THE IMPORTANCE OF STATUS

I am dedicating a series of postings to the concept or element of an association I call an entity. An entity is one individual member of an association. An entity can be a person or a group. Entities, in joining an association, become federated with the other entities making up the association by agreeing to the provisions of a covenant or compact. For example, each citizen of the United States is federated with all other citizens under the provisions of the compact, the United States Constitution. By the way, so are the states, such as New York and Florida. All entities in an association have equal standing; that is, each is subject to the same rules and opportunities within the association – at least to the degree the association is a true federation. But that does not mean all members enjoy the same status, and this posting is dedicated to delineating what a variance of that attribute means.

In its most simple terms, status is a reflection of how much leadership standing a particular entity either has or is thought to have. In terms of other entities, there is deference to those who have higher status and this deference takes the form of respect and willingness to do the bidding of those who hold higher status. Effective leadership might even solicit adulation. In a true federalist union, such deference reflects legitimate power relations in which leadership is exercised to further the aims and goals of the association. In short, status, effectively used, assists the association in fulfilling its functions within its environment. Status relates to the command structure within the association, and clear and legitimate hierarchies allow the association to be efficient and productive. That is true in any arrangement, but in a federalist arrangement, the tendency should be toward more horizontal organizational structures and less vertical ones. That is, all members in the federated union should be allowed and encouraged to participate in the different levels of decision-making that the group conducts.

There is an entire literature dedicated to these themes in the field of organizational studies. Current business thinking, particularly theorizing that relates to high tech industries, has promoted this more, but limited, federated way of defining manager-subordinate relations at the workplace. Incorporating the theoretical thinking of the developmental psychologist, Abraham Maslow, and his theory of “hierarchy of needs,” management is encouraged to institute policies that have workers actively take ownership over the firm's methods of producing and marketing whatever the firm's product or service is. This is mainly done by sharing, to the degree that it is reasonable, decision-making authority and responsibility. Names in this literature that have garnered a certain level of notoriety are Douglas McGregor (of Theory X and Y fame) and W. Edwards Deming (of Japanese organizational theory fame – see the work of William Ouchi). This whole trend in organizational theory can be traced, in this country, back to the 1960s and has been, I believe, mostly motivated in our country by the promotion of individualism. The concern seems to be how to make individuals self-actualizing workers.

This development, for the most part, has been welcomed as it replaced a total “top-down” approach that was bolstered by the work of Frederick Winslow Taylor and, later, by the systems approach (Elton Mayo). Here, motivational studies were highly influenced by modified behavioral psychology. Workers, under these views, were seen as being able to be manipulated in order to derive from them the highest possible levels of efficient and productive work output. The more modern approaches of McGregor and Ouchi have been a reaction to those theories, but how truly workers' roles are seen as federated ones with fellow workers and management is questionable.

The whole subject field of organizational studies is a complicated one. But my modest insights are more in line with what happens in schools. There, school reform can be highly advanced – I would say, can only have a chance – if school managements institute truly federated arrangements. Factors that need to be addressed are vision, trust, levels of agreement, professional practice and knowledge, institutional culture, norms, sense of morality, affect, and status allocation. From my experience – and I will concede that the variance between different sorts of organizations is quite extensive – schools offer significant challenges in instituting those changes that will lead to meaningful improvements. Status is very important to professional workers. Professionalism, as it has come to be understood in our modern world, indicates a way of making a living that entails high degrees of skills and trust among said workers and said workers and the general population. In both of these concerns, schools do not exhibit ideal levels of recognized proficiency. Whether or not teachers and other educators are worthy of the status of a professional is not my concern here. What is my concern is the lack of a recognized proficiency among our citizenry and the lack of resulting trust that hinders schools from meeting the expectations we might have of them. The whole situation demonstrates the importance of status and how a deficient system of allocating status can make an institution dysfunctional.

Whichever system of status allocation a particular organization adopts, it should be one that promotes not only trust, although trust is essential, but an affect of communality among the members of the arrangement. While I cannot give you any sense of a level or an amount of communality that is needed, one telling sign is: do the workers, group members, citizens of a particular populace, genuinely care what the answer to the question “how are you?” is? To the degree that they care is the degree to which a collective enjoys community among its members or citizens. As such, when the degree is sufficient, the association has a baseline level of status that each member enjoys and relishes. He or she is much more apt to truly want to pursue the common goals and aims of that association. Therefore, an organization or a society that wants to address its proficiency in meeting its self defined goals and aims – its vision of perfection – needs to address the role of status among its members.