One of the great unanswered questions in governance research is, Why do directors serve on boards? Drawing on self-determination theory, a theory of total motivation that combines both intrinsic and extrinsic motivations, we find that the prestige associated with being a director, the ability to have influence, and identification with the director role make directors less likely to exit; howeve...

Modest support was found for the "Dr. Fox Phenomenon": Management scientists gain prestige by unintelligible writing. A positive correlation (+0.7) was found between the prestige of 10 management journals and their "fog indices" (reading difficulty). Furthermore, 32 faculty members were asked to rate the prestige of four passages from management journals. The content of the passages was held co...

OBJECTIVES The objective of this study was to investigate 2 key dimensions of socioeconomic status (SES)-prestige and resources-and their associations with immune, behavioral, and clinical outcomes in childhood asthma. METHODS Children ages 9 to 17 years with a physician's diagnosis of asthma (N = 150), and one of their parents participated in this study. Children and parents completed interv...

The pursuit of social rank is a recurrent and pervasive challenge faced by individuals in all human societies. Yet, the precise means through which individuals compete for social standing remains unclear. In 2 studies, we investigated the impact of 2 fundamental strategies-Dominance (the use of force and intimidation to induce fear) and Prestige (the sharing of expertise or know-how to gain res...

The statement that individuals care for status and for their position within a hierarchy has been subject to sparse economic analysis. I check this assertion by analyzing wages and status in the labor market. The following questions are addressed: Are individuals willing to pay for status in the labor market? Is a high position in a large ̄rm more valued than a similarly high position in a smal...

How do consumers evaluate the prestige of a person or an object? This paper proposes an empirical exploration of this question from a symbolic interactionist point of view. On the basis of in-depth interviews with consumers, a conceptual model is proposed. The findings highlight the key role of (1) the perception of unique human achievement; (2) the interpretation of socially shared symbols and...