CONFLICT MANAGEMENT IN WORK TEAMS: THE ROLE OF SOCIAL SELF‐EFFICACY AND GROUP IDENTIFICATION

Abstract

The current study focused on intra‐group conflict by attempting to elucidate individual and situational factors underlying choices along two dimensions of conflict management patterns: engagement versus avoidance and constructive versus destructive. In the study, the role of two types of self‐efficacy (global and social) among group members was investigated, as was the sense of group identification in team dispute resolution preferences modes. Sixty‐seven members of volunteer community service communes in the Israeli Scouting youth movement, 48 females and 19 males, representing 13 intact teams, participated in the study. Self‐report structured questionnaires (previously used and adapted for this study) served as research instruments. Both global self‐efficacy and group identification independently predicted the conflict engagement‐destructive pattern of domination. Social self‐efficacy served as the sole predictor of the preference to manage intra‐team conflict by means of integrating—the engagement‐constructive mode. In contrast, the choice of compromising was also fostered by the joint contribution of social self‐efficacy and group‐identification, beyond the direct effect of social self‐efficacy. The study corroborates the assumption that conflict management patterns within an intact team are related to dispositional variables on the individual level, i.e., global and social self‐efficacy, and to the team‐related variable of group identification.