Victorious and Hierarchical: Past Performance as a Determinant of Team Hierarchical Differentiation

Christopher To (), Thomas Taiyi Yan () and Elad N. Sherf ()
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Christopher To: Department of Management and Organizations, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois 60208
Thomas Taiyi Yan: Department of Organizational Behavior, University College London, London E14 5AB, United Kingdom
Elad N. Sherf: Organizational Behavior Area, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27599

Organization Science, 2022, vol. 33, issue 6, 2346-2363

Abstract: Hierarchies emerge as collectives attempt to organize themselves toward successful performance. Consequently, research has focused on how team hierarchies affect performance. We extend existing models of the hierarchy-performance relationship by adopting an alternative: Performance is not only an output of hierarchy but also a critical input, as teams’ hierarchical differentiation may vary based on whether they are succeeding. Integrating research on exploitation and exploration with work on group attributions, we argue that teams engage in exploitation by committing to what they attribute as the cause of their performance success. Specifically, collectives tend to attribute their success to individuals who wielded greater influence within the team; these individuals are consequently granted relatively higher levels of influence, leading to a higher degree of hierarchy. We additionally suggest that the tendency to attribute, and therefore grant more influence, to members believed to be the cause of success is stronger for teams previously higher (versus lower) in hierarchy, as a higher degree of hierarchical differentiation provides clarity as to which members had a greater impact on the team outcome. We test our hypotheses experimentally with teams engaging in an online judgement task and observationally with teams from the National Basketball Association. Our work makes two primary contributions: (a) altering existing hierarchy-performance models by highlighting performance as both an input and output to hierarchy and (b) extending research on the dynamics of hierarchy beyond individual rank changes toward examining what factors increase or decrease hierarchical differentiation of the team as a whole.

Keywords: hierarchy; teams; performance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:inm:ororsc:v:33:y:2022:i:6:p:2346-2363

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