Status concerns in top executive hiring: the case of U.S. higher education

Abstract

While organizational status is an important concern in organization and management literature, its effect in top executive hiring has not been examined yet. Drawing on the decision-making theory of organizations, this research examines top executive hiring as a strategic decision that an organization makes when entering relationships with other organizations. It argues that organizations are possibly motivated to maintain their existing status and, more importantly, to achieve higher status and to avoid lower status. Taking decision-making approach, this research theoretically and empirically develops a model of status consciousness that attempts to explain under what circumstances status concerns are more or less important for interorganizational relation formation decisions. An analysis of presidential hiring in U.S. colleges and universities from 1987 to 2006 was used to test the empirical patterns in the maintaining and building of organizational status. In so doing, this research makes a case for the effect of organizational status in the formation of interorganizational relationships.