Power and Status Inconsistency and Conflict in Teams

Power and status, two forms of social hierarchy, are fundamental feature of social relations, and they have two functions that are especially important for teams that lack formal hierarchy: 1) to establish order and coordination, and 2) to motivate employees to strive for promotion. Hierarchy provides clear social governance in groups by allowing leaders to assign tasks or allocate resources, and it provides incentives for individuals to climb the organizational ladder to obtain greater compensation and comfort. Individuals with high power and/or high status are more likely to perform leadership behaviors in teams. However, they may also cause conflict by activating threat and distrust when other team members perceive that aspirants’ leadership behaviors are misaligned with their power and/or status. This misalignment can be complex because social hierarchy has multiple forms such as status and power and multiple levels such as team and organizational levels. The current study investigates (1) how the inconsistency between power and status of a team member affect conflict with other team members and (2) how team member’s needs for power and needs for status moderate the power-status inconsistency and conflict relationship. Data was collected from a sample of MBA student teams at a large mid-western university in the United States. In the results the study found no evidence of the power-status inconsistency and conflict relationship, yet found the moderating effect of needs for power on that relationship.