent to the issues or problems facing the group at any point in
time. Wood found that paying undue attention to ascribed status differences nega-
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tively affected a group’s ability to accomplish its task. Lower status, however, does
not mean of little value. Lower-status members are not necessarily unhappy in the
group; cohesive groups value the contributions of each member, and each member
knows it. Often, everyone in the group might follow the lead of a normally quiet,
low-status person who seems to have just the information or ability the group most
needs at a given moment. That person might later slip back into a more usual low-
profile position, but the contribution will have been noted and appreciated.
Recent research by Kahn and her associates suggests that high- and low-status
individuals differ in their willingness to support a low-status member who confronts
another group member. In these two experiments, men were considered high status
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and women low status. Men were more supportive if a woman confronted a sexist
remark that was described as rare. In contrast, women were more supportive when a
woman confronted sexism that was described as pervasive. Both responses were likely
driven by personal impression management. Men saw challenges to other men’s

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