Social position and shared knowledge: Actors' perceptions of status, role, and social structure

In this study of a university administration office, we explore the implications of variation among informants in their understandings of the structure of the group. Each office actor completed two similarity judgement tasks (pile sort and triad test) and two advice ranking tasks (personal and work advice) evaluating the other actors. We compare the patterns of judged similarity, the patterns of advice seeking, and the patterns of agreement among the actors on the four tasks. We find there is a consensus about the similarities of actors and that the structural position of actors influences their approach to the consensus. However, we also find that individuals who agree with each other are not necessarily those who are judged similar by other informants.