Organization Science Vol. 33 No. 6 2022

Building Status in an Online Community

Inna Smirnova¹; Markus Reitzig²; Olav Sorenson³

¹ School of Information, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109 · ² Department of Accounting, Innovation, and Strategy, University of Vienna, 1090 Vienna, Austria; · ³ Anderson School of Management, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California 90095

Abstract

We argue that the actions for which actors receive recognition vary as they move up the hierarchy. When actors first enter a community, the community rewards them for their easier-to-evaluate contributions to the community. Eventually, however, as these actors rise in status, further increases in stature come increasingly from engaging in actions that are more difficult to evaluate or even impossible to judge. These dynamics produce a positive feedback loop, in which those who have already been accorded some stature garner even greater status through quality-ambiguous actions. We present evidence from Stack Overflow, an online community, and from two online experiments consistent with these expected patterns.

DOI

10.1287/orsc.2021.1559

Volume

33

Issue

6

Pages

2519-2540

Language

en

Sources

openalex crossref bibtex:phds-export.bib

Cite

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