Dysfunction and Power

Discussion

As the epic power struggle between Apple's founder Steve Jobs and Apple's CEO John Sculley illustrates, power within the team context may have detrimental consequences for teams and their broader organizations. With our conflict account of power in teams, which emerges from our review of the literature on both the team-level and the individual-level effects of power, we aim to explain why and when power may harm teams. We outline below the immediate theoretical implications of our review and emergent model, and then address new and important topics for future research that our paper helps to open as viable and important channels for future research, including the need to identify the potential upsides of power for teams.

Theoretical implications

We first elaborate on the implications of our explanations for how power may corrupt team interactions. The assumption has been that power structures – especially power dispersion but also to a lesser extent power level – serve team effectiveness. This assumption was derived from work which has found power to serve individual effectiveness. However, our review shows that overall empirical evidence suggests the opposite to be true in teams - namely, that power in teams negatively relates to team outcomes. While we acknowledge that contingencies exist for the negative effects of power structures for teams, our work does point out that the past positive perspectives, which drew on the benefits of power for individuals to predict the functionality of power in teams, do not adequately explain the data that has arisen in this area. As such, our findings qualify past functional perspectives on power in teams, and suggest that conflict perspectives on how power may negatively impact team-level outcomes merit further attention and expansion.

To this end, we develop an emergent theoretical model in which we explicate why power may impair teams, or in other words why high-power teams and teams with high power dispersion tend to have lower team outcomes. For this, we reviewed, contrasted and then integrated the bourgeoning literature on power in teams (surrounding team power-level, team power-dispersion, and team power-struggles) with the literature on the individual-level effects of power. This resulted in our emergent theory in which we introduced the concept of power sensitivity and explained that the largely detrimental effects of power for teams can be understood by the predominantly positive effects of power for individuals. Power sensitivity, or members' strong reactivity to resources in the team, stems from having at least one high power member in the team, which signals the benefits of power to individuals. This saliency of the benefits of power makes power a desirable and sought-after good, thereby increasing the likelihood of members socially comparing against one another and ultimately competing with one another for power. The identification of members' power sensitivity as the mechanism through which team power structures affect power dynamics has important implications for both the team-level as well as the individual-level literatures on power. For the team-level, power sensitivity is a synthesizing construct as it explains both the effects of team power-level and the effects of team power dispersion on team dynamics and outcomes. This suggests that contextual research that has been performed with high power teams may apply to high power dispersed teams as well and vice versa. For the individual-level, power-sensitivity can be viewed as a new negative effect of power for the power-holder. The positive effects of power have been largely found in isolated laboratory contexts where power holders were safe in their power position. However, in the real-life setting of a team, power is often contested precisely because it is so beneficial, and in such settings it is possible that power sensitivity may also impair individual outcomes, as well as team outcomes. As such, we extend conflict perspectives on power in teams by showing in our review that having power in a social setting is not an unequivocally positive experience, and then explaining in our emergent theory how the downsides of power comes about in teams via increased conflict sensitivity.

Last, with our model we clarify when power can harm teams. While power sensitivity can be seen as a precursor for power struggles, power sensitive members do not always struggle with each other for power. There needs to be a trigger that ignites power struggles in power sensitive teams, and we argue that a resource threat may function as such a trigger. When members either experience a personal resource threat, due to, for instance, inequitable or illegitimate resource allocation within the team, or when there is an external resource threat, due to for example an intergroup conflict or scarcity, they are much more likely to act upon their power sensitivity. This contextual view is important for both team-level as well as individual-level research on power. For team-level research, this implies that threats both inside and outside of the team may jeopardize the effectiveness of team power structures, and therefore it is important to identify what these threats are. For individual-level power research, our emergent theory implies that power in a threatening social context may be utilized as a tool to protect oneself. The utilization of power as a protection tool has hitherto been under-researched as a strategy for individuals to mitigate threat. For team-level power research, this implies that more effort needs to be given towards understanding when threats in a team's environment will ignite power struggles in teams, as opposed to unifying teams as researchers have commonly assumed will happen in the face of team threats.

Future research directions

With our conflict account of power in teams, we focus on why and when team power structures foster competitive power dynamics in teams. We identified two categories of factors, both internal (personal threats) and external (resource threats) to the team, that are likely to ignite the link between power sensitivity and team outcome-detracting power struggles. However, there is room for future research to investigate other mitigating factors that may discourage power sensitive teams from getting embroiled in power struggles. One important factor may be whether members view power as fixed or as expandable. In our theory, we propose that members tend to view power as zero-sum, i.e., a non-expandable pie, and that this is why power sensitive teams tend to fall prey to power struggles. However, teams may also view power as non-fixed and expandable, meaning that one member's power gain does not detract from other members' power. In teams where members have this belief, power sensitivity does not necessarily have to lead to power struggles. As it is likely that there will always be teams that are high power and/or power dispersed, it is important to identify situations that mitigate the harmful effects of these power structures, for instance by fostering expandable-pie beliefs.

Another key future research direction lies in understanding why and when power could benefit teams. Our goal with our emergent theory here was to make sense of the negative conclusion from our review – that power hurts team outcomes, and understand how it could be reconciled with more positive perspectives on power from the individual-level of theory and analysis. We therefore focused on explaining when and why negative effects of power can occur in teams, but we do acknowledge that these effects are highly contextually dependent – in teams without resource threats (such as a government office with a 5-year guaranteed budget), power in teams, be it power dispersion or power level, may not negatively influence team outcomes. In such and other situations, in which members do not feel vulnerable in their power position, power in teams may actually even benefit team outcomes. For instance, when team members do not see power as fixed sum (i.e., your power gain, is my power loss) but more an expandable pie (e.g., you have power in this domain, I have power in another domain), power may help rather than hurt teams. We leave it for future research to understand the how, why, and when of this more positive pathway. Potential avenues could include looking at what power does to motivation, shared understandings of task, and speed of action in teams.

Yet another key future research direction is understanding how the different bases of power that are present in teams may interrelate. In teams, multiple bases of power may be present (French & Raven, 1959). When teams have high power-base diversity, such that different members each control different types of power bases, this may help reduce power struggles in teams, by reducing the likelihood of social comparison, threat, and conflict. Indeed, research suggests that members may actually even seek out such power-base diversity across members. Namely, research shows that when power is salient, individuals help each other carve out unique identities, and create an optimal differentiation in the team which can improve members' self-esteem and thereby cooperation. These positive processes in turn can improve team and individual outcomes. However, power diversity also has the potential to hurt teams. Some research has suggested that the presence of multiple bases of power in a team can promote conflict among different political positions. Other related research suggests that allowing members unique areas in which they can exert influence can create representational gaps and different thought worlds which may clash. One way to reconcile these different views is to examine the role of a ‘hierarchy of hierarchies'. Greer, Dannals, and Rao provided the evidence which suggests that teams are most functional when a clear hierarchy exists, but everyone in the team has their own distinct power base. By having an overall hierarchy to bridge across the different power bases, this can allow a coordination mechanism to align different power areas, reducing politics and conflict. Additionally, by having clearly distinct power roles within a power-dispersed team, this can reduce power sensitivity and ensuing power struggles by reducing the relevance of social comparisons across ranks. For example, in an early stage start-up, it's critical that all members acknowledge the CEO as the overall leader, but teams will perform best when each member has their own unique area of esteem and ownership within the start-up, be it owning a certain piece of code or being in charge of managing the relationships with a set of clients. Future investigation into how the different bases of power in teams shape member positions and team interactions is therefore essential. For example, questions could include assessing when power-base differences are good or bad for teams, how members compose their own unique profiles of power bases in teams, and when and why an overarching hierarchy across power bases is needed.

A final key future research direction lies in understanding the temporal dynamics of power in teams. While research has often suggested that power disparities may be self-reinforcing and stable over time in groups, other research suggests that power levels can and do change in groups. In understanding the potential temporal dynamics of power over time, several important questions exist. One area of questions extends to how and why power changes in teams. Is there a natural pendulum in teams, such that teams swing back and forth between the extremes of high and low power dispersion, or otherwise said, hierarchy and equality? If so, what prompts swings in either direction? And how can such swings be guided? Research has shown that swings to high power-dispersion, may encounter more resistance than swings to low power dispersion, suggesting that swings in that direction may require more intentional management than pushes towards equality.

A related set of questions extends to when power is in a temporal sense more or less functional for teams. Matusik, Hays, and Galinsky suggests that power disparities are more useful in the short run than in the long run. However, questions remain as to what the tipping point is to shift power differences from functional to dysfunctional for teams. Similarly, questions exist as to the length of time that power dispersion is useful for teams. And finally, there are questions about whether teams, in order to be functional, should naturally cycle through the hierarchy-equality pendulum. For example, Navy seal teams have often traditionally struggled with the balance between hierarchy and equality. The military itself is a highly hierarchical, power dispersed organization, yet Navy seal teams have to operate in complex, uncertain situations where the ability of all members on the team to speak up and have voice in determining action can be essential. This struggle has led them to separate their hierarchical structure by the phase of their interactions. They endorse active hierarchical structures on the ground while on missions, but when they reconvene for debriefings, they emphasize egalitarian structures, as hallmarked by literally removing their rank bars at the door before entering their debriefing meeting. This example raises the question whether highly functional teams are able to naturally shift their power structure to match the situation, or are such shifts so difficult that teams with different structures should be convened for different tasks?