Social Power, Social Status and Perceptual Similarity of Workplace Victimization: A Social Network Analysis of Stratification

Abstract

This article develops and tests a comprehensive social structural model of social power and status effects on victimization in organizations. Victimization focuses on the extent to which individuals perceive themselves to be the target of negative or aggressive behaviors by others. The conceptual framework elucidates how formal and informal status differences associated with access to social powers in three different social networks are related to victimization perceptions. Using dyads as the unit of analysis in a sample of government employees, we find that asymmetric relationships between two actors in the friendship and advice networks, and structural equivalence in the advice and dislike networks are associated with perceptual agreement. The results suggest that stratification in a social system may create the context in which victimization thrives because it affects access to informal forms of social power.