Team Hierarchical Adaptability: Benefits for Team Coordination and Performance

We introduce the concept of hierarchical adaptability, which we define as a team’s relative capability to repeatedly and bidirectionally shift between different shapes of its influence hierarchy (i.e., more hierarchical or flatter) across tasks, while the team’s formal hierarchy remains constant. We provide a first investigation of the effects of team hierarchical adaptability, proposing that team hierarchical adaptability enables teams to achieve better coordination and team performance outcomes as they move across different tasks, compared to consistently hierarchical or flat teams. Five multimethod studies, including field data of intact teams and a laboratory experiment of interacting teams, provide support for our hypotheses.