Too Much of a Good Thing? The Effects of Complex Configurations of Status on Experts' Participation and Influence within Groups

The contribution of unique knowledge of experts within groups is essential for organizational productivity. Our study examined the combined status effects of expert and reward power on expert members' participation, influence and performance within decision-making groups. Previous research on status differences has led to conflicting findings: additional status sometimes has positive effects on the contribution of expert information (Stewart & Stasser, 1995) while other studies have found negative effects (Janis, 1982). In our study, we find that groups with public experts without additional rewarding status extract more expert information and perform better than groups with private experts or groups with rewarding experts. Our results also indicate that the emphasis on expert information mediates the relationship between the status configuration of the group (public vs. private experts and rewarding vs. non-rewarding experts) and group performance. Additionally, we find that expert influence is not always beneficial to group performance. Namely, too much or too little amounts of influence lead to sub-optimal performances. We discuss the implications of our findings for managing experts within groups