Researchers and practitioners have long hinted at there being the existence of a link between status conflict and creativity, and are interested in the factors that attenuate or accentuate an employee’s creativity – and specifically in how these factors play out in increasingly dynamic and uncertain work environments (George, 2007). A dispute over member’s relative status in a team – conflict over power, control, or respect – generates a long term breakdown in teams (Bendersky & Hays, 2010; Wang et al., 2022). Such conflict is a common feature of group where members maintain their (status) interests, advocate their contributions to group, challenging expertise of others, compete in-group discussions, or allocate resources in self-serving ways (Pai & Bendersky, 2020). According to Greer et al., (2017), power and influence (emergence) in teams create power struggle and conflict to gain a desired position among team members. Desire for status is a requirement of the team members to fulfill the job demands (Anderson et al., 2015). However, lack of desired resources (status) in teams instill desire to gain power and influence and negatively influences the team outcomes (Greer et al., 2017). Following the prior work, we, therefore, posit that status conflict among team members involves the undermining of one another’s participation and induces competing behaviors, thus creating an unsafe social environment for employees to conceive of and share their creative ideas (Gould, 2003; Porath et al., 2008) and consequently hamper team creativity (Lee et al., 2018). According to Shin and Zhou (2007), team creativity is defined as “the production of novel and useful ideas concerning products, services, processes, and procedures by a team of employees working together” (p. 1715).

We argue that the development of new ideas and solutions requires an exchange of information, because employees learning from each other is a primary step in the creative process. Conversely, status conflict creates a hostile environment, inhibits learning opportunities (Bendersky & Hays, 2012), and restricts the exchange of ideas (Fasnacht, 2003). Therefore, it can reduce information-processing capacity (Greer & Jehn, 2007) and can likely lower creativity (Černe et al., 2014). We, therefore, propose that status contests among team members induces competing behaviors (Greer et al., 2011) that hamper their helping behavior as well as information sharing and team learning (Greer & Dannals, 2017). Consequently, this would likely lower team’s creativity.

Status conflict based on cutthroat competition among employees builds up a social environment that reduces members’ cooperation and information sharing, thus creating a psychologically unsafe social climate (Gould, 2003). We argue that status as a psychological resource provides control in difficult job situations and is directly associated with one’s self-esteem (Schieman et al., 2001). An employee’s effort to gain desired status requires energies that leave them with fewer (physical or psychological) resources, causes diversion from the assigned tasks, and devalues the task itself, consequently affecting their creativity (Erez & Nouri, 2010).

We used the theoretical lens of job demands-resources (JD-R) model proposed by Demerouti et al. (2001) to explain the proposed conceptual framework. The model predicts that there are primarily two perspectives, namely energy depletion perspective and motivational perspective, to explain high job demands and low job resources, causing job burnout and disengagement from work (Bakker & Demerouti, 2017). Consistent with energy depletion perspective of JD-R model, we therefore contend that carrying a desired status in workgroup drives members to fulfill the job demands and complete the assigned tasks efficiently, while team status conflict creates a non-conducive work environment and will deplete an employee’s psychological resources (Schneider et al., 2017), constraining the exchange of ideas with other members that are essential for doing creative work. It is thus predicted that:

H1: Status conflict among team members is negatively related to a team’s creativity.

Depersonalization, a dimension of job burnout and indicator of psychological health in the workplace (Schaufeli & Enzmann, 1998), refers to mentally distancing oneself from others and seeing others unsympathetically (Chiu & Tsai, 2006), and is characterized by a callous, negative, and detached attitude (Salanova et al., 2005). We propose that a dispute in the workplace in order to gain the desired position in a group social hierarchy induces competitive behavior among employees and encourages them to manipulate status relations (Gould, 2003). We argue that members disagreement on “who should be in higher status positions” or differences in hierarchy initiates power struggles and heightened competition and restricts helping behavior, information sharing, and team learning (Bendersky & Hays, 2012; Pai & Bendersky, 2020, p. 38). This could result in a member being either blamed for another employee’s problems or being insensitive to their needs (Gould, 2003), which could potentially distance them from others in the team and result in indifference, detachment, and a lack of empathy (Garden, 1987). Thus, these employees would likely develop feelings of depersonalization with their peers (Russell & Fiske, 2008). Such feelings lead to employees distancing themselves from the task at hand, thereby restricting the processing or sharing of ideas (Hollet-Haudebert et al., 2011) and reducing helpful and participative behaviors (Greer & Dannals, 2017; Lee et al., 2018). This, in turn, will restrict their own personal processing and sharing of ideas, thus lowering overall creativity of team (Salanova et al., 2005).

In light of the above statements, then, we argue that status conflict, a psychological workplace stressor, may create tension and anger among members who are working together in a team. From the motivational perspective of the job demand-resource model, this study contemplates that the members of a team require a desired status to complete various job tasks with creativity; for example, due to physicians power in medical teams, the National Health Service Direct increased the perceived status of nurses because they had creative role in teams (i.e., performing diagnosis) (Voyer, 2013). A scarcity of desired resources to complete the assigned tasks among team members may result in difficulties to accomplish the tasks. Consequently, employees may not participate in team activities and build cynical sentiments towards team members and work to avoid failures (Cho et al., 2020). This may lead to fewer available resources for engaging in personal relationships and feeling connected at work, and therefore will likely increase depersonalization that may decrease overall team creativity. Personal relationships and workplace connections are also important psychological resources, and therefore, when personalization is reduced, it will ultimately have an impact on employees’ work behaviour and overall wellbeing (Hobfoll, 1989, 2001). Moreover, personal relationships create a conducive environment for generating new ideas (Baer & Oldham, 2006; Dakhli & De Clercq, 2004). As depersonalization depicts a form of disengagement and directly influences other team members, lack of personalization resource would likely lead to reduced team’s creativity. We, therefore, predict that:

H2: Depersonalization mediates the relationship between status conflict among team members and a team’s creativity.

Organizational awareness is often used interchangeably with social astuteness – a part of social and political skills – in organization studies, due to the fact that each helps individuals to observe, understand, and consider the other in wide-ranging social settings (Boyatzis & Sala, 2004). However, both are distinct yet come under the umbrella of political skills because a socially astute individual perceptively “observe others and keenly attune to diverse social situation” (Shi et al., 2011, p. 361), while organizational awareness is an individual’s competency to read emotional currents and power relationships in a group, and identify influencers, networks, and dynamics within the organization (Goleman et al., 2017; Goleman et al., 2013). In this research, we do not distinguish between the two, because of both constructs’ similar social effects and the fact that both facilitate social influence skills in work settings (Semadar et al., 2006; Treadway et al., 2005). We argue that individuals who have high organizational awareness hold a high level of self-awareness, intuitively understanding both the immediate social and political dynamics of their own groups and the ultimate effects of conflict in matters of deviance and social conflict (Boehm, 2000). In this study, we considered organizational awareness or social astuteness to be a positive resource, because individuals with high organizational awareness are better able to manage stress and mitigate burnout as they take interpersonal interaction as an opportunity (Brotheridge, 2001; Harvey et al., 2007; Perrewé et al., 2004). Within a work setting, individuals with high organizational awareness and social skills are able to grow their social network more effectively, due to the fact that they are able to influence others, appear to be sincere, and behave in ways that are socially astute (Ferris et al., 2005). Likewise, with such a degree of organizational awareness, one also knows how to use a social network for one’s own benefit by adjusting their behaviors/actions toward the changing situational demands and toning down the negative aspects of social interactions, including status conflict (Fang et al., 2015; Ferris et al., 2012).

Recent studies have indicated that organizational awareness as a social competency diminishes the negative consequences of conflict – such as job burnout (Xu, 2019) – and is positively related to self-monitoring, paying attention to details (conscientiousness) and political savvy (Snyder, 1987). Better understanding of work situations and people – organizational awareness – is an individual resource that one can use to attain personal and organizational goals, an important component of being successful in the workplace. Others at the workplace would thus view them as knowledgeable and skilled, and this would result in increasing their networking resources (Brouer et al., 2011). In line with the buffer perspective of JD-R model, we argue that organizational awareness as a personal resource would help employees to attenuate the negative effects of team status conflict on employee’s depersonalization (Ferris et al., 2005; Lee et al., 2018). We contend that, in the case of status conflict in team, an employee with high organizational awareness has a keen understanding of social interactions within the workplace environment (Ferris et al., 2005; Lee et al., 2018). This would likely help the employees to reduce the negative effects of depersonalization, due to their confidence and capability of handling through self-regulation. Furthermore, in line with JD-R, we argue that such employees also have the ability to accumulate the required resources to replenish and protect resource loss that results from team status conflict, thus providing emotional respite and psychological wellbeing (Ferris et al, 2007). We, therefore contend that organizational awareness as a personal resource would mitigate the negative outcomes of status conflict among team members (i.e., depersonalization) and employees with high organizational awareness will experience less depersonalization than employees with lower level of organizational awareness. It is thus predicted that:

H3: Organizational awareness moderates the relationship between team status conflict and depersonalization, such that individuals with less-developed organizational awareness experience more depersonalization, and vice versa.

It was operationalized as disagreement over members’ relative position in team’s hierarchy and measured through four items developed by Bendersky and Hays (2012) on a five-item Likert-scale, from 1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree. A sample item is “I experience conflict because of others trying to assert their dominance” (α = .620 and ω = .626.)

It was operationalized as individual detachment from job and measured through five items derived from the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) developed by Maslach and Jackson (1981) on a five-item Likert-scale, from 1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree. A sample item is “I worry that this job is hardening me emotionally” (α = .72 and ω = .722.)

It was operationalized as individual level social skills to observe, understand, and consider others in work settings measured through five items derived from the political skill inventory (PSI) developed by Treadway et al. (2005) on a five-item Likert-scale, from 1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree. A sample item is “I am good at getting people to like me” (α = .67 and ω = .667.)

It was measured through four items proposed by Shin and Zhou (2007). The supervisor was asked to rate subordinate creativity on a five-point Likert scale, from 1 = very poor to 5 = very good. A sample item includes “How well does your team member produce new ideas?” (α = .93 and ω = .928.)

Age and gender were added as control variables, because of their possible effect on status. Age has the potential to affect performance through conflict (Jehn et al., 1999). Gender was controlled, because our sample contained 70% of females mostly nurses, which could potentially affect status and creativity.