Garnering the benefits of conflict: The role of diversity and status distance in groups

This chapter discusses how social-category diversity and status distance among team members influence the process of information elaboration (or task conflict). They develop four propositions to reconcile conflicting findings in the literature about the benefits of diversity on information elaboration in teams. They argue that status differences among team members can suppress the confidence or assertiveness of lower-status members as well as the exchange and integration of their unique knowledge, perspectives, and information. This effect creates misattributions for members' behaviors that can create harmful relationship conflict among members, reduce information elaboration, and ultimately reduce performance outcomes. They propose that by understanding partitions between low-status and high-status members, managers and leaders of organizational groups can help overcome these negative impacts of status differences.