Disagreement about the team's status hierarchy

Heidi K. Gardner

Hierarchies are pervasive in groups, generally providing clear guidelines for the dominance and deference behaviors that members are expected to show based on their relative ranks. But what happens when team members disagree about where each member ranks on the status hierarchy? While some research has examined overt status rivalries, typically focusing on battles for the top positions, our study contributes novel findings on the effects of disagreement amongst all members' perceptions of their team's status hierarchy. This paper develops and tests a theory to explain how even small differences in members' status perceptions-differences that may not be apparent to the members themselves-can diminish coordination, generate task conflict, and weaken performance.