Within a particular organization an individual climbs the ladder and goes on to assume more and different responsibilities. Such promotions represent changes in designation. A movement from a lecturer to a reader and on to professor, and then to Dean and to Vice Chancellor represents a sequence of statuses. There are also statuses that come first and other statuses add on to them, but do not replace the already existing ones. Thus, a girl is first a daughter, then a wife, then a mother and a grand mother. And she continues to have this set of statuses while adding new ones in this stream.
Figure 7.8 illustrates the concepts of role sequence and status sequence.
Figure 7.8 Role sequence and Status sequence
Source: Loomis and Loomis, 1963: 284.
The first set suggests the role sequence of a university teacher. When he conducts a class, the teacher performs his role as a teacher vis-à-vis his students, say by teaching in a class. Within the department, at time point 2, the same teacher may have interactions with other colleagues as members of the department, as a colleague conducting a joint seminar or working on a common research project. And again at time point 3, the teacher may return to another class with a different set of students. Thus, as status occupant of the position of teacher, a person carries out various roles in a sequence.
The second part represents the phenomenon of status sequence. Here we take the example of a medical practitioner—a doctor. While studying at the Medical School a person is a Medical Student (time 1); after passing out from the Medical school a person is appointed an Intern (time 2); upon completion of his internship, he is promoted as a Resident (time 3); and then finally, he becomes a Medical practitioner with a licence. Thus Medical Student, Intern, and Resident are statuses in a sequence within the general status of a doctor.
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