Third parties and status position: How the characteristics of status systems matter

For organizations, as for individuals, status position governs access to a variety of valued rewards. To uncover the causes of status position, recent research has focused on the relationship between the attributes of individual organizations and their standing in a status hierarchy. Although this research has made valuable contributions to our understanding of both the consequences of status to organizations and the determinants of status, its emphasis on organizational attributes has not addressed how the characteristics of status systems shape the nature and distribution of these positions. Drawing on data from 134 in-depth interviews with law school administrators and faculty, this article investigates how variations in the characteristics of status systems influence status processes. Concentrating on the theoretically underdeveloped role that third parties play in status systems, I examine how a third party change – the emergence and increasing popularity of the U.S. News and World Report’s law school rankings – has had powerful effects on the shape of the status hierarchy of legal education as well as the values that underlie this hierarchy. These changes have, in turn, transformed the landscape of positions that are available to actors, the process by which these positions are allocated among various actors, and the bases upon which this allocation is carried out.