Faculty of Business Seminar Series / Yeliz Cantimur

Title : The Antecedents and Consequences of Hierarchies in Organizational Work Teams

Abstract: Hierarchies are a pervasive reality of organizational work teams. Yet, despite the ubiquity of this phenomenon, it remains largely unclear how individuals strive for and attain social influence in such settings. To close this gap, this talk highlights a contingency model of the effectiveness of dominance displays as a route to influence in work teams, demonstrating team competition as a key context factor in this relationship (Paper 1). Furthermore, even though people are generally conditioned to think that hierarchies are universally bad, hierarchies can actually promote success in organizational work teams when certain circumstances are in place. More specifically, hierarchies can reduce logistical controversies among the team members and improve team performance either when teams perform tasks with relatively low levels of complexity (Paper 2) or when the influence hierarchy is characterized by cascading relations of dyadic influence (Paper 3).  This talk therefore aims to assert that hierarchies can be functionally beneficial in organizational work teams and instead of abolishing them, their merits should be capitalized on under the right conditions.

Place:  Meeting Room AB2/ 345