Status–Authority Asymmetry between Professions: The Case of 911 Dispatchers and Police Officers

Status–authority asymmetry in the workplace emerges when lower-status professionals are ascribed with functional authority to oversee higher-status and elicit compliance from them on specific processes or tasks. Eliciting such is ridden challenges. How can professionals? To examine this question, I conducted a 24-month ethnography of 911 emergency coordination understand how dispatchers (lower-status authority) police officers (higher-status professionals). identify set relational styles—entailing interactional practices communication media—enacted by dispatchers. My findings suggest that whose styles involved customizing workflow via private communications privately escalating cases officers’ noncompliance supervisors did not greater compliance. In contrast, who used peer publicizing style: they shared news noncompliant behavior—generally bantering, humorous manner—with an officer’s immediate peers using medium all unit could hear. Publicizing behavior among triggered officer self-discipline, as trustworthiness was line front group. More generally, through enrolling alter’s process, generate second-degree influence professionals.