Publications
Publications
- 2018
Do We See the Same Hierarchy? Status Disagreement in Multicultural Teams and Its Impact on Team Performance
By: Catarina Fernandes and Sujin Jang
Abstract
This paper develops and tests a theory of status disagreement in multicultural teams. We posit that, in multicultural teams, the diversity of members’ cultural backgrounds will lead to implicit disagreements about who has how much status in the team. More specifically, when team members come from countries that vary along the individualism-collectivism spectrum, status disagreements are more likely to emerge. Meanwhile, the more team members have spent time studying or working abroad, the less prevalent status disagreement will be. Such status disagreements, we argue, negatively impact team performance, namely by creating coordination problems among team members. Given that status attributions are expected to be most relevant in informing and influencing team coordination patterns in the absence of a formally elected leader, we expect the negative effect of status disagreement on team performance to be strongest in teams without a formal leadership structure. We test these hypotheses in a study of 784 multinational teams (4,177 participants) collaborating over the course of eight weeks, and find strong support for our theory.
Keywords
Status; Social Hierarchies; Multicultural Teams; Team Performance; Team Diversity; Status and Position; Groups and Teams; Diversity; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Performance
Citation
Fernandes, Catarina, and Sujin Jang. "Do We See the Same Hierarchy? Status Disagreement in Multicultural Teams and Its Impact on Team Performance." Working Paper, 2018. (Revise and resubmit, Academy of Management Journal.)