When team members (dis)agree about social rules and norms: a shared relational models approach to explaining team viability

When people work together in teams, they ideally have a common understanding, a shared mental model regarding various aspects of teamwork. This common understanding refers not only to task-related aspects of teamwork but also to the elemental social rules and norms that underlie social interactions among team members. Relational models theory proposes that social rules and norms can be seen as the implementation and combination of four elemental relational models that people use to coordinate their social interactions. Since each of these relational models encompasses a distinct moral motive, which determines expectations of fairness and appropriate behaviors in social interactions, we propose that the degree of sharedness of individuals’ perceptions regarding the applicable relational models in teams (i.e., shared relational models) is positively related to various aspects of team viability, mediated by perceived justice and relationship conflict. In two field studies collecting data from N = 40 and N = 46 work teams in organizations, we found reproducible support for most of our hypotheses. Our studies’ findings emphasize the importance of shared relational models among team members for justice perceptions, conflict and team viability in organizational settings.