Research

People stand alone at work for different reasons: sometimes they choose to because incentives make standing apart strategically valuable; sometimes they cannot avoid it because their background sets them apart. Across nine preregistered studies (Chapters 1 and 2; N = 8,614), I find that people are twice as willing to be a solo—the only representative of their identity group—when promotions or bonuses are allocated competitively rather than randomly. At the individual level, the effect operates through perceived performance and evaluation advantages, and is partially suppressed by perceived threat. At the organizational level, the effect is amplified by up-or-out incentive structures.

Chapter 3 shifts from solo status as strategic choice to structural condition. Drawing on 477 leadership assessments and seven interviews with Fortune 500 executives with first-generation and/or low-income (FGLI) backgrounds, I find that FGLI executives had access to mentors who advised them but faced a gap in sponsorship—that is, access to senior leaders who advocated for their visibility and advancement. In response, these executives invested in individual capital (performance-based legitimacy, deliberately sought challenges, and instrumentally constructed networks) to substitute for sponsor-mediated relational capital. While these strategies accompanied career advancement, they also carried costs, most notably a self-sufficiency trap in which self-reliance eventually constrained the relational capacities senior leadership demands.

Together, these findings reveal both sides of solo status—when and why people choose it, and what it costs those without a choice.

First-generation and/or low-income (FGLI) executives navigate professional contexts in which their distinctiveness is structurally imposed—personally salient, yet rarely organized as a basis for institutional response. I term this condition structural solo status. Drawing on a coded archive of 477 leadership assessments and seven in-depth interviews with Fortune 500 FGLI executives, I find that they received mentorship at rates comparable to their peers but were less likely to report sponsorship—the advocacy that creates visibility, legitimacy, and opportunity.

In response, I theorize a compensatory system through which executives invested in individual capital to substitute for sponsor-mediated relational capital. Three behavioral strategies—performance-based legitimacy, challenge orientation, and instrumental bridge-building—directly addressed the sponsorship gap. Two psychological predispositions rooted in material scarcity—resilience reframing and scarcity-driven drive—sustained the strategies over time.

Finally, I document enduring costs of structural solo status, most notably a self-sufficiency trap in which the same self-reliance that accompanied advancement constrains the relational capacities senior leadership requires—and rations the resources its correction demands. The findings suggest that organizations seeking to develop and retain senior leaders must distinguish between developmental support that provides advice and that which provides advocacy—and recognize costs that accumulate when the latter is left to chance.

Standing alone carries real costs; it severs the comforts of similarity and exposes one to scrutiny without allies. Yet under competitive pressure, people increasingly accept these costs. Across three preregistered studies (N = 3,214), including two scenario studies and an incentive-compatible real-decision study, I show that competition shapes whether people choose to be a solo—the only representative of their identity group in a given context.

I find that the effect operates through opposing pathways: (1) competition increases the desire for uniqueness and decreases the desire for belonging, both of which predict solo choice, and (2) competition simultaneously activates threat appraisals that pull people back toward similarity, partially suppressing the effect. I further show that the effect depends on how incentives are structured: solo status preferences intensify when incentives reward top performers (up-or-out systems) and disappear when incentives punish bottom performers (rank-and-yank systems).

These findings clarify how competition produces distinctiveness-seeking and identify boundary conditions under which it does not, with implications for organizational incentive design and talent management.