THE EVOLUTION OF STATUS HIERARCHIES: NETWORK DYNAMICS AND STATUS DIFFERENTIATION

The existence of status differentiation is one of the most pervasive and well-documented feature of virtually every social system: social actors occupy different positions within their own status ordering. These inequalities have important consequences in terms of power, influence, visibility and ultimately opportunities opened to individual actors. However, despite the amount of work and the consistency of findings showing the relevance of status differentiation, our understanding of its causes and antecedents is still very limited. In this paper we would like to contribute to this stream of research focusing our attention on the role that different network structures play in the diffusion of relevant information about firms and how this affects their status evaluation. In particular we will explore the role that brokering vs. constrained network positions have on the formation of status rankings