Creating a More Inclusive and Sustainable Future
Should I Stand Up for My Mistreated Colleague? When and Why High-Status Team Members Stand Up for Their Coworkers
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, January 2026
Supervisory mistreatment has adverse consequences for its victims. Coworkers, as observers, can shape victims’ experiences by standing up for them. Yet doing so entails the risk of supervisory retaliation. High-status coworkers should be well-positioned to stand up for victims as they have greater social capital at work. However, such retaliation risks may loom large for them because they are highly motivated to protect what they have. Thus, prior research reports both positive and negative links between status markers and various forms of standing up. We suggest that these inconclusive findings stem from examining individuals’ status only within a single domain (e.g., work) while neglecting how their standing in other groups may shape their experiences in that focal domain. Building on status inconsistency theory (Lenski, 1954) and the concept of status portfolios (Fernandes et al., 2021), we argue that status variance (i.e., inconsistency of status across groups) shapes how high-status employees react to mistreatment. Specifically, we hypothesize that high-status employees with high (compared to low) status variance will experience greater fear of retaliation and reduced willingness to stand up. We argue that this occurs because they perceive their status portfolios as unstable and become more vigilant in protecting their elevated standing at work. Four complementary studies provided support for our hypotheses. We discuss implications for research on bystander intervention, supervisory mistreatment, and status.
Gencay, Oguz, PhD., Bilkent University., Derfler-Rozin, Rellie, PhD. University of Maryland, Arman, Gamze, UWE Bristol
The Influential Solo Consumer: When Engaging in Activities Alone (vs. Accompanied) Increases the Impact of Recommendations
Journal of Marketing Research
Information about the social context of consumption is often seen on review websites or social media when consumers sharing word-of-mouth about an experience indicate whether they engaged in the activity solo or with companions. Across a secondary dataset scraped from Tripadvisor.com, five main experiments, and one supplemental experiment, the current research finds that individuals who engage in consumption activities alone can be a more influential source of recommendations than people who engage in these same activities with others. The results support an attribution-based process, such that people are more likely to attribute a solo (vs. accompanied) review to the quality of the activity itself, leading the solo (vs. accompanied) person’s review to be particularly influential. Further, the studies test the theorizing that perceived interest on the part of the solo (vs. accompanied) consumer leads to the stronger attribution to quality, and therefore that additional cues to intrinsic interest (e.g., presence of a cue to intrinsic or extrinsic motivation) attenuate the influence of solo (vs. accompanied) word-of-mouth. This work has theoretical and managerial relevance for those who seek to understand how the social context of consumption influences other consumers.
Rebecca Ratner, Dean's Professor of Marketing, Robert H. Smith School of Business; Yuechen Wu, assistant professor, Spears School of Business, Oklahoma State