There are other reasons that an employee may comply with a leader's instructions than some highly subjective and deeply irrational notion of social status. For example, they might comply because they're paid to, or because they want company to succeed (for stocks, or for other reasons). Some performance of authority isn't a perquisite for humans choosing to organize.

Sure, but there are longer shots than others, where money alone won't make the difference and when conviction in mission is directly related to conviction in founders/leaders.

"subjective and deeply irrational" aren't the exception for how humans organize