Organizations differ in the extent to which they emphasize the importance of status, yet most extant research on the role of status at work has utilized a limited view of status as merely a matter of a person’s status rank. In contrast, we examine people’s perceptions of the extent to which having status matters in their work context and explore the behavioral implications of such perceptions. We offer a new construct, perceived status importance, defined as employees’ subjective assessment of the degree to which people within their organization are preoccupied with status. Relying on social comparison theory, we propose that higher perceived status importance triggers envy, which leads to interpersonal deviance. Across three studies, using multiwave survey and experimental designs, we find support for these relationships. We also find support for the mitigating influence of core self-evaluations on the perceived status importance—envy relationship. Implications are discussed.

组织在强调地位重要性的程度上各不相同，但大多数现存的关于地位在工作中的作用的研究都利用了一种有限的观点，将地位仅仅视为一个人地位等级的问题。相比之下，我们研究了人们对在工作环境中地位重要程度的看法，并探讨了这种看法的行为影响。我们提供了一个新的结构，感知地位的重要性，定义为员工对其组织内人员对地位的关注程度的主观评估。依靠社会比较理论，我们提出较高的感知地位重要性会引发嫉妒，从而导致人际偏差。在三项研究中，使用多波调查和实验设计，我们找到了对这些关系的支持。我们还发现支持核心自我评价对感知地位重要性——嫉妒关系的减轻影响。讨论了影响。