Order in the Court: How Firm Status and Reputation Shape the Outcomes of Employment Discrimination Suits

This article explores the mechanisms by which corporate prestige produces distorted legal outcomes. Drawing on social psychological theories of status, we suggest that prestige influences audience evaluations by shaping expectations, and that its effect will differ depending on whether a firm’s blameworthiness has been firmly established. We empirically analyze a unique database of more than 500 employment discrimination suits brought between 1998 and 2008. We find that prestige is associated with a decreased likelihood of being found liable (suggesting a halo effect in assessments of blameworthiness), but with more severe punishments among organizations that are found liable (suggesting a halo tax in administrations of punishment). Our analysis allows us to reconcile two ostensibly contradictory bodies of work on how organizational prestige affects audience evaluations by showing that prestige can be both a benefit and a liability, depending on whether an organization’s blameworthiness has been firmly established

Contracts as Organizations

Empirical studies of contracts have become more common over the past decade, but the range of questions addressed by these studies is narrow, inspired primarily by economic theories that focus on the role of contracts in mitigating ex post opportunism. We contend that these economic theories do not adequately explain many commonly observed features of contracts, and we offer four organizational theories to supplement-and in some instances, perhaps, challenge-the dominant economic accounts. The purpose of this Article is threefold: first, to describe how theoretical perspectives on contracting have motivated empirical work on contracts; second, to highlight the dominant role of economic theories in framing empirical work on contracts; and third, to enrich the empirical study of contracts through application of four organizational theories: resource theory, learning theory, identity theory, and institutional theory. Outside economics literature, empirical studies of contracts are rare. Even management scholars and sociologists who generate organizational theories largely ignore contracts. Nevertheless, we assert that these organizational theories provide new lenses through which to view contracts and help us understand their multiple purposes

Contracts as Organizations

Empirical studies of contracts have become more common over the past decade, but the range of questions addressed by these studies is narrow, inspired primarily by economic theories that focus on the role of contracts in mitigating ex post opportunism. We contend that these economic theories do not adequately explain many commonly observed features of contracts, and we offer four organizational theories to supplement-and in some instances, perhaps, challenge-the dominant economic accounts. The purpose of this Article is threefold: first, to describe how theoretical perspectives on contracting have motivated empirical work on contracts; second, to highlight the dominant role of economic theories in framing empirical work on contracts; and third, to enrich the empirical study of contracts through application of four organizational theories: resource theory, learning theory, identity theory, and institutional theory. Outside economics literature, empirical studies of contracts are rare. Even management scholars and sociologists who generate organizational theories largely ignore contracts. Nevertheless, we assert that these organizational theories provide new lenses through which to view contracts and help us understand their multiple purposes

Good Firms, Good Targets: The Relationship Among Corporate Social Responsibility, Reputation, and Activist Targeting

Much research on social movements and organizations contends that there is an empirical link between activists\u27 contentious activity and corporate social responsibility (CSR; e.g., Bartley 2007; Campbell 2007; Soule 2009). Typically, we assume that activists influence firms\u27 CSR practices directly. Activists target corporations in order to pursue their social change agendas, hoping to influence those companies to change their policies or practices (King and Pearce 2010). Targeting corporations give activists a way to directly address their grievances and influences a firm to amend an undesirable practice (King and Soule 2007; Walker, Martin, and McCarthy 2008; Lenox and Eesley 2009). For example, if a retail firm regularly sources its products from manufacturers that employ sweatshop labor, activists may raise concerns about this inflammatory practice by protesting the firm boycotting it. Getting in the activists\u27 spotlight puts public pressure on firms to change their practices, especially inasmuch as movement tactics draw unwanted negative attention from the media that could influence the public\u27s perceptions about a firm\u27s level of social responsibility (King 2008, 2011; Bartley and Child 2011)

Keeping Up Appearances: Reputational Threat and Impression Management after Social Movement Boycotts

In this paper, we show that corporate targets\u27 responses to social movements are a function of impression management to counteract perceived image threats created by movement tactics. An image threat occurs when an organization‟s audiences or reference publics are given reason to doubt its reliability or claimed conformity to socially acceptable behaviors, norms and values. We examine organizational responses to image threats created by social movement boycotts. Consumer boycotts, while ostensibly trying to cause a decline in a firm\u27s sales revenue and force them to change a policy or practice, have a pronounced negative impact on their targets\u27 public images. Boycotts may elicit increased efforts by the firm to engage in positive impression management and to reinforce positive audience perceptions. We argue that firms frequently use corporate social actions as part of their image repertoire when dealing with the threat of boycotts. Corporate social actions are especially likely to be used by firms that have built their reputation around being a virtuous” company. We draw on social movement theory and organizational theory to predict the conditions in which firms will respond to boycotts with increased levels of social action. We use a dataset of boycotts that were reported in major national newspapers from 1990 to 2005 to test our hypotheses

Have You Tried This? Field-Configuring Spaces and Implementing Moral Mandates

Organizational theorists and strategy scholars are both interested in how organizations deal with ambiguity, especially in relation to implementation. This chapter examines one source of ambiguity that organizations face, which is based on their efforts to implement moral mandates. These mandates, which are related to areas such as environmental sustainability and diversity, are inherently ambiguous, as they lack a shared understanding regarding their scope and associated practices. They are also often broad and systemic and may be unclearly aligned with an organization’s strategy. Due to these challenges, in this chapter, we theorize that collective action at the field level is necessary for organizations to advance and concretize moral mandates. We examine this theorizing through the case of the implementation of sustainability in higher education. We hypothesize and find support for the idea that when an organization’s members engage in collective action at the field level, those organizations have an increased likelihood of achieving sustainability implementation. To gain insight into this field-to-organization relationship, we qualitatively examine 18 years of conversations from an online forum to develop a process model of moral mandate implementation. We theorize that collective action functions as a field-configuring space, in which actors from a variety of organizations come together to (1) refine the scope of the mandate and (2) create an implementation repertoire that actors can draw on when seeking to bring sustainability to their own organizations.</p

A Dynamic Process Model of Private Politics: Activist Targeting and Corporate Receptivity to Social Challenges

This project explores whether and how corporations become more receptive to social activist challenges over time. Drawing from social movement theory, we suggest a dynamic process through which contentious interactions lead to increased receptivity. We argue that when firms are chronically targeted by social activists, they respond defensively by adopting strategic management devices that help them better manage social issues and demonstrate their normative appropriateness. These defensive devices have the incidental effect of empowering independent monitors and increasing corporate accountability, which in turn increase a firm’s receptivity to future activist challenges. We test our theory using a unique longitudinal dataset that tracks contentious attacks and the adoption of social management devices among a population of 300 large firms from 1993 to 2009

SEEING STARS: MATTHEW EFFECTS AND STATUS BIAS IN MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL UMPIRING

Abstract This paper tests the assumption that evaluators are biased to positively evaluate high status individuals, irrespective of quality. Using unique data from Major League Baseball umpires&apos; evaluation of pitch quality, which allow us to observe the difference in a pitch&apos;s objective quality and in its perceived quality as judged by the umpire, we show that umpires are more likely to over-recognize quality by expanding the strike zone, and less likely to under-recognize quality by missing pitches in the strike zone for high status pitchers. Ambiguity and the pitcher&apos;s reputation as a &quot;control pitcher&quot; moderate the effect of status on umpire judgment. Further, we show that umpire errors resulting from status bias lead to actual performance differences for the pitcher and team. In economic sociology, the classic statement of self-reproducing advantages is Robert Merton&apos;s (1968) theory of the Matthew Effect. Underlying the Matthew Effect is an assumption that individuals are biased to positively evaluate high status individuals irrespective of quality, and that this bias, rather than actual quality differences, perpetuates inequality between high status and low status actors. Scholars in status characteristics theory have made the case that this bias results from individuals&apos; expectations and prior beliefs about competence and quality Despite the evidence emanating from the experimental research in status characteristics studies, scholars studying the Matthew Effect in real world settings have had a more difficult time demonstrating that status bias is a mechanism that leads to cumulative advantages for high status actors. Due, in part, to the empirical and conceptual challenges of establishing what the correct amount of recognition should be given to an actor&apos;s performance, past field research has been less concerned with status bias and instead ! ! 3 has focused on evidence supporting the presence of status advantages. Disentangling status and quality poses considerable empirical challenges for research based in field settings, as the very conditions that make status valuable are those that make it harder to observe actual quality. Recent studies have exploited quasi or natural experiments involving exogenous shifts in status signals uncorrelated with quality to provide a clearer picture about status advantages, i.e., high status actors outperforming low status actors While these study designs have helped isolate the causal effect of status, the unsolved challenge of establishing true quality (i.e., the amount of recognition the actor &quot;should have&quot; received) has made it difficult to document the presence and direction of status bias outside of experimental settings. Imagine a low and high status scientist receiving 10 and 100 citations for the exact same discovery. We have clear evidence of a status advantage, but to identify bias, we must be able to answer the question: is the fundamental value of a scientific discovery worth 10 citations or 100 citations? Because of this empirical challenge, non-experimental research on status and inequality can only observe the actual outcomes of evaluative processes but cannot show that the evaluative processes are actually biased by status differences. The purpose of this paper is to establish evaluative bias as a source of status-based advantages by comparing judgments made by evaluators to precise measurements of actual quality. Drawing on status characteristics theory, we argue that evaluators are biased to recognize quality in high status actors, which can at times lead to erroneous over-recognition of quality. High status structures the expectations of evaluators and leads them to &quot;see&quot; quality in high status actors, especially when a performance is ambiguous. Furthermore, because this status bias is driven by expectations, we argue that an actor&apos;s reputation (i.e., history of past performance), which also establishes high expectations, should moderate the impact of status. High status actors that are also known for certain kinds of performance will receive more favorable evaluations than high status actors who do not carry those same expectations. Thus, an actor&apos;s past performance helps to magnify future advantages gained from occupying a high status position ! ! 4 inasmuch as the expectations from an actor&apos;s reputation and status are aligned. When an actor&apos;s reputation is not well aligned with that actor&apos;s status, he or she may not benefit from the same expectations. We utilize a unique dataset of judgments made under uncertainty, coupled with precise data on quality that allow us to examine the influence that status has on the rate and direction of status bias. Major League Baseball (MLB) operates four cameras placed around each ballpark to record the locations and trajectories of pitches throughout the game. Leveraging the considerable amount of detail provided by these cameras, we compare the umpiring decision on balls and strikes with the actual location at which the pitch crossed home plate. We find that the evaluator (i.e., umpire) is more likely to recognize quality when quality is absent (i.e., calling a strike when a pitch was actually a ball) if the actor (i.e., pitcher) has high status, measured by the number of All-Star game selections. In addition, we find evidence that umpires are less likely to withhold recognition of true quality (i.e., not calling a strike for a good pitch) when the pitcher is higher in status. We further find that ambiguity and players&apos; reputations shape the effect of these status biases, consistent with the expectations mechanism. Finally, we demonstrate how this evaluative bias translates into real performance advantages for the pitcher. Status Bias in the Evaluation of Quality Our understanding of the role of status in the Matthew Effect is largely driven by egocentric considerations -e.g., high status actors get more resources, which makes it less costly to produce high quality performances -and underplays the altercentric aspects that stem from their evaluators&apos; assessments of performance. Evidence from social psychology, however, clearly indicates that status characteristics shape the cognition of actors assessing performance. Members of groups perceive high status members as being more influential, more technically competent and defer more to them ! ! 5 Research in social psychology has demonstrated that cognitive biases profoundly shape judgment and decision-making (e.g., Status characteristics theory and expectation states theory have found evidence of this bias in experimental studies (e.g., Expectations are, of course, shaped by a multitude of factors beyond status positions and characteristics. In particular, an actor&apos;s reputation-&quot;observed past behavior&quot; (Raub and Weesie 1990: 629)-is both a reflection of the expectations held by audiences, but also a key factor in determining what evaluators expect regarding the performance of an actor. The relationship between status and reputation has been a heavily debated topic in the recent literature (Stern, Dukerich, and Zajac 2013), and we argue that the two concepts are interlinked by the expectations they create in the evaluator&apos;s mind. More specifically, we propose that reputations that are consistent with status expectations will accentuate the biases associated with status, while reputations that go against expectations will diminish bias, by virtue of creating greater focus on quality. ! ! 6 Empirical Setting and Hypotheses Sports performance provides an intriguing window to assess the social dynamics of status bias as it allows you to observe objective differences in performance outcomes and, in a quasi-experimental fashion, control for other factors that should affect performance, such as skill or situational characteristics. Status is highly visible in most sports and has a considerable influence over the behavior of all actors involved. Baseball in particular is a sport that is steeped in tradition, and status distinctions such as the Hall of Fame and All-Stars have been an integral part of the sport&apos;s prominence in American culture 2 For a number of reasons, umpire decision-making is an ideal setting to observe status bias in quality evaluation. Baseball umpires&apos; evaluations of non-swinging pitches are critical to a pitcher&apos;s performance. Unlike other sports in which the officials are mainly responsible for enforcing players&apos; errors or fouls, baseball umpires are directly involved in determining the quality of a player&apos;s performance. Another reason for studying status effects on umpire decision-making is because their calls are inherently subjected to bias. Across a number of sports, officials exhibit perceptual and cognitive biases that vary their subjective assessments of player performance (e. Status-based Over-recognition of Quality Even though umpires seek to create a fair strike zone, they are also not immune from social and cognitive biases. Umpires rely on keen perception to discern the borders of the strike zone, but players may influence this perception. Ozzie Guillen, a former player and manager in the league, summarized this bias: Everybody has their own strike zone…This year they come to us and say, We&apos;re gonna call the strike zone from here to here -&apos; he sliced the air at the knees and the letters -&apos;but they have to say something every year to make us think they&apos;re working. But if Roger Clemens or Pedro Martinez or Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, is pitching, it&apos;s a strike. Jose Cruz pitching? It&apos;s a ball. The quote expresses the belief that for an identical pitch, high-status pitchers are more likely to receive a strike call than low-status pitchers. But to what extent are high-status pitchers benefitting from unfairly called strikes? While Guillen&apos;s quote implies that high-status players receive undue favoritism, it is unclear whether calling more strikes for high-status pitchers is actually a mistaken judgment or not. High status pitchers, after all, should be expected to throw more strikes. It is precisely this expectation that high status pitchers will throw strikes that leads to strike calls even when the pitch does not warrant this judgment. Greg Maddux, a renowned pitcher in the National League, is an example of how expectations can alter the judgment of the umpire. A four-time Cy Young winner and eight-time All-Star, Maddux often received favorable calls from umpires, usually by locating his pitch just outside the lower half of the zone away from the hitter. Bob Gibson, another multiple time All-Star, described the favoritism that umpires showed to Maddux: Maddux can throw a pitch three or four inches outside, and the umpire will say, &apos;Striiiike!&apos; because he&apos;s always there. If the umpires call that one, Maddux will come right back to that spot, ! ! 9 or maybe stretch it out another half-inch. His control is just that good. The umpires know who&apos;s out there, and they have a tendency to give you a break if you have good control and you&apos;re always right there where you want to be (Gibson 2009: 163). The high expectations that umpires have for high status pitchers should cause them to expand their strike zone, leading to greater over-recognition of quality. The likelihood that a low quality pitch (i.e., ball) will be seen as a high quality pitch (i.e., strike) should be greater for high-status actors. Therefore, we hypothesize that: Hypothesis 1: The higher the status of the pitcher, the more likely the umpire will mistakenly call a real ball a strike Status-based Under-Recognition of Quality Merton describes the Matthew Effect as consisting of &quot;the accruing of greater increments of recognition for particular scientific contributions to scientists of considerable repute and the withholding of such recognition from scientists who have not yet made their mark&quot; (1968, p. 56). Much of the existing sociological work on status has focused on how high status individuals receive more positive outcomes, but relatively little work has been done to affirm the second component of the Matthew Effect, i.e., the withholding of recognition due to a lack of status. Making a highly important scientific breakthrough, only to have gatekeepers in the field fail to notice, or question the value of the discovery can be a frustrating experience for any scholar, regardless of prominence. The important question from an inequality perspective is whether status can be a contributing factor to this under-recognition of quality. In the context of baseball, the under-recognition of quality manifests itself when the umpire misses a pitch that was in the strike zone, and calls it a ball. As with the over-recognition of quality, we argue that the status-based expectations held by umpires will have an impact on how likely this type of error is committed. Evaluators expect low quality performance (i.e., balls) from low-status actors, and this ! ! 10 leads to evaluators &quot;seeing&quot; poor quality. Pitches must be closer to the center of the zone for these lowstatus pitchers for umpires to see them as strikes, and this in turn means that umpires will be more likely to miss pitches that are actually strikes. In contrast, umpires expect high status pitchers to provide quality (i.e., throw strikes), and as a result, are more likely to accurately call a strike when a pitch is in the zone. Thus, Hypothesis 2: The higher the status of the pitcher, the less likely the umpire will mistakenly call a real strike a ball. Conditions that Heighten Status-Bias: Reputation and Uncertainty If expectations drive status bias, then conditions that make expectations more salient should increase the magnitude of bias. In particular, a pitcher&apos;s reputation and performance ambiguity are conditions that should moderate status bias. Sociologists define reputation as &quot;a characteristic or attribute ascribed to him by his partners,&quot; and the empirical basis of an actor&apos;s reputation is &quot;his observed past behavior&quot; (Raub and Weesie 1990: 629). Players&apos; reputations are largely determined by their performance in certain statistical categories, which summarize their past performance and are often used to forecast future performance. Performance ambiguity refers to the extent to which the quality of an actor&apos;s performance is difficult to measure. In the case of baseball pitches, performance ambiguity refers to the degree that pitches are difficult to evaluate because they are located near the edges of the strike zone. The aforementioned All-Star pitcher Greg Maddux benefitted not just from his high status, but also because he had a reputation for being a control pitcher who could accurately put the pitch in a desired location. Because umpires believed Maddux could control pitch location, they were more likely to give him the benefit of the doubt. If reputation shapes the expectations umpires have about pitch quality, one should expect that reputation will moderate the effects of status. Having a reputation for consistently locating high-quality pitches (i.e., strikes) should bias the umpires to an even greater degree. Thus, high status pitchers with reputations as &quot;control pitchers&quot; (such as Maddux) are even more likely to benefit ! ! 11 from increased over-recognition and reduced under-recognition of quality than other high status pitchers. On the other hand, if a high status pitcher has a poor reputation for being able to control the location of the pitch-a track record of not being able to throw strikes despite being able to get batters out-the pitcher&apos;s status advantage may be reduced by the umpire&apos;s expectation that the pitcher will not be able to carefully locate the ball. Taken together, we hypothesize that: Hypothesis 3: The effect that pitcher status has on the umpire&apos;s over-recognition and underrecognition will increase with the pitcher&apos;s prior performance (i.e., reputation) in throwing strikes. We should further expect that umpires assessing high status pitchers will be more generous in their recognition of quality for high status pitchers when the pitch location has greater ambiguity. Podolny and Phillips (1996) argued that high status actors tend to benefit more when there is considerable ambiguity. One reason for this is that when there is greater ambiguity evaluators will resort to their prior expectations about performance. For umpires, pitches that are close to the border of the zone are extremely difficult to judge, leading to a greater reliance on expectations. Another reason to expect an interaction effect between ambiguity and status is that if status biases the perception of quality, then extreme and unambiguous demonstrations of quality are more likely to override these biases and lead to more accurate judgments. 5 All in all, we expect: Hypothesis 4: The effect that pitcher status has on the umpire&apos;s over-recognition and underrecognition will increase when the pitch is located closer to the border of the strike zone. We obtained these data about each pitch and at-bat from MLB Gameday, a service that collects and stores data about each pitch from every game played during the regular season, including data about pitch location estimated by Pitch f/x. The unit of analysis is the pitch itself, yet we also merged data about the at-bat, player characteristics, and situational characteristics from other publicly available sources including Baseball Databank, Retrosheet, and Fangraphs in order to account for contextual determinants&apos; of each pitch. Our data set included 756,848 observations (i.e., pitches), which took place over 313,774 Data and Methods ! ! at-bats and 4,914 games. Dependent variable Our dependent variable is the occurrence of an umpire mistake. This could take place in two different ways. An umpire over-recognizes quality by mistakenly calling an actual ball a strike. 6 This is equivalent to a Type I error, false positive, or error of commission. The second type of mistake happens when an umpire under-recognizes quality when he mistakenly calls an actual strike a ball. This is also known as a Type II error, false negative, or error of omission. To operationalize these errors we used data about the location of each pitch and compared those locations against the strike zone. The Pitch f/x system calculates both the location of the pitch as it crosses the plate and the size of the strike zone. To ensure accuracy in their estimates, the Pitch f/x system takes twenty-five pictures of the ball after it leaves the pitcher&apos;s hand until it hits the catcher&apos;s glove. Thus, the system is not only able to determine the location of the pitch as it crosses the plate, but it also records the velocity, movement, and trajectory of the pitch. For our purposes, we are only interested in the location, although we also use information about movement and velocity to create control variables for the analysis. ! ! 13 A pitch varies in its location relative to the strike zone both vertically and horizontally. To count as an actual strike, a pitch must be located both vertically and horizontally inside the strike zone. To estimate vertical location relative to the strike zone, we compared the height of the pitch as it crosses the plate (labeled pz in the Pitch f/x data) with the upper and lower barriers of the strike zone, also measured in feet (labeled sz_top and sz_bottom, respectively). If the height of the pitch is either lower than the bottom of the strike zone or higher than the top of the strike zone, then the pitch is objectively a ball. To estimate horizontal location relative to the strike zone, we compared the distance of the pitch from the middle of the plate, measured in feet, from the outer boundaries of the strike zone (labeled px in the Pitch f/x data). Any pitch that is more than .83 feet from the middle of the plate is objectively a ball. For example, if a strike zone&apos;s upper bound is 3.6 and its lower bound is 1.4, and the height of the pitch is 2 and the horizontal location is .05, the pitch would objectively be a strike. [ Independent variable The main independent variable in our analysis is the status of the pitcher. Although we include the batter&apos;s status in later analyses, we focus on the status of the pitcher since the umpire is evaluating the ! ! 14 performance of the pitcher, and not the batter, when assessing whether a pitch is a ball or a strike. We measure status using a pitcher&apos;s number of All-Star appearances in prior years. All-Star appearances are an adequate measure of status in professional baseball for a number of reasons. Status refers to a privileged position of esteem and distinction that elevates one actor above another Although in theory All-Stars are chosen based on the players&apos; performance on the field that year, other factors also account for who is actually chosen. Not all teams receive as much media coverage, have the same level of national visibility, or have the same amount of post-season success, leading to differential valuation of players&apos; abilities. 7 But putting aside team differences, as is true with all measures of status, All-Star selection is also highly inertial and prone to self-reproduction. Once a player has established himself as an All-Star, he is more likely to be chosen in the future. &quot;Perennial All-Stars,&quot; which included high status pitchers like Roger Clemens and Roy Halladay, do not have to match the performance of their younger peers to make the All-Star team again. In contrast, players who have never ! ! 15 been Al

Taking Stock and Looking Ahead

F.G.A. de Bakker, F. den Hond, B.G. King, K. Weber (2013), Social Movements, Civil Society and Corporations: Taking Stock and Looking Ahead, Organization Studies Vol.34, No.3, pp.573-593 The relationships between social movements and civil society on the one hand, and the corporate world on the other hand, are often shaped by conflict over the domination of economic, cultural and social life. How this conflict plays out, in current as well as in historical times and places, is the central question that unites the papers in this special issue. In this essay, we review the differences and points of contact between the study of social movements, civil society and corporations, and offer an agenda for future research at this intersection that also frames the papers in the special issue. We suggest that three research areas are becoming increasingly important: the blurring of the three empirical domains and corresponding opportunities for theoretical integration, the institutional and cultural embeddedness of strategic interaction processes between agents, and the consequences of contestation and collaboration. The papers in this special issue are introduced in how they speak to these questions

Great Successes and Great Failures: The Impact of Project Leader Status on Project Performance and Performance Extremeness

Research supporting the Matthew effect demonstrates that high-status actors experience performance benefits due to increased recognition of their work and greater opportunities and resources, but recent research also indicates that high-status actors face a greater risk of negative performance evaluations. In this paper, we seek to contribute to the status literature by reconciling these findings and ask: To what extent does status influence heterogeneity in performance evaluations? We explore how project leader status affects the performance of innovation projects in the video game industry. We hypothesize that there is an inverted U-shaped relationship between project leader status and project performance, and a positive relationship between project leader status and performance extremeness (i.e., performance variation). In order to test our hypotheses, we analysed the performance of video game projects and computed the status of project leaders by applying a project affiliation social network analysis. We find that an intermediate level of status – neither too much nor too little – is positively associated with average project performance. We also reveal more extreme performance effects for high-status leaders: While some achieve superior project performance, others experience significant project failures. We, therefore, provide important theoretical and practical insights regarding how status affects the implementation of innovations. We also discuss the implications of these findings for the literature on middle-status conformity