The Positive Effects of Status Conflicts in Teams Where Members Perceive Status Hierarchies Differently

Status conflicts, conflicts about members' relative positions in a team's status hierarchy, generally harm group performance. We integrate research on status conflicts and social information processing and find in two longitudinal survey studies that the disruptive effects of status conflicts depend on the extent to which members agree about the group's status hierarchy. Specifically, status conflicts in teams with high-status agreement disrupt team performance by producing lower status agreement after the conflict. Status conflicts that occur in teams with low-status agreement, however, benefit performance by helping members clarify the hierarchy, leading to higher subsequent status agreement. In a third study, we examine how status conflict and status agreement interactively impact teams' use of task-relevant cues to assign status. By contextualizing status conflicts in terms of the teams' status agreement, we identify conditions in which the dysfunctional effects of status conflicts counterintuitively enhance team performance.