Tug-of-War: Why and when teams get embroiled in power struggles

Many organizational teams get tormented by performance-detracting power struggles. In this dissertation, I aim to unravel  why and when power struggles emerge within organizational teams. I draw on individual-level research on power and integrate this with the diverse literatures on group threats and team (power) structures to theorize that power may be sought after as a protection-tool when members feel threatened and are motivated by the team structure to cope with this threat in individualistic manners. Accordingly, I developed an overarching framework in which I propose that the combination of a threatening team environment with an individualistic team structure encourages intra-team power struggles. I tested and found support for this overarching framework with three studies that examined the combined effects of team threats (i.e., inter-team conflict in chapter 2, team uncertainty in chapter 3, and organizational change in teams in chapter 4) and internal team structures (i.e., intra-team power structures in chapter 2 and 4 and intra-team outcome interdependence in chapter 3). The research in my dissertation has both important theoretical as well as practical implications.