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Built-in hierarchy `could be better than equality within group` | Contrary to the popular
belief that equality within a team or group is vital, a new research has suggested
that a built-in hierarchy leads to fewer group conflicts and higher productivity.
The research finds a team or group with all high-performers will not outperform
teams or groups with an established hierarchy. Teams in which everyone has high
power are likely to experience elevated levels of conflict, reduced role differentiations, less coordination and integration, and poorer productivity than teams with a broader
distribution of power and status. The new study was conducted by Adam Galinsky
of the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University; Richard Ronay
of Columbia University; Katharine Greenaway of University of Queensland; and
Eric M. Anicich of Columbia University. The study confirmed the researchers’
theory that “there will be greater conflict with all high-power individuals as
each member jostles to take control,” thus undermining group performance. “We
found that a clear hierarchy, division of labor and patterns of deference reduce
conflict, facilitate coordination and ultimately improve group productivity,”
said Galinsky, Morris and Alice Kaplan Professor of Ethics and Decision in Management
at the Kellogg School . “On the other hand, when there are too many leaders or
too few followers, group performance suffers.” The research illustrates how the
composition of a group from sports teams to corporate work teams to political
groups affects the way the group functions. When a group requires lots of coordination,
such as when performing tasks that call for interdependence among the group members,
hierarchy wins out. This is the first study that manipulated overall levels of
hierarchal differences in groups and measured the effects on group productivity.
“Despite the overt appeal of egalitarian social structures, there remains an enduring
implicit preference for hierarchy,” Ronay said. The study suggests that this preference
has its roots in “the utilitarian value of distributed power.” The authors found
similar findings among animals, as well. Previous studies discovered egg production
among chickens declined when all the high-producers were placed together. Citing
this example, the authors noted that “pecking orders, it seems, are not just for
the birds.” In the first experiment, 138 undergraduate students were randomly
assigned one of three experimental conditions (high-power, low-power, baseline)
and organized into same-sex teams of three high-powered participants, three low-power
participants or teams with one high-power, one low-power and one baseline. Next,
the researchers had the teams perform a task that required group interdependence.
In this task, each member was required to make words from 16 letters and then
work as a group to combine the words into as many sentences as possible. They
also measured how the groups functioned on a second task that did not require
individuals to coordinate their efforts. The experiment showed that groups with
hierarchies were more productive than groups with either all high-power or all
low-power individuals. It also showed that hierarchy is most beneficial when group
members are working on a task together, providing no advantage to individuals
when working alone. In the second experiment, Galinsky and his co-authors examined
the biological basis of hierarchal differentiation to determine whether individual
differences play a role in the formation of naturally occurring hierarchies. The
researchers sought to test whether limiting variance in testosterone, a hormone
associated with the pursuit of dominance and status, would disrupt development
of a hierarchy and reduce group productivity. To measure individual differences
in prenatal testosterone exposure, they calculated the ratio between the length
of the index finger and the ring finger, with lower ratios indicating higher levels
of testosterone during prenatal development. Next, they created groups of high-testosterone,
low-testosterone or a mix of both and average testosterone. The participants took
part in the same word-and-sentence game which is a procedurally interdependent
task as described in the first experiment while the researchers measured the conflict
within the groups. They found that the mixed testosterone groups outperformed
the all high and the all low-testosterone groups, conceptually replicating the
first study. Furthermore, decrements in performance by the all high-testosterone
groups were driven by increased conflict. The experiments tested for the first
time the central prediction of the functional theories of hierarchy: “When power
is distributed, intragroup conflicts decrease while coordination and productivity
increase,” the researchers noted. Both sets of experiments supported that conclusion.
These findings are consistent with an earlier study co-authored by Galinsky that
revealed hierarchal pay structures on National Basketball Association teams increased
performance, promoted coordination and enhance cooperation on teams. The study
has been published online in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association
for Psychological Science.
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