Prestige Orientation and Reconciliation in the Workplace

Human social hierarchies comprise two distinct bases of status: dominance and prestige. One can acquire high social status not only by physically intimidating others (dominance) but also by providing information goods to others (prestige). Given that prestige-oriented individuals need to be liked and accepted by others, we hypothesized that they would be more eager to reconcile with their coworkers when they were involved in interpersonal conflicts in their workplaces. Study 1 asked 487 respondents about their conciliatory behaviors in response to workplace conflicts. Prestige-oriented individuals were more apologetic (when they hurt someone in their workplace) and forgiving (when they were hurt by someone). However, analyses of a subsample of respondents who had conflicts with their followers showed that organizational leaders’ prestige orientation was associated only with forgiveness but not with apologetic behavior. Study 2 collected comparable data from 678 organizational leaders. Study 2 confirmed the results of the subsample analysis of Study 1. Compared with leaders low in prestige orientation, leaders high in prestige orientation were more likely to forgive their subordinates; however, they were no more likely to apologize to their subordinates.