ABSTRACT
Membership in any enduring group or social structure inevitably involves passage from status to status. When positional mobility follows known sequences, different motivations frequently become appropriate at each successive status. Slips are inevitable, for although the new status may be fully granted, proper situational identities may be temporarily forgotten to everyone's embarrassment. The problems attending the speed of status-passage are merely part of the larger organizational problem of recruiting members for various posts. When occupancy of a status is accompanied by acute strain, there is an enhanced possibility that the regular or institutionalized sequence of steps will be abandoned. When organizations and institutions are expanding, forming, disintegrating, and the personal lives of their members are rendered more tortuous and uncertain and at the same time more dangerous and more exciting. However, the movement from status to status, as well as the frustration of having to remain unwillingly in a status, sets conditions for the change and development of identities.
