Managing Conflict in School Teams: The Impact of Task and Goal Interdependence on Conflict Management and Team Effectiveness

Abstract

Purpose: Although conflict has traditionally been considered destructive, recent studies have indicated that conflict management can contribute to effective teamwork. The present study explores conflict management as a team phenomenon in schools. The author examined how the contextual variables (task interdependence, goal interdependence) are related to team conflict management style (integrating vs. dominating) and school team effectiveness (team performance). Research Design: Data were collected from 149 school teams (including team coordinators and team members) at 149 elementary schools. Results: Hierarchical regression analyses demonstrate, as expected, a positive relation between conflict management of integrating and team performance and a negative relation between dominating and team performance. In addition, there are positive relations between the congruent low-low or high-high combinations of task and goal interdependence and integrating and positive relations between the incongruent low-high or high-low combinations of task and goal interdependence and team conflict management of dominating. Moreover, results indicate that the highest level of integrating is under the condition of high task interdependence and high goal interdependence, whereas the highest level of dominating is under the condition of high task interdependence and low goal interdependence. Finally, a team's conflict management was partially mediated by the combination of task and goal interdependence and team performance. Conclusions: The present results provide additional empirical support for the notion that conflict management can be considered a team phenomenon. The study should serve to encourage educational administration researchers to focus more attention on characteristics of organizational and team context as related to team conflict management and team effectiveness.