The Popularity Contest at Work: Who Wins, Why, and What Do They Receive?

Research on popularity in school settings has shown that being popular has advantages. In comparison to unpopular students, popular students are approached more often by others, receive more help, have positive stereotypes attached to them, and maintain more positive relationships with others.

It is likely that popularity continues to matter throughout adulthood. According to an article in the Journal of Applied Psychology (see reference at end):

The same interaction with others in groups that occurred in childhood and adolescence does not stop in adulthood. This is especially true in the workplace, where an increasing amount of work is performed by teams. Thus, the same social stratification that characterizes children’s and adolescents’ school experiences may also characterize adults’ work experiences.

Popularity is an element of social stratification, therefore, it is important to study popularity in organizations to find out why some employees are more popular than others and whether popularity influences work outcomes.

Past research has shown that popularity has been linked to job satisfaction, individual job performance, group performance, and organizational punishment.

The researchers defined popularity as "being generally accepted by one’s peers". The researchers also pointed out that when an individual was labeled as popular it was dependent on what the other individuals thought, not just the person being asked for their opinion. Individuals evaluate how others view the employee. In other words, popularity is in the eye of the beholders, the general opinion of the group about an individual is given.

Popularity was conceptualized as a function of both an employee’s personality and an employee’s situational position within his or her group.

Interactions with popular employees were perceived by coworkers as rewarding.
As a result, coworkers were motivated to direct more beneficial behaviours and less harmful behaviour toward popular employees to maintain a positive relationship.

Although the workplace is not supposed to be a popularity contest, there still are winners and losers (popular employees and unpopular employees).

The study on popularity was done with two different samples. One sample for the study included 116 undergraduate students attending a south-eastern United States university. These students were working part time in a variety of jobs like restaurant servers, sales associates, and administrative assistants. The second sample included 139 health care employees. All participants worked in this sample worked full time and
performed much of their work in teams.

In the two study populations, the popularity of employees was examined, popularity was looked at in a framework of personal and situational backgrounds and work- relevant outcomes.

The researchers also examined two important concepts OCBs and CWBs. OCBs (organizational citizenship behaviours) which were beneficial actions that bring people together, such as helping and demonstration courtesy. CWBs (counterproductive work behaviours) were harmful actions that drive people apart, such as behaving rudely and withholding information.

Both studies revealed that coworkers reliably agree on who within their work groups is popular and who is not and that an employee’s popularity is associated with the receipt of favourable treatment from those coworkers.

Although popularity was influential towards receiving OCBs, popularity was not influential in receiving CWBs. Individuals low in core self-evaluations (those who were less likely to interact with other in a positive way, displayed negative emotions such as hostility and anxiety, all of which were viewed negatively by others) resulted in lower levels of popularity, which in turn motivated coworkers to engage in CWBs.

It may be that popularity has a stronger influence on individuals’ behaviors in some organizations than in others. Superficial qualities such as popularity may matter less in organizations in which workloads and interdependencies are high, such as the health care site used for Study 2.

Why might popular employees be the recipients of such beneficial behaviours from coworkers? The researchers suggest that popular employees are perceived by others as rewarding to interact with for both emotional and instrumental reasons. Interactions with popular employees are rewarding because those employees should elicit positive emotional responses in their coworkers during encounters. In other words, popular individuals are generally "fun to be with". From a more practical standpoint, interactions with popular employees are rewarding because affiliation with such employees may indirectly increase a co-worker’s own popularity.

Thus, even those who dislike a popular employee on an interpersonal level may still benefit from maintaining a positive relationship. The rewards associated with interacting with a popular employee should trigger norms of reciprocity, resulting in behaviours that maintain positive relationships and increase the likelihood of future interaction, that is, increase OCBs and decrease CWBs.

Reference

Scott, B.A. and Judge, T.A. (2009). "The Popularity Contest at Work: Who Wins, Why, and What Do They Receive?" Journal of Applied Psychology, 94(1):20-33.

Posted by: suhujitha on 2009-05-20 14:51:47

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