Dear Faculty and Fellow Ph.D. Students,

I cordially invite you to attend my dissertation defense scheduled for Monday, April 15th from 1:00 PM to 2:30 AM (EST). Location details will be provided once confirmed.

You can also attend virtually via the following Zoom link: https://gatech.zoom.us/j/94625889353

An overview of the dissertation is included below. Copies will be made available upon request. 

Thank you! 

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Yufei Zhong | Ph.D. Candidate

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Area: Organizational Behavior

Committee Members: Dr. Huisi (Jessica) Li (Co-chair), Dr. Katie Badura (Co-chair), Dr. Terry Blum, Dr. Eugene Kim, and Dr. Eric Anicich (University of Southern California)

Title: Survival of the Flattest: Team Status Differentiation Influences How Team Failure Impacts High-Status Member Addition and Team Performance

Dissertation Overview:

Although most previous research on how teams react to failures has studied teams as closed systems, in reality, teams are open systems whose membership may change. This can be especially important for teams that seek to improve their performance after failures. Adopting a teams-as-open-systems perspective, I examine whether teams are more likely to add high-status members following failures and whether doing so improves subsequent team performance. Drawing from status hierarchy research, I also examine whether status differentiation within the team moderates the relationship between team failure and teams’ tendency to add high-status members. I predict that teams with lower status differentiation will respond to failure by adding high-status members, whereas this effect will be weaker in teams with higher status differentiation. I analyzed longitudinal archival data containing 25,035 performance episodes of 5,283 product development teams in a large IT company and found support for the contingency effect of status differentiation. This research helps advance research on team failure and social hierarchy