Abstract
This article examines teammates’ perceptions of individual expert and referent power (personal power) in student teams working on a semester-long project. In our study, we found a positive relationship between being perceived as high in personal power (expert and referent power) by teammates and faculty advisor-rated performance, measured by quality and quantity of work, efficiency, meeting team goals, meeting deadlines, and overall performance. To examine the mechanism behind this relationship, we also examined and found that expressed humility mediated the effect between teammates’ power perceptions and individual performance. These findings suggest that power plays an important role in teammates’ perceptions of individuals, in the individual’s own performance, and in how humility functions in team settings. We further discuss these results in terms of practical implications as well as implications for management educators.
In the 2000 movie, Remember the Titans, Gerry Bertier is a high-performance player on his high school football team, the Titans. While his athletic skills are important, it is not just his raw talent that lead to his high performance. In contrast, another player named Ray Budds, who also shows strong athletic ability, ultimately undermines the performance of team by displaying undesirable behaviors that are contrary to fostering an effective team dynamic. The contrast highlights that raw talent alone is not enough to lead to superior performance. So, why is it that Gerry is so successful on his team, while Ray is not despite both players having superior physical skills? The key to Gerry’s high performance is the perceptions that his teammates hold of him as having valuable skills that will aid in the performance of the team (known as expert power) as well as his social skills, integrity, values, and other qualities that make it so that his teammates want to be associated with him (known as referent power). These perceptions lead to him expressing humility, where he recognizes his own strengths and weaknesses, sees value in others’ strengths, and strives to learn from his teammates. Gerry’s success in a team setting, then, begins with his teammates’ positive perceptions of his personal (expert and referent) power (French & Raven, 1959). The purpose of this article is to examine these types of power and behavioral dynamics that occur in within team settings. While Gerry’s story from Remember the Titans plays out on a football team, we examine how these power dynamics play out with students in higher education teams.
It is well-documented that power dynamics play an important role in higher education. Power exists when an individual controls or has significant influence over important outcomes that others care about (Aguinis et al., 1996; Emerson, 1962; Keltner et al., 2003), and as such, power often resides with instructors and administrators in educational settings. For instance, power dynamics can explain why certain academic programs are eliminated (Gumport, 1993), and where resources (Hearn & Corcoran, 1988) and legitimacy (Jané et al., 2018) are allocated in terms of institutional research. Aguinas et al. (1996) even found that the power relationships between graduate students and their advisors affects important outcomes for the students such as research productivity. Moreover, instructors hold power by having the ability to give assignments and assign grades, and administrators have power in setting curriculum and admission standards. However, power can exist in the absence of formal power relationships (French & Raven, 1959) and therefore, students are not powerless in educational settings (Golish & Olson, 2000; Marolla et al., 1980).
The power dynamics that exist among students themselves have not received much research attention. Power dynamics exist in any interaction or relationship within educational settings, including among students (Cornelius & Herrenkohl, 2004). Given that one’s power often relates to one’s personal outcomes, it may be that the power students have over one another relates to important individual educational outcomes. Investigating these power dynamics among students may reveal important lessons about what students can do to achieve optimal results during their higher education experiences.
One form of power that students can hold is personal power, which exists when individuals possess valuable knowledge (expert power) or social skills, integrity, values, and other qualities that make a person attractive to others (referent power). Such knowledge, social skills, and other attractive qualities may be of value to other students, especially when they are working interdependently, as in the case of student teams.
Power is conferred by others, especially in team settings (Franz, 1998). For instance, Keltner (2016) suggests that when others are seen as able to advance the greater good of the team, they are “rewarded” with more power. What remains unclear is whether the conferral of power by teammates provides benefits for the individual possessing personal power. We suggest that students’ personal power may have positive outcomes for the individuals possessing it even in the absence of a formal power relationship. More specifically, we are interested in investigating whether expert and referent power affects students’ individual performance in team settings. This finding would demonstrate what extant research has already begun to uncover: that academic performance in higher education is affected by more than just motivation and ability (e.g., Luthans et al., 2019; Marks, 2006; Ruthig et al., 2011).
In this article, we answer recently renewed calls to understand student team dynamics (Bacon & Stewart, 2019; Morgan & Stewart, 2019) spurred by the 2019 Lasting Impact Award given to Bacon et al.’s (1999) article “Lessons from the best and worst student team experiences: How a teacher can make the difference.” To do so we examine the impact that teammates’ perceptions of an individual’s expert and referent power has on that student’s performance, as well as the “how” and “why” of this relationship by looking at humility as a mediating variable to this relationship. In addition to responding to recent calls for increased understanding of the role of student’s humility, we focus on humility because it is relevant in team contexts and may benefit teams, but may not be displayed by all team members (e.g., McCorkle et al., 1999). Additionally, in contrast to the literature highlighting the negative sides of power (Keltner et al., 2003), we show that greater power (specifically personal power) can have positive consequences for individuals. Our hypotheses are grounded in power theory and we collected data from students in a semester-long team project to determine if being perceived as high in personal power promotes an individual’s engagement in humility, ultimately leading to higher performance. The results indicate that students experience the impact of personal power in the educational environment (a fact that can be utilized by management educators to teach about power) and that personal power can lead to opportunities for individuals to show humility, ultimately resulting in greater performance on a team.
Theoretical Development
Power is an individual’s relative capacity to modify the states of others based on control over resources that are valued by others (Keltner et al., 2003), thus creating a dependence of others on this individual for these resources (Emerson, 1962). These resources can be material (such as money, food, or economic opportunity) or social (such as knowledge, friendship, or input in decision making). The types of resources that an individual has control over determines which bases of power they have. French and Raven (1959) suggest there are five bases of power: reward, coercive, legitimate, expert, and referent. An individual has reward power when they are able to provide others with positive reinforcement, while coercive power derives from an individual’s ability to apply punishment or other negative outcomes. Legitimate power is present when an individual can administer feelings of obligation to, for instance, complete a task. Individuals have expert power when they have knowledge or expertise that is valuable to others, and they have referent power when others respect, admire, and desire to be associated with them. 1
These first three types of power (reward, coercive, and legitimate) are often grouped together to describe an individual’s position power, as they typically are associated with an individual’s hierarchical position within an organization. The other two bases of power can be combined to describe an individual’s personal power as they deal with an individual’s personal attributes and capabilities (Rahim, Antonioni, & Psenicka, 2001). This theoretical distinction is empirically supported by Rahim (1988) and Yukl and Falbe (1991) who found strong and consistent results indicating the distinction between position and personal power. As students have no formal power roles because they generally hold the same title (student) and generally have few ways to exert formal or positional power over teammates, this article will focus on “personal power” as student do vary in the expertise, social skills, and values which they bring into their teams.
Personal Power and Performance
As previously mentioned, individuals who are conferred power are seen as controlling resources that are valuable to others. In the case of personal power, power is given to individuals who have superior personal characteristics, social skills, knowledge, and expertise that other people need or want (Bales, 1951; Blau, 1964; Rahim et al., 2001; Ridgeway, 1982; Scott & Blau, 1962; Thibaut & Kelley, 1959; Yukl & Falbe, 1991). Within teams, resources such as these are seen as valuable as they may be instrumental to the completion of team goals as well as helpful to individual team members by providing them with assistance, advice, and social support that help complete their personal tasks (van der Vegt et al., 2006). Consequently, in student teams, individuals will attend to their teammates in search of qualities that can lead to team success as well as their own success within the team, so that they know where to find those resources when needed. While these resources are seen as valuable to those who confer power on others, these same resources may be useful to powerholders themselves in facilitating their own performance within the team.
Successful individual performance in a team setting means that a team member completes high-quality work quickly and efficiently (van der Vegt et al., 2006). Possessing resources such as knowledge, expertise, as well as social skills and values that others admire may facilitate an individual’s performance in the team. Knowledge and expertise that are relevant to the task allow for an individual to quickly complete high-quality work. Moreover, the individual can use social skills to navigate the social context of the team, minimizing distractions and process losses, leading to greater efficiency.
Additionally, when an individual is seen by teammates as controlling valuable resources, teammates are likely to come to that individual in pursuit of those resources. Within the team context, team members who perceive a teammate as high in personal power may seek that teammate out in search of work support (e.g., information that can help with tackling task-related issues) and interpersonal support (e.g., advice that can help manage conflict or social support for dealing with stress; Erkutlu & Chafra, 2006). When teammates go to a high-power team member for resources, the high-power individual gains access to more potential resources to draw on from the people coming to them. Thus, this pattern of interaction may create a bidirectional relationship that is potentially fruitful for both parties: teammates go to a team member whom they perceive to be high in personal power in search of resources, which gives the high-power team member access to resources that their other teammates may possess. While not all teammates who come to them may possess resources that the high-power individual finds useful, the powerholder will become aware of where resources are located within the team should he or she find them useful at any point during the life span of the team. This increased social capital (i.e., the actual and potential resources that derive from relationships with others; Aquino & Serva, 2005; Nahapiet & Ghosal, 2000) of high-power team members may increase their individual performance.In sum, not only do team members who are conferred high personal power possess resources themselves that may facilitate their individual performance within the team, but due to the central position in the team, they can also draw on the resources of teammates that may promote their own performance.
Personal Power and Humility
Humility is defined as “a nondefensive willingness to see the self accurately, including both strengths and limitations” (Kachorek et al., 2004, p. 463). Humility is expressed through three types of behaviors: viewing oneself accurately, showing appreciation for others’ strengths and contributions, and teachability (Owens et al., 2011; Owens et al., 2013; Owens & Hekman, 2012). When individuals view themselves accurately, they can acknowledge their own strengths and weaknesses as well as aim to seek honest and realistic feedback from their teammates. 2 By showing appreciation for other’s strengths and contributions, individuals acknowledge that their teammates have strengths and are able to contribute to the end product of the team, without feeling threatened by them (Exline & Geyer, 2004). Finally, teachability means that an individual displays an openness to learning and feedback from teammates. While some conceptualizations of humility imply that it is an indication of weakness (Tangney, 2000), the general academic consensus is that humility is considered a positive trait that is admired by others (Exline & Geyer, 2004).
While some research suggests that those high in power may, in fact, be less humble and more arrogant (e.g., Keltner et al., 2003), it is important to note the differences in that research from the nature of the current research. Research in the former stream typically looks at individuals’ feelings of their own power and does not differentiate between positional and personal power. Indeed, holding a formal position of power increases the amount of power a person feels (Tarr & Kohles, 2019). Instead, the current research is looking at others’ perception of individuals’ personal power, where positional power is not a factor and therefore power distance is likely to be low.
Exline and Geyer (2004) argue that individuals may show more humility in contexts where they feel a strong sense of security and in which people build their feelings of self-worth on sources that are stable and reliable. Therefore, we propose that when individuals are perceived as having high personal power by their teammates, such a context is created, as their teammates will frequently seek them out for knowledge and social support. These interactions may act as stable, reliable sources on which to base feelings of self-worth: if multiple teammates frequently seek out an individual, that individual may feel they are accepted and appreciated within the team. The individual finding themselves in a context in which they feel safe and supported, will then be more likely to express humility.
Humility and Performance
Previous research has shown humility to impact individual and team performance in work environments (Owens et al., 2010; Owens & Hekman, 2016). When an individual accurately appraises which resources they possess (an important facet of humility; Owens et al., 2013), they are better able to leverage these resources in service of their performance. Team members who express humility not only recognize the resources they possess themselves but also the variety of resources possessed by their teammates (Owens et al., 2013). Often in student teams, there is diversity in the strengths that individual team members possess. For instance, while one team member may possess specialized knowledge in marketing, another may have a stronger knowledge of accounting. If individuals are accurate in their self-awareness with respect to their own weaknesses, they may be able to seek support from teammates who possess strengths in these areas. As a result, this increases the resources available to that team member that may promote greater performance. Furthermore, expressing humility means not only recognizing these resources that one’s teammates bring to the team but also appreciating those resources. This increase in the valuation of others does not imply a decrease in one’s own valuation (Means et al., 1990), but it simply increases the likelihood of an individual actually utilizing those resources.
Humility is also manifested in teachability, or an openness to feedback, ideas, and advice from teammates (Owens et al., 2013). In receiving feedback from their team members, humble individuals can improve their own behavior that may lead to inferior performance. Because of their tendency to view themselves accurately, they are unlikely to fall prey to self-enhancement or self-verification effects in feedback seeking, resulting in feedback that does not simply confirm of one’s current self-view or inflates one’s ego. Moreover, being humble means that one is nondefensive about information that is potentially damaging to the ego (Kachorek et al., 2004). For instance, if they receive feedback from teammates that their effort is lower than other team members, they are likely to accept that feedback as intended to be constructive rather than as a personal attack. Therefore, not only are humble team members more likely to seek relevant feedback from their teammates, they are also more likely to utilize this feedback to enhance their own performance.
Owens et al. (2013) provide up-and-coming evidence showing a positive relationship between individuals’ expression of humility and their performance. In replication of these findings, we propose that team members’ expression of humility will positively predict their individual performance in the team. As argued above, humble team members will accurately appraise their own and teammates’ resources, effectively utilize these resources, and display and openness to learning and feedback from teammates. Each of these behaviors should lead the humble teammate to produce high-quality work quickly and efficiently.
Mediating Effect of Humility
As discussed above, we predict that being perceived by their teammates as having high personal power relates to high individual performance within the team. We also contend that this effect is mediated by those high-power teammates’ expressions of humility. When individuals are seen as high in expert power, this means that they are seen as possessing valuable knowledge that can facilitate their individual performance within a team and their teammates are more likely to seek them out when completing tasks that require their valuable knowledge. We contend that this creates a context in which individuals feel strong self-worth—if others are seeking them out, they may feel that they provide unique value to the team. According to Exline and Geyer (2004), this is a context that encourages individuals to display humility, as it is a context that is built on stable and reliable sources (i.e., teammates showing them they provide value) rather than on transient external sources such as appearances or social inclusion, which is more likely to breed arrogance or boastful behavior.
Referent power likely works in a similar way: teammates will seek out those that they perceive as having valuable social skills and other attractive qualities, thus creating an environment where those sought out feel high self-worth and therefore are more likely to express humility. Humility then relates to higher performance by acknowledging what one’s strengths and weaknesses are, therefore knowing how to direct their efforts so that they can use their own knowledge combined with the knowledge of others (others’ strengths) to improve performance. Thus, it is through the expression of humility (i.e., learning from others, acknowledging their strengths and weaknesses, and appreciating other’s strengths) that those with expert and referent power have greater performance within the team setting (Figure 1).
Hypothesized conceptual model.
Method
Data were collected from undergraduate students enrolled in the experiential capstone course at a large west-coast university in the United States. Students typically take this course in their last semester, but a small number take it in their penultimate semester. Since this is a capstone course, students must pass all of their core courses in the different business disciplines before being allowed to enroll in this course (i.e., management, marketing, supply chain management, finance, accounting, management information systems, and business statistics), ensuring proficiency in various areas of business administration. This course entails of a semester-long project in which students work in teams and are assigned a project sponsor (i.e., a local business or other organization), for whom the team of students works as consultants for a specified project requested by the sponsor. After receiving a short synopsis of all of the possible projects, teams indicate their preferences for projects, and typically receive a project ranked in their top five choices. Teams are also assigned a faculty advisor, with whom they meet at least once per week throughout the semester. 3
Teams are composed of five students, except in rare cases where there are teams of four or six. Students get to form their own teams, and anecdotal evidence suggests that teams are formed by social connections (e.g., friends or people with whom one has taken classes previously). Based on the empirical data we collected as well as anecdotal data, most teams seem to be formed by smaller groups of two to three people who combine with another smaller group (81% of students indicate that they chose at least one other person on their team, but not every member on their team).
We collected data through the course of one semester. Data were collected multiple times, which we refer to as T1 and T2. 4 Students spend the first 2 weeks of the semester learning project management skills in a large class setting, after which they begin working with their sponsor and faculty advisor. The first survey (T1) took place between the 5th and 6th weeks of the semester, in which students rated each of their teammates on expert and referent power, as well as indicated their own gender, ethnicity, and elements of personality (used as control variables). Since students had been working with their teammates for at least 3 weeks, this gave them sufficient time to get to know one another and form perceptions that go beyond the surface level. In the second data collection (T2), students completed the second survey at the end of the 13th week of the semester, at which time they had nearly completed their team projects. At the conclusion of the project (after the 15th week of the semester), faculty advisors rated the performance of each team member. 5
Students were given class time to complete the surveys. Additionally, the first author of this article spoke about the importance of the research to the classes. These two factors likely account for the high response rate. Two hundred and sixty students out of a possible 268 completed the first survey, 266 students completed the second survey, and faculty advisor data were collected for 214 students, resulting in complete data for 214 students. Students were an average age of 25 years old, 56% female, 45% White, 33% Hispanic, 10% Asian, and 3% Black.
Measures
Unless otherwise specified, all variables were measured using a 5-point Likert-type scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree).
Expert and Referent Power
At the initial time point (T1), individuals rated each of their teammates on expert and referent power using scales from Hinkin and Schreisheim (1989). Each scale consists of four items (expert α = .95; referent α = .94). Sample items include, “This person can provide me with sound task-related advice” (expert) and “This person can make me feel personally accepted” (referent). An individual’s score of expert and referent power was then created by aggregating the ratings given by each of their teammates.
While there is theoretical and empirical support for the distinction of personal power from position power (Rahim, 1988; Yukl & Falbe, 1991), expert and referent power are two different dimensions of personal power. 6 Therefore, we conducted analyses using the two scales separately.
Humility
Humility was rated by an individual’s teammates during T2. Using teammates’ ratings of humility is appropriate given that humility is expressed by overt behaviors that are observable to others and is typically better assessed by others rather than the self (Owens et al., 2013). Individuals rated each of their teammates with a scale from Owens and Hekman (2012; α = .93). Sample items include, “This person shows appreciation for the unique contribution of others.” An individual’s rating of humility was created by aggregating the ratings by his or her team members.
Performance
Performance for each team member was rated by faculty advisors at the conclusion of the project using van der Vegt et al.’s (2006) six-item measure, rating each individual on quantity of work, quality of work, efficiency, meeting team goals, meeting deadlines, and overall performance (α = .97).
Controls
Ethnicity and gender were controlled for, as these variables may relate to power (Lips, 1991) and humility (Furnham et al., 2002; Morris et al., 2005). Each of these variables was dummy-coded (for gender 0 = male and 1 = female 7 ). We also controlled for conscientiousness and agreeableness, as measured by Goldberg’s (1990) scales. Conscientiousness has been shown to correlate with performance ratings (Barrick & Mount, 1991; Hurtz & Donovan, 2000) and agreeableness may affect teammates’ perceptions of personal power (e.g., Coats & Feldman, 1996; Hogan et al., 1990). All controls were collected from individual self-report at T1 and T2 (Table 1).
Means, Standard Deviations, and Intercorrelations.
Note. n = 214.
†p < .10. *p < .05. **p < .01.
Analysis
Data were structured so that individuals were grouped by their team number and nested within their faculty advisor. Because of this nature of the data, we used hierarchical linear modeling (HLM; see Hoffman, 1997), to account for the dependence among the observations (Raudenbush & Bryk, 2002). This analysis accounts for any bias associated with dependence among observations due to the team groupings. More specifically, in this article, we are interested in the individual-level effects, however the individuals are situated within teams. When individuals are within the same team, this means they may share some common experiences that are different from the common experiences shared by other individuals within other teams. This may result in correlations between scores of individuals who are within the same team, violating the ordinary least squares (OLS) assumption of independence among observations. By using HLM, we are explicitly acknowledging and modeling the within-team homogeneity of errors by using estimates for error terms for both the individual and the team (Krull & MacKinnon, 2001). More simply, our key dependent variable is faculty advisor-rated performance, and since each person within the same team had the same faculty advisor, there may be statistical dependence among these ratings that is not accounted for in OLS regression. However, HLM takes this dependence into consideration and includes it in the model so that we are appropriately testing for whether variance in the dependent variable is statistically related to variance in the independent variable.
To test for mediation (where X is the independent variable, M is the mediating variable, and Y is the dependent variable), we conducted 5,000 Monte Carlo intervals (Bauer et al., 2006; Mackinnon et al., 2002), which is appropriate for samples of hierarchical nature (Bauer et al., 2006). With this method, we are using the values for the path coefficients (β values) from X to M and from M to Y to represent the indirect effect of the mediation. We use these values as well as the standard errors for the β values to calculate 5,000 estimates for the indirect effect (the product of the β values of X to M and from M to Y). These values then create 5% confidence intervals whereby significant mediation occurs when the 5% confidence interval does not contain zero. This means that the indirect effect is estimated to be significantly greater than 0, indicating significant mediation.
Results
In testing Hypotheses 1a and 1b, we found significant results positively predicting advisor-rated performance for expert power (β = .67, p < .01) but not for referent power (β = −.33, p = .10; see Table 2).
HLM Results Testing Hypothesis 1.
Note. HLM = hierarchical linear modeling.
†p < .10. *p < .05. **p < .01.
Hypotheses 2a and 2b predict a positive relationship between teammates’ ratings of an individual’s expert and referent power and expressed humility. Analyses revealed support for both Hypotheses 2a and 2b (expert power and humility: β = .18, p < .05; referent power and humility: β = .35 p < .01; see Table 3).
HLM Results Testing Hypotheses 2a and 2b.
Note. HLM = hierarchical linear modeling.
†p < .10. *p < .05. **p < .01.
Hypothesis 3 predicts a positive relationship between an individual’s expressed humility and advisor-rated performance. We found support for this hypothesis finding a positive relationship between humility and advisor-rated performance (β = .52, p < .01; see Table 4).
HLM Results Testing Hypotheses 3.
Note. HLM = hierarchical linear modeling.
†p < .10. *p < .05. **p < .01.
Finally, in examining Hypotheses 4a and 4b, we looked at the mediating effect of expressed humility in the relationship between teammate-rated expert and referent power and advisor-rated performance. Results support Hypotheses 4a and 4b, finding significant mediation of humility for both expert power (0.02 to 0.19) and referent power (0.06 to 0.34) on advisor-rated performance.
Discussion
Within higher education, prior research has shown that power plays an important role in determining the outcomes of those who hold it and those who do not (e.g., Aguinis et al., 1996; Gumport, 1993; Hearn & Corcoran, 1988). We examined and found that personal power does have a positive influence on advisor-rated performance. However, this effect is only apparent for expert power, but not for referent power. Moreover, this relationship is mediated by expressed humility. These results reveal that even when students do not have positional power in a team, their personal power—especially expert power—has a significant impact on their performance in the team setting, thus showing that students’ power can play in their own outcomes within higher education.
When teammates perceive an individual as having superior knowledge that will aid in the completion of the team’s project, these individuals show more humility, ultimately leading them to have better performance in the team. It makes sense intuitively that those perceived as having greater knowledge will perform better in teams, confirming our hypothesis. However, it is teammates’ perceptions of this person’s knowledge that brings about these effects, rather than an objective measure of greater and/or more valuable knowledge that these individuals possess. Therefore, we contend that it is through others’ perceptions—not only the knowledge itself—that this effect occurs. More specifically, when teammates perceive individuals as possessing valuable knowledge, they seek them out, creating a context that encourages these individuals to display more humility, which then leads to greater performance. Interestingly, this implies that peers’ perceptions of these individuals’ knowledge are seemingly accurate.
Our results also show that there are significant positive results between humility and performance (as rated by the advisor). Our research highlights a benefit to the individual engaging in humble behavior—better performance ratings from superiors. This is a particularly interesting finding given that these variables were rated by different sources, and therefore does not reflect a simple common method bias or halo effect. This research builds on the extant research around the benefits of humility.
Interestingly, and contrary to our hypotheses, referent power does not have a direct impact on performance, but it does have a positive influence on expressed humility. Humility mediates the relationship between referent power and performance, suggesting that referent power does play some role in individual outcomes, but not as directly as does expert power. This could be because referent power is picking up on some shared conceptual space with humility; perhaps they are both associated with being seen as trustworthy or nice. This pattern of results reveals that it is not just referent power that matters, but it is the effect that referent power has through expressed humility that leads to increased performance. More specifically, just being perceived as high in referent power does not necessarily lead to better performance; instead, it is the fact that being perceived as high in referent power leads to individuals expressing more humility, and this expressed humility leads to greater performance. Therefore, instead of simply looking at the distal relationship (i.e., between referent power and performance), we highlight the importance of identifying humility as the more proximal explanatory mechanism.
Our research contributes to the literature by highlighting positive consequences of greater power. Our results suggest that elevated power can also result in positive social processes that are not self-focused. These results build on a body of literature that finds contingency variables to some of the aforementioned negative relationships between power and a focus on others (Blader & Chen, 2011; De Dreu & Van Kleef, 2004; Overbeck & Park, 2001, 2006; Vescio et al., 2003).
Finally, our findings have important implications for research on power in organizations. Specifically, we add to the literature by parsing out the impact that personal power has on performance in the absence of positional power. We believe that this could be generalized to actors who may not have access to positional power for a number of reasons, such as new employees entering the workforce at lower levels in the organizational hierarchy (see Rousseau et al., 2006, for discussions on such contexts). Our studies show that personal power may promote individual performance, which may be useful in organizations as well as in higher education. Moreover, we highlight the importance of showing humility regardless of formal power positions. Not only do our results point to a personal benefit from engaging in humble behaviors (i.e., others’ greater perceptions of one’s performance), but this result occurs especially when individuals are seen as high in personal power—power that is based on the personal qualities of the individual rather than on their position within the organizational hierarchy.
Practical Implications
Aside from contributing to the body of literature on how power affects higher education actors’ outcomes, the findings from this study may be used as a teaching tool for those teaching classes such as Organizational Behavior and Leadership. In fact, as suggested by Barbuto (2000), power may be a topic that is difficult for students to grasp due to its abstractness as a concept. However, if instructors are able to use students’ own experiences in teams with personal power and related outcomes, students may be able to understand the concept better. Many projects and exercises utilize teams, so instructors could distribute short versions of surveys that measure the personal power of teammates and relate this to any positive outcomes that may result at the conclusion of the team projects. Connecting expert and referent power to valued outcomes can illustrate to students the importance of these bases of power, which may not be as evident as the importance of positional power.
Education efforts can be aimed at teaching students how to enhance others’ perceptions of their personal power. Although we did not measure any variables related to impression management, our findings may be able to speak to the use of such techniques within student teams. Our results suggest that individuals may be able to engage in impression management to affect their own performance. In our experience, students occasionally work hardest to manage their impressions in front of instructors, and those impressions may not extend to their teammates. For instance, students may strive to appear as they are actively participating in the team’s project in front of the advisor, whereas their teammates report they are in fact social loafing or free riding (e.g., Fellenz, 2006). However, our study indicates that if advisors’ performance evaluations are a result of impression management, these students are also engaging in impression management with their teammates to draw out higher ratings of personal power and humility. That is, within the context of the student teams we examined, if students are engaging in impression management, they are doing so with all constituents rather than only their instructors. Our results suggest that students get the best outcomes when others have positive impressions of them based on attractive personal qualities (i.e., those that influence perceptions of referent power) as well as attractive qualities that contribute to the success of the team’s project (i.e., those that influence perceptions of expert power) such as possessing relevant knowledge and actively contributing to the team’s efforts. We encourage instructors to use these results to highlight to students how managing others’ positive impressions of oneself can result in favorable outcomes, but these positive impressions must also be grounded in actual contributions to the team.
The use of peer evaluations can be used as such a tool to encourage individuals to be accountable not only to the instructor but also to their teammates (Cestone et al., 2008). 8 Peer evaluations are based on peers’ impressions of the personal qualities of their teammates as well as teammates’ work toward the team’s goals. We did not explicitly include peer evaluations in this study as we were interested in the outcomes for the students (determined by the advisors in the form of the course grade). Peer evaluations are used in this course and were due to advisors prior to the advisors completing our survey, and therefore, if peer evaluations affected advisors’ impressions, it was accounted for in our data. Collecting personal power and humility perceptions may provide additional information to instructors about an individual’s role within the team over and above data collected from traditional peer evaluations. In interest of this, future research may examine more closely the relationship between peers’ perceptions of personal power and traditional peer evaluations.
Finally, while our research does not attempt to disentangle the question of whether student-selected teams are superior to instructor-assigned teams, we feel our findings may speak to this question. As suggested by Connerley and Mael (2001), students choose those that they have prior positive experiences with to be on their teams, using things such as communication skills (which speaks to referent power) as decision criteria. We assume that students are more likely to choose others whom they already view as greater in referent and expert power, and as long as those perceptions do not change over the course of this project, this results in positive outcomes for those high personal power students. Therefore, we would encourage instructors to allow students to select their teams, especially for long-term projects where there are ample opportunities to engage in behaviors like humility.
Strengths, Limitations, and Future Research
This study has a number of strengths as well as some limitations worth mentioning. One strength of this study is that we collected data at multiple time points from multiple sources (students, their teammates, and their faculty advisors). This approach to data collection helps minimize common method variance concerns and allowed us to explore our hypotheses and other factors which affect team performance through multiple time points to understand the mechanism by which the relationships occurred. This study also utilizes a design in which participants are in real-life situations where the outcome has an impact on them (specifically coursework and grades), so unlike vignette style studies, the implications here have the potential for a greater personal impact. Finally, this study has objective outcomes instead of focusing on perceived learning and differentiates between individual and team-level analysis, following suggestions from Bacon and Stewart (2019).
That being said, there are also some limitations in the design. First, we cannot fully rule out that perceptions of teammates’ humility could shape perceptions of expert and power, leaving to question the causation of the relationships in the study. That is, it is possible that students look to the humble behavior of their teammates to judge how much expert and referent power they perceive each teammate to have. It could be that early perceptions of individuals’ humility shaped their perceptions and ratings of expert and referent power, even though the ratings of humility did not occur until a later time. This could especially be the case given that students chose their own teams, which means they may have selected teammates whom they have already formed positive impressions of throughout earlier educational experiences. It is important to note that despite the separation of time between the measurements of these variables and them being collected in the order they were hypothesized, it is possible that there is reverse causation. Future research might follow Bacon and Stewart’s (2019) recommendation to replicate our study using an experimental design.
Second, we cannot be certain that raters are meaningfully differentiating between personal power and humility given that our independent variables and mediator variable are rated by the same source about the perceptions of the same teammate and they are highly correlated. Thus, the nature of our data and results does not rule out the idea that there may be an impression management story here. More specifically, it may be that those who are high in personal power are especially skilled at managing their teammates’ and advisors’ impressions, therefore resulting in higher ratings of these positive attributes (i.e., expressed humility and teamwork behaviors) and performance. Advisors’ interactions with team members were typically limited to only 1 hour per week, which limits the amount of time team members have to engage in impression management techniques in the presence of their advisors. Unfortunately, we do not have any objective data on individual performance in teams, therefore, we cannot say whether higher personal power leads to objectively higher performance, or if those high in personal power are skilled at managing both teammates’ and advisors’ impressions. We suggest that future research examine impression management tactics used by those who are seen as high in expert and referent power, while also collecting some objective data on performance.
An additional limitation is that we are using one sample of students from one university, which limits the generalizability given that our findings may or may not be representative of all college students. While the university that the sample came from is one that is highly diverse in terms of age, demographics, background, work experience, veteran status, and first-generation college student status, we did not collect the majority of these variables to use as control variables. Therefore, while we believe that these results will play out similarly for all college students and anyone with limited position power, we cannot, with certainty, say that they will. It may be that there is a gender or ethnicity effect with power, as women and minorities are often viewed as holding lower power than their male counterparts regardless of whether that is objectively the case (Lips, 1991). While we controlled for these variables, we did not include them as variables of interest in our analyses. However, looking at some of the analyses reveal insights into these relationships. For instance, it appears there may be a marginal effect between race and performance. In our sample, it is unclear why, but it is notable that there are very small numbers of students of certain ethnicities and therefore we are unsure if these are meaningful results. Moreover, it appears that female students were rated higher in humility than their male peers. Research on humility has indicated differences on the outcomes of humble behaviors for younger, low-level, or female leaders (Owens & Hekman, 2012), therefore future research should investigate the role of social identities in understanding power and humility in the team setting. These are interesting questions that would be very suitable for future research to examine.
Other social identity variables that we did not collect may merit further research as well, such as first-generation college student or veteran status. The university from which this data was collected hosts a greater-than-average proportion of students who are first-generation college students. In our experience as instructors at such universities, we have noticed at times that first-generation students may not hold the same type of confidence, and thus influence, in higher educational settings. Additionally, it may be that veteran students, due to their familiarity with formal or positional power from the military, may respond differently in educational team settings where roles are not as clearly defined. While these are very interesting questions, we are unable to test them with the current research, but we encourage scholars to examine them in future research.
Finally, this research focused on examining relationships at the individual level. Future research should examine whether the team performs better if there is a greater mean level of personal power within a team. Indeed, Steiner (1966) suggests that the team’s productivity level depends on the resources of its members. Therefore, it may be that teams where all members are seen as high in personal power hold valuable resources to help them engage in behaviors that promote high team performance. Moreover, we only examined the role of student personal power in a team context, and thus, it is unclear whether these relationships would generalize to work that is more individual in nature. One reason we examined this in team settings is due to practicality—it’s easier to have teammates only rate their other teammates rather than everyone in their classroom. However, it may be that these findings extend outside of team settings as well. More specifically, we found that humility facilitates performance, which may extend to settings outside of teamwork (e.g., individual work), as humble individuals may acknowledge their weaknesses and seek out others to learn from, even if those individuals are not helping with that a specific task.
Conclusion
Within higher education, students are often not thought of when the concept of “power” arises, primarily because they hold no positional power when compared with instructors and administrators. However, this research shows that students can and do experience power within their higher educational experiences. While they may experience positional power in relation to formal positions they hold in student organizations, the personal power they experience in team settings has an impact on educational outcomes that they value. As management educators, we can use these findings to illustrate to our students that being successful in a team is more than just raw talent. Instead, it is others’ perceptions of your personal power that allows you to conduct the kinds of behaviors to be successful in a team environment.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
