Rival or comrade? A systematic review and conceptual framework of when and why the powerful act prosocially or antisocially towards each other

We present a systematic review of the literature on power and its interpersonal consequences. Our review, comprising 339 studies published in 145 research articles, shows that this line of research has primarily examined how powerholders attend to and act towards powerless individuals, or others in general. We therefore know surprisingly little about how powerholders attend to and act towards other powerholders. To address this issue, we present a conceptual framework that outlines how an actor's power interacts with a target's power to influence prosocial and antisocial beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors. We identify two routes in the literature detailing how powerholders respond to one another. First, building on rivalry literature, we present a competitive route suggesting that powerholders rival each other and engage in conflict. Second, building on social identity and social dominance literature, we present a harmonious route suggesting that powerful peers will show compassion and care for each other. Finally, we bring forth suggestions for how future research could test these two perspectives, by presenting moderators that determine when each of these two routes is activated. In doing so, we offer important implications for the power literature and open a new line of inquiry for future research

Multiple team membership and job performance:The role of employees' information-sharing networks

Individuals in contemporary work organizations are often involved in multiple teams at the same time. This study uses a social capital perspective to propose that employees' multiple team memberships (MTM) offer the potential for individual performance benefitsanddetriments, depending on the characteristics of an employee's information-sharing network. To test our predictions, we gathered both archival and survey data at an organization for applied research in the Netherlands. We found that individual MTM was indirectly associated with an employee's overall job performance by increasing the size of his or her information-sharing network. As expected, however, this indirect relationship was contingent on the average strength of an employee's network ties (i.e., the frequency of the respective interactions), such that MTM only improved overall performance when network ties were relatively weak. The indirect relationship between MTM and individual job performance was negative, by contrast, when an employee's network ties were relatively strong. Together, these findings advance our understanding of the mechanisms and contingency factors that shape the performance consequences associated with individuals' concurrent membership in multiple teams. Practitioner points An employee's membership in multiple teams at the same time increases the size of his or her information-sharing network within the organization. The performance consequences associated with this increased information-sharing network hinge on the characteristics of an employee's information-sharing network. If the respective information-sharing linkages are based on relatively infrequent interactions with colleagues, an employee's multiple team membership indirectly benefits his or her overall job performance. If the respective information-sharing linkages are based on relatively frequent and intense interactions with colleagues, however, an employee's multiple team membership indirectly diminishes his or her overall job performance

Facing differences with an open mind: Openness to Experience, salience of intra-group differences, and performance of diverse groups.

This study examined how the performance of diverse teams is affected by member openness to experience and the extent to which team reward structure emphasizes intragroup differences. Fifty-eight heterogeneous four-person teams engaged in an interactive task. Teams in which reward structure converged with diversity (i.e., "faultline" teams) performed more poorly than teams in which reward structure cut across differences between group members or pointed to a "superordinate identity." High openness to experience positively influenced teams in which differences were salient (i.e., faultline and "cross-categorized" teams) but not teams with a superordinate identity. This effect was mediated by information elaboration

The performance evaluation of novices:The importance of competence in specific work activity clusters

In this study, we examine the relationships between newcomers' competence in specific work activity clusters and the evaluation of their performance. Longitudinal data were gathered on 92 novice nurses from themselves and from the senior staff at three stages: before entering the job, 6 weeks after entry and 18 months after entry. Results showed that, after entry, a newcomer's competence in the cluster of care activities contributed more to a positive performance evaluation than competence in the cluster of non-care activities. Competence in the non-care cluster was only found to contribute to a positive performance evaluation, if the newcomer also showed competence in the care cluster. Moreover, novices showed a greater improvement in their care competence than their non-care competence during the first 18 months of socialization. Finally, we found that after 18 months competence in the non-care cluster contributes more to a positive performance evaluation than competence in the care cluster

Harnessing members' positive mood for team-directed learning behaviour and team innovation:The moderating role of perceived team feedback

<p>This study examines the role of individual team members' positive mood and perceived team feedback for their team-directed learning behaviour. Results obtained in a sample of 186 members from 27 work teams showed that positive mood was positively associated with team-directed learning behaviour if individual members perceived that the feedback they received was based on the performance of the team as a whole, but not if they perceived such team feedback to be lacking. Moreover, teams were found to be more innovative to the extent that their members, on average, engaged in team-directed learning behaviour to a greater extent. These results offer new insights into the micro-foundations of team learning. Our findings explicate why the contributions of individual members to their team's learning may differ and suggest that, if managed effectively, members' positive mood may be an important resource in facilitating team learning.</p>

Diversity and inequality in management teams:A review and integration of research on vertical and horizontal member differences

The promise and perils of heterogeneity in team member characteristics has been and continues to be one of the central questions in research on management teams. We review the literature on member heterogeneity within management teams, with a focus on summarizing and integrating research on both horizontal member differences (i.e., diversity) and vertical member differences (i.e., inequality)-two streams of research that have been largely separate in past research. We find that the overwhelming majority of research on management team heterogeneity has focused on horizontal differences, though there are few clear and consistent themes in empirical findings within either stream. We also find that horizontal and vertical differences are interrelated, such that the effects of diversity can depend critically on the degree of inequality within a team, and vice versa. Moreover, we find that our ability to clearly account for the effects of vertical and horizontal differences in management teams has been limited by a confusion of definitions and conceptualizations that hamper our ability to compare theoretical arguments and empirical findings across studies. We organize various conceptualizations of heterogeneity into six types based on whether a given conceptualization is concerned with horizontal or vertical differences (diversity or inequality) and whether it is focused on the differentiation, dispersion, or concentration of member differences. The result is a framework with three types of diversity (separation, variety, and skew) and three types of inequality (stratification, steepness, and centralization). Finally, we summarize different approaches to operationalizing each of these types. The conclusions and recommendations of this review can help to bring clarity and focus to research on member heterogeneity within management teams, or groups and teams of any sort

Learning and performance in multidisciplinary teams:The importance of collective team identification

In multidisciplinary teams in the oil and gas industry, we examined expertise diversity's relationship with team learning and team performance under varying levels of collective team identification. In teams with low collective identification, expertise diversity was negatively related to team learning and performance; where team identification was high, those relationships were positive. Results also supported nonlinear relationships between expertise diversity and both team learning and performance. Finally, team learning partially mediated the linear and nonlinear relationships between diversity and performance. Findings broaden understanding of the process by which and the conditions under which expertise diversity may promote team performance

When and why hierarchy steepness is related to team performance

This study develops and tests a contingency theory on the functions of status hierarchy steepness in teams. Findings from a field study among 438 employees working in 72 work teams across diverse business settings demonstrate that task complexity moderates the relationships between status hierarchy steepness, different types of team conflict, and team performance. Steeper status hierarchies were negatively related to both process and task conflict, and hence increased team performance in teams working on tasks with lower complexity but did not yield such clear conflict and performance effects in teams working on more complex tasks. By showing that various levels of task complexity determine whether status hierarchy steepness has a conflict-regulating function that drives team performance, this research generates valuable insights about the context dependency of team responses to status hierarchy steepness

Location-level links between diversity and innovative climate depend on national power distance

In this study, we examined the relationship between the demographic diversity and innovative climates of 248 organizational locations of a multinational company in 24 countries. Supporting a status characteristics perspective, multilevel analyses revealed that diversity in the more task-oriented demographic attributes of organizational tenure and functional background was negatively related to these locations' innovative climates in high-power-distance countries but positively related to the locations' innovative climate in low-power-distance countries. These interactive effects were not found for the more relations-oriented demographic attributes of age and gender