Power disparity and team conflict: The roles of procedural Justice and legitimacy

Subjects: Psychology >> Management Psychology submitted time 2019-02-20

朱玥 谢江佩 金杨华 施俊琦

Abstract： Power disparity refers to the differences in the concentration of power among team members. Although the pervasiveness and importance of power disparity have been well recognized, it is less clear about whether power disparity is functional or dysfunctional. Researchers have suggested that power disparity can facilitate team performance by facilitating coordination, while it has also been shown to trigger team conflict since power disparity may be perceived as unequal and unfair. In this context, our study mains to reconcile the contrasting perspectives by proposing procedural justice and team legitimacy as the contingences of the relationship between power disparity and team conflict (i.e., task conflict and relationship conflict). Drawing on the perspective of power struggle, we propose that in a situation where power disparity is perceived as legitimate due to high level of procedural justice, members are likely to accept the current distribution of power, and thus coordinate with each other. However, when power disparity is perceived as illegitimate, as generated by low level of procedural justice, members are likely to view power disparity as unequal and unfair. In this case, low ranked members may tend to rebel the current power distribution by competing over power, thereby resulting in team conflict. Data were collected from two manufacturing companies in Zhejiang Province. To reduce the potential influence of common method bias, we used a two-wave design with a one-month interval. At Time 1, 450 employees within 90 teams responded to the questions on power disparity, procedural justice, team legitimacy and control variables. At Time 2, 376 employees within 81 teams who completed Time 1 survey responded to the questions on task conflict and relationship conflict. The final sample contained 322 employees within 70 teams. We measured individuals’ power through round-robin design (i.e., asking individual to rate the power of each team member) and calculated the coefficient of variation in individuals’ power to indicate the degree of power disparity within a team. Moreover, we aggregated the measures of task conflict, relationship conflict, procedural justice and team legitimacy to the group level for analyses. Results showed that both procedural justice and team legitimacy moderated the relationship between power disparity and team conflict (task conflict and relationship conflict). When procedural justice was high, power disparity was negatively related to task conflict and relationship conflict, while these relationships became positive when procedural justice was low. In a similar vein, when team legitimacy was high, power disparity was negatively associated with task conflict and relationship conflict, whereas power disparity was positively related to task conflict and relationship conflict when team legitimacy was low. Moreover, procedural justice was shown to positively related to team legitimacy. Finally, following the procedures suggested by Grant and Berry (2011), we conducted a mediated moderation analysis to test the integrative model. Result showed that team legitimacy mediated the moderation effect of procedural justice on the relationship between power disparity and team conflict (task conflict and relationship conflict). Our findings contribute to literature in two ways. First, this study extends our current understanding of the relationship between power disparity and team conflict by testing procedural justice and team legitimacy as the moderators of this relationship. Second, our findings reveal that power disparity can either decrease or increase team conflict when procedural justice （team legitimacy） is high and low, respectively. By doing so, our study provides a new approach to integrate the functional and dysfunctional perspectives on the effect of power disparity.

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