Middle-status conformity revisited: The interplay between achieved and ascribed status

Decisions about conforming to or deviating from conventional practices in a field are an important concern of organization and management theory. The position that actors occupy in the status hierarchy has been shown to be an important determinant of these decisions. The dominant hypothesis, known as “middle-status conformity,” posits that middle-status actors are more likely to conform to conventional practices than high- and low-status actors do. We challenge this hypothesis by revisiting its fundamental assumptions and developing a theory according to which actors’ propensity to conform based on their achieved status further depends on the ascribed status that they inherit from their social group. Specifically, we propose that middle-status conformity applies only to actors who have a sense of security, based on their high ascribed status. Regarding actors with low ascribed status, we propose that high- and low-status actors show greater conformity than middle-status actors. We test our hypotheses using data from the U.S. symphony orchestras from 1918 to 1969.