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. The conflict account of power dynamics in teams.