Playing the Promotion Game

Abstract: Formal and informal hierarchies are all around us. Some hierarchies offer functional benefits, supporting achievement, mentorship, coordination, division of labor, and predictability. Other hierarchies are dysfunctional—they are unfair, illegitimate, and oppressive systems characterized by ultracompetitiveness, unkindness, injustice and instability. Members of both functional and dysfunctional hierarchies make numerous decisions about how to navigate hierarchy. People navigate hierarchy by communicating, cooperating, negotiating, competing, claiming, escalating, networking, gossiping, brokering, voting, building coalitions, withholding information, exchanging gifts, and more. This teaching/training session introduces a novel strategic game called Promotion! This game simulates many of the interactive processes through which people gain and lose power and status in organizational hierarchies. This newly invented card game includes 20 unique action cards, voting cards, as well as resource cards. The winner is the first person to collect 5 power cards and 5 status cards. The game is designed for 4-6 players, takes ~10 minutes to learn, and ~40 minutes to play. People’s choices in the game shape relationships, reputations, and group norms. Through their choices, people shape their own and others’ outcomes. The game begins with perfect equality (i.e., all players have identical levels of power and status) but within a few minutes, a hierarchy invariably forms with different participants holding different levels of power and status. This game can be used to teach multiple topics of interest to IACM members, including power, status, influence, multiparty negotiation, communication processes, decision making, leadership and followership, norms, and the emergence of inequality.

Keywords: Power, Status, Hierarchy, Multiparty Negotiation, Communication, Group Processes, Norms