Dysfunction and Power
An emergent theory of power in teams
Our review of the literature
on power in teams suggests that power can have deleterious consequences
for team outcomes. Here we develop an emergent conflict account of
power in which we explain why and when power can corrode team outcomes
(for an overview of our theoretical model, please see Fig. 1). In this
theory, we focus on the two most commonly examined conceptualizations of
power at the team-level - team power-level, or the average level of
power of members in the team, and team power dispersion, or the
dispersion of organizational power within the team. We build on and
extend individual-level findings by translating them to the team-level
of analysis, theorizing that power can be harmful at the team-level
paradoxically because it is so advantageous at the individual level. We
then identify contexts most likely to elicit the negative effects of
power (namely, settings where teams face external or internal threats to
resources), and suggest that in other contexts (when such threats are
absent), the negative effects of power will remain inactive. In such
settings, power could help teams achieve better outcomes, and we call
for future research to unpack the why and when of the benefits of power
in a way similar to how we unpack the dark side of power in the model
presented here.
Fig. 1
Fig. 1. The conflict account of power dynamics in teams.