ABSTRACT
People today may work among thousands of strangers and yet have nothing to do with any of them outside the workplace. The private lives of co-workers usually remain out of sight. When people with unclear or fractured identities enter the workplace, they can come to imagine that they are members of the organization—not just employees. In modern organizations, status is a bit more problematic. The structure of the organization forces people to match their self-evaluation with the evaluations of their colleagues and hierarchical superiors, a procedure that is institutionalized in the excruciating ritual of the "annual review". The decisions about staffing and promotion that are made in large organizations often have little to do with ability. Influence and leadership were functions of merit. There are, of course, emergent leaders in hierarchical organizations, and they can play important roles, but their leadership is usually indirect and often goes unacknowledged. Slowly jobs morphed from opportunity to oppression.
