Consequences of homophily: does social status similarity enhance project performance?

This study examines the effect of status homophily between a team organizer and a project team on project performance. Due to the Matthew effect, high statuses of the team organizer and project team may lead to better project performance, respectively. However, similar-status association on a project can make it difficult to form an informal hierarchy and therefore cause internal conflict. Thus, status homophily may weaken project performance. We test this idea in the context of the Chinese film industry. The results show that both producer status and artistic team status enhance project performance. However, the joint effect (i.e., status homophily) negatively affects project performance.