Affective Conflict Research Articles

The Moderating Role of Affective Interpersonal Conflict on Managerial Decision-making and Organizational Performance in Private Sector Organizations: A Study of Ghana

ABSTRACTThe issue of interpersonal conflict has been a thorny issue in high-power distant environments due to disagreement and divergence of superior and subordinate views resulting from managerial decision-making. This work looks at the moderating role of affective interpersonal conflict on managerial decision-making and organizational performance. A quantitative methodology was used to sample 197 managers from 10 private sector organizations in Ghana. By means of structural equation modeling and hierarchical regression, findings showed that there is a significant positive relationship between managerial decision-making and how organizations performance. Findings also showed that there is a negative relationship between affective interpersonal conflict and organizational performance. Our major finding revealed that affective interpersonal conflict moderates the relationship between managerial decision-making and organizational performance. The article recommends prudence in decision-making by managers in the sub-Saharan African business environment. Prudent decision-making by managers is akin to ethical decision-making, which resides in moral and theological philosophies that are fundamentally in the realm of management and business and are also concerned with explaining and predicting employees’ actual behaviors.

COLLABORATION OR CLASH? MAPPING THE EFFECTS OF TOP MANAGEMENT TEAM CONFLICT ON FIRM ABSORPTIVE CAPACITY

Top management teams (TMTs) that work (not so) well together enhance (restrict) the ability of the firm to leverage capabilities, which affects outcomes such as innovation. Although internal team dynamics at this level have notable effects on the firm, much remains to be understood about how these effects occur. Therefore, we investigate TMT conflict (cognitive and affective) to understand how the firm-level knowledge capability of absorptive capacity (ACAP) is altered as a result of such types of conflict. Further, given that strategic orientations offer guiding principles for organisational behaviours, we suggest that the main effects of conflict are augmented by strategic orientations. Specifically, both entrepreneurial orientation and market orientation are posited to affect the relationship between conflict and ACAP, which expands understanding of the conditions in which TMT conflict affects ACAP. In all, a conceptual framework is developed to offer insight into how TMT conflict affects firm-level ACAP, highlighting differences that are dependent on whether team members collaborate via cognitive conflict or clash given affective conflict.

Top management team conflict and exploratory innovation: The mediating impact of market orientation

Drawing on upper echelon theory, this study examines the linkage of top management team (TMT) conflict to exploratory innovation and the mediating impact of market orientation (MO) on the linkage. It finds that cognitive conflict in TMTs positively affects exploratory innovation, while affective conflict has a negative effect. Moreover, MO is a critical conduit through which TMT conflict plays its role in exploratory innovation. These findings advance our knowledge on the antecedents of exploratory innovation, improve our understanding about the linkage of TMT conflict to innovation, and identify additional antecedents and consequences for MO.

Neurocognitive mechanisms of affective conflict adaptation: An event related fMRI study.

Control of conflict can be seen in reduced effects of conflict following incompatible trials known as conflict adaptation. Such control mechanisms have been shown to depend on emotional content present in stimuli, which could be a motivational force for control adjustments. We explored the neural mechanisms of the interaction between proactive control in terms of conflict adaptation effect and emotions through an event related fMRI study involving an emotional Stroop effect (facial expression-emotional word paradigm) involving happy and angry expressions. Conflict adaptation was measured in terms of the reduction in Stroop effect as a function of previous trial congruence and previous trial emotion. Participants responded to the facial expression while ignoring the distractor word written over the face. Behavioral results showed larger Stroop effect for angry faces compared to happy faces. Conflict adaptation effect was greater for angry faces and was also influenced by previous trial emotion. Both priming and adaptation effects were observed. Stroop effect was correlated with activations in dorsal anterior cingulate. Emotion effect was correlated with activations in amygdala, fusiform face area (FFA), and insula along with the expected hemispheric asymmetry for positive and negative emotions in left vs right FFA, respectively. Conflict adaptation effect was correlated with activations in amygdala. In addition, activations in striatum supported the three-way interaction between emotion, previous and current trial congruence. Activation in dorsal anterior cingulate was correlated only with the overall Stroop effect in the current trial. Activations in amygdala and striatum were also found with facial expressions. The results indicate that emotion specific processing areas themselves such as amygdala and striatum may self-regulate and contribute toward enhanced proactive control mechanisms for task-relevant emotional stimuli. These findings further confirm the strong relationship between cognition and affect in the context of conflict monitoring and adjustments in cognitive control.

Conflict and Decision‐Making: Attributional and Emotional Influences

AbstractThere is general consensus among conflict scholars that cognitive conflict's impact within the organization is functional, whereas affective conflict's impact is dysfunctional. Inconsistent findings in the literature suggest that additional factors impact these relationships. In this study, we integrate theories of conflict, affect, and attribution within the domain of decision‐making to gain a greater understanding of how and why organizational conflicts are at times positive, negative, or neutral. Specifically, we posit that the conclusions individuals reach as a result of their attributions, and their subsequent emotions and behavioral responses, play a significant role in determining conflict's effects. We apply theories of team‐level emotional convergence to propose how the individual emotional responses of team members may converge into a collective emotional response at the team level. Finally, we propose that the team‐level emotional responses initiated by the attribution process are significant moderators of the relationship between conflict type and decision outcomes.

Intra-team conflict: the moderating effect of emotional self-leadership

PurposeThe aim of this paper is to present a model of the moderating role of emotional self-leadership on the cognitive conflict–affective conflict relationship and their effect on work team decision quality.Design/methodology/approachThis paper draws upon extant theoretical and empirical research on the conflict, leadership and emotions literature works to argue for the role of emotional self-leadership as a boundary condition of the intra-team conflict–work team decision quality relationship.FindingsKey to understanding why cognitive conflict sometimes leads to improved decision quality and sometimes it does not is the role of emotional self-leadership. Through emotional self-leadership, team members can actively anticipate, guide and focus their emotional responses to cognitive conflict and reduce their experience of affective conflict, improving team decision quality.Research limitations/implicationsIdentifying and explaining the moderating role of emotional self-leadership represents important progress for reframing emotion regulation and emotional intelligence into a new theoretical lens that may yield more meaningful insights into self-managed teams’ research. If empirically supported, this moderating effect would help explain the contradictory results obtained in prior empirical studies.Practical implicationsPractitioners can diminish or avoid the negative effect of the type of conflict that lowers work team decision quality and preserve the positive effect of the type of conflict that improves work team decision quality by identifying and implementing ways to improve a work team’s level of collective emotional self-leadership.Originality/valueThis paper extends the emotions, leadership and conflict literature works into the current research on self-directed work teams’ effectiveness by bringing attention to the moderating role of emotional self-leadership and calls for empirical research on this subject.

Conflict modification: predictable production of congruent situations facilitates responding in a stroop task.

Humans cope with cognitive conflict in various ways, such as focusing on task-relevant instead of task-irrelevant information or avoiding situations where conflict is likely. These adaptations to conflict resemble those used to cope with negative affect. We examined whether situation modification, a strategy derived from the extended process model of emotion regulation, may influence responding in cognitive conflict tasks. This should be evident by a facilitation of actions that consistently modify situations towards congruent (positive) situations rather than to incongruent (negative) situations. In four experiments, participants modified stimuli in a color-word Stroop task towards congruent or incongruent stimuli of (un)predictable identity. A modification effect emerged insofar as participants were faster when they foreseeably produced congruent stimuli of predictable identity than when they produced incongruent stimuli or stimuli of unpredictable identity. Our results add to the body of evidence connecting affect and cognitive conflict, and reveal a constraint when using situation modification as a means to regulate cognitive conflict.

School leadership and socioeducational conflicts. An exploratory study in chilean public high schools

The research seeks to study the processes of educational conflict, giving an account of the strategies and frameworks of action implemented by school administrators in public secondary schools in Chile. In order to achieve this, a case study was carried out in eight public high schools, using several qualitative techniques. Three results are obtained. First, the conflicts that involve students as central actors mainly arise from their social, economic and cultural context. In contrast, conflicts involving adults are related to problems of micro-politics (school level) and macro-politics (field of education). The second result is related with the dynamics adopted by conflicts, where it is observed that, in most cases, conflicts tend to transition from cognitive conflicts to affective conflicts, which means that become personalized and viewed as unproductive processes for schools. Finally, and in relation to the strategies that school leaders use to handle the conflicts, it is verified that these differ depending on the actor involved. When they involve students, there are regulations and action protocols ; whereas when teachers are involved, there are generally no regular channels to proceed, and conflicts tend to be avoided or not recognized.

Liderazgo escolar y conflictos socioeducativos. Un estudio exploratorio en liceos públicos chilenos

The research seeks to study the processes of educational conflict, giving an account of the strategies and frameworks of action implemented by school administrators in public secondary schools in Chile. In order to achieve this, a case study was carried out in eight public high schools, using several qualitative techniques. Three results are obtained. First, the conflicts that involve students as central actors mainly arise from their social, economic and cultural context. In contrast, conflicts involving adults are related to problems of micro-politics (school level) and macro-politics (field of education). The second result is related with the dynamics adopted by conflicts, where it is observed that, in most cases, conflicts tend to transition from cognitive conflicts to affective conflicts, which means that become personalized and viewed as unproductive processes for schools. Finally, and in relation to the strategies that school leaders use to handle the conflicts, it is verified that these differ depending on the actor involved. When they involve students, there are regulations and action protocols ; whereas when teachers are involved, there are generally no regular channels to proceed, and conflicts tend to be avoided or not recognized.

On the dimensionality of intragroup conflict

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore the dimensionality of intragroup conflict and to develop an instrument with acceptable psychometric properties for the comprehensive measurement of conflict.Design/methodology/approachThis paper strictly follows the standard scale-developing method: first, establish theoretical dimensions of intragroup conflict; then, develop the initial scale through in-depth interviews and coding schemes; third, revise and verify the scale through exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis; and, finally, examine the predictive validity of the new intragroup conflict scale.FindingsThis study identifies four dimensions of intragroup conflict – cognitive conflict, affective conflict, behavioral conflict, and interest-based conflict – and provides evidence of construct validity for a new measure. The results show that cognitive and interest-based conflict affect group innovation performance positively, whereas affective and behavioral conflict affects it negatively.Originality/valueThis study first detects interest-based conflict as a new dimension and explores a more comprehensive scale (ABCI) that reflects all the connotations of conflict, which deepens the understanding of intragroup conflict, laying a solid foundation for empirical studies of conflict.

Effects of Intranasal Oxytocin on the Blood Oxygenation Level-Dependent Signal in Food Motivation and Cognitive Control Pathways in Overweight and Obese Men.

Recent research indicates that the hypothalamic neuropeptide hormone oxytocin is a key central nervous system factor in the regulation of food intake and weight. However, the mechanisms underlying the anorexigenic effects of oxytocin in humans are unknown and critical to study to consider oxytocin as a neurohormonal weight loss treatment. We performed a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled crossover study with single-dose intranasal oxytocin (24 IU) in ten overweight or obese, otherwise healthy men. Following oxytocin/placebo administration, participants completed an established functional magnetic resonance imaging food motivation paradigm. We hypothesized that oxytocin would reduce the blood oxygenation level-dependent (BOLD) signal to high-calorie food vs non-food visual stimuli in the ventral tegmental area (VTA), the origin of the mesolimbic dopaminergic reward system. Following oxytocin administration, compared to placebo, participants showed bilateral VTA hypoactivation to high-calorie food stimuli. A secondary exploratory whole-brain analysis revealed hypoactivation in additional hedonic (orbitofrontal cortex, insula, globus pallidus, putamen, hippocampus, and amygdala) and homeostatic (hypothalamus) food motivation and hyperactivation in cognitive control (anterior cingulate and frontopolar cortex) brain regions following oxytocin administration vs placebo. Oxytocin administration reduces the BOLD signal in reward-related food motivation brain regions, providing a potential neurobiological mechanism for the anorexigenic oxytocin effects in humans. Furthermore, our data indicate that oxytocin administration reduces activation in homeostatic and increases activation in cognitive control brain regions critically involved in regulating food intake and resolving affective conflict, respectively. Future studies are required to link these changes in brain activation to oxytocin effects on food intake and weight.

Relationship quality time: the validation of a relationship quality scale in higher education

ABSTRACTThis study investigated the overall quality of the interpersonal relationship students have with faculty and staff, that is, relationship quality (RQ). In relationship management research, RQ is paramount for the creation of bonds with customers, which in turn is necessary for the sustainability of organizations, that is, continuity and growth. In higher education, it is not only recent changes in funding of education that urge us to further investigate RQ, as students having relational bonds with their teachers and faculty/staff is important as well. These relationships are expected to positively influence students’ college experiences. Although educational literature addresses the importance of student–faculty relationships, little is known about students’ perceptions of the quality of their relationship with their program. The aim of this study was therefore to get a more in-depth understanding of the concept and measurement of RQ within a higher education context. To that end, an existing RQ scale was used measuring five dimensions: trust in honesty, trust in benevolence, satisfaction, affective commitment, and affective conflict. A confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was conducted on survey responses of 551 students from a Dutch university of applied sciences. Next to the CFA, a small-scale focus group discussion was held to validate the quantitative findings of students’ perceptions on RQ. The findings confirm that the RQ instrument is an adequate instrument to investigate RQ in a higher education context. Additional qualitative findings also suggest that students acknowledge the relevance of RQ and the need for having a good relationship with their faculty and staff.

How Maps are Made Matters: Enacting Artifacts in Collective Decision Making

How does human activity in strategy-making interact with do epistemic objects? Studies on strategizing as a situated activity provide insight into managerial practice, yet few studies focus on the role of epistemic objects in strategy making. This paper contributes to the strategy-as-practice literature by investigating the role of epistemic objects as situated material artifacts in collective decision-making. Presenting inductive research based on student and practitioner data, this study develops theory on how causal maps as epistemic objects are enacted, interpreted, and deployed as a sociomaterial ‘tool-in-use’ by actors. The findings show how causal mapping is associated with higher tolerance of cognitive conflict in collective decision episodes, more consideration of multiple decision outcomes, development of innovative solutions to decision problems, and greater acceptance of decisions. Showing how affordances of causal maps prevent the emergence of affective conflict and reduce the risk of managerial biases such as groupthink and the escalation of commitment biases, this study offers deeper insight in how managers can use epistemic objects to improve the quality of strategizing processes. The study concludes by pointing out routes for future strategy research on ‘tools-in-use’.

Affective conflict and identification of knowledge sources in MNE teams

How does affective conflict influence identification of knowledge sources in MNE teams? We apply social exchange theory and consider the effect of two types of affective interpersonal conflict: relational tension and self-interest on identification of knowledge sources in MNE teams. We further analyse how these effects are related to geographic and nationality differences. We test our hypotheses with a field study of 1181 dyadic interactions between 160 members within 40 MNE teams engaged in product innovation, human resources, and operational improvement in three large diversified MNEs. We find that affective conflict has a direct negative relationship to identification of knowledge sources in MNE teams. This relationship is further negatively moderated by geographic differences and nationality differences. Our study contributes to theoretical and empirical micro-foundations of conflict and identification of knowledge sources in MNE teams.

Understanding top management team conflict, environmental uncertainty and firm innovativeness

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to understand the impact of top management team (TMT) processes on firm innovativeness. Firm innovativeness is critical for organizational survival. Yet, the authors’ understanding about the key determinants of firm innovativeness is limited, particularly concerning the role of TMT dynamics. Drawing on upper echelon’s theory, the authors develop and test hypotheses concerning the influence of two TMT processes, namely affective conflict and cognitive conflict, on firm innovativeness. They also explore the boundary conditions of TMT dynamics by examining the moderating effect of environmental uncertainty on the relationship between TMT conflict (affective and cognitive conflict) and firm innovativeness.Design/methodology/approachThe authors collected survey-based data from TMT members in 171 information technology organizations based in India. They used multiple regression analyses to test the study hypotheses.FindingsThe empirical findings indicate that TMT affective conflict is negatively associated with firm innovativeness, whereas TMT cognitive conflict has a negative curvilinear relationship with it. Both relationships are stronger in firms operating in environments characterized by a high degree of uncertainty.Originality/valueThis study highlights the role of TMT conflict in the pursuit of firm innovativeness. Significantly, the study shows that both TMT affective conflict and cognitive conflict can affect firm innovativeness. However, their effectiveness is contingent on environmental uncertainty. This contributes to the firm innovation literature by clarifying how specific types of TMT conflict influence firm innovativeness in different environmental conditions.

A Measure of Strategic Decision-Making in Non-profit Membership Associations

The goal of this investigation was to construct a comprehensive instrument for measuring strategic decisionmaking in non-profit membership organizations. Based on a literature review, the multiple-item measurement development procedures suggested as a guideline and philosophy by Churchill and Spector were used to identify eight dimensions to measure strategic decision-making: decision quality, decision routines, procedural rationality, procedural justice, affective conflict, cognitive conflict, understanding, and decision commitment. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) validated the constructed measures.

Board Socio-Cognitive Decision-Making and Task Performance Under Heightened Expectations of Accountability

This study examines how heightened expectations of board responsibility and accountability affect the socio-cognitive decision-making of boards and their collective task performance. Using data from the directors of 60 boards who served before and after the enactment of Sarbanes–Oxley, this study provides insight into the potential negative impact that this tightened accountability environment can have on a board’s task performance. Examining several socio-cognitive elements of board decision-making, board authority is found to have a positive main effect on board task performance, while relative CEO power and affective conflict have curvilinear relationships with board task performance. Cohesiveness also moderates the relationship between a board’s perceived uncertainty and affective conflict with board task performance. In sum, the model shows how a new era of director accountability can affect the social cognitions of board decision-making that underlie board task performance.

Dissociable early attentional control mechanisms underlying cognitive and affective conflicts.

It has been well documented that cognitive conflict is sensitive to the relative proportion of congruent and incongruent trials. However, few studies have examined whether affective conflict processing is modulated as a function of proportion congruency (PC). To address this question we recorded event-related potentials (ERP) while subjects performed both cognitive and affective face-word Stroop tasks. By varying the proportion of congruent and incongruent trials in each block, we examined the extent to which PC impacts both cognitive and affective conflict control at different temporal stages. Results showed that in the cognitive task an anteriorly localized early N2 component occurred predominantly in the low proportion congruency context, whereas in the affective task it was found to occur in the high proportion congruency one. The N2 effects across the two tasks were localized to the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, where responses were increased in the cognitive task but decreased in the affective one. Furthermore, high proportions of congruent items produced both larger amplitude of a posteriorly localized sustained potential component and a larger behavioral Stroop effect in cognitive and affective tasks. Our findings suggest that cognitive and affective conflicts engage early dissociable attentional control mechanisms and a later common conflict response system.

Preventing dysfunctional conflict: examining the relationship between different types of managerial conflict in venture capital-backed firms

Prior literature reports mixed results relative to the performance outcomes of different types of conflict in top management teams. These conflicting results may stem from the complex interactions between different types of conflict. To address this gap in existing knowledge, we set out to explore the interactions between task, process, and affective conflict in entrepreneurial teams of venture-backed firms. Our data are based on a survey among 240 firms that received investment from Norwegian venture capital funds with a response rate of 25% (59 firms). Our results show that task conflict is positively related to affective conflict and that this relationship is partially mediated by process conflict. Furthermore, we find that team size moderates the relationship between task and process conflict. Our results provide a potential explanation for the previously reported inconsistent results on the outcomes of different types of conflict and suggest that especially nascent entrepreneurs with small management teams should be wary of all types of conflict – also those labeled as ‘functional’ by the prior literature.

Conflict, individual satisfaction with team, and training motivation

PurposeThis paper aims to investigate the mediating effect of an individual’s satisfaction with the team between conflict and training motivation. This study provides understanding regarding how the type of conflict within a team can influence an individual’s team experience which can, in turn, influence that individual’s training motivation and impact future teams.Design/methodology/approachData were collected from 498 upper-level business students engaged in a team project. Structural equation modeling examined the serial mediation relationship between perceived diversity, conflict (affective and cognitive), individual satisfaction with the team and training motivation (learning and transfer).FindingsIndividual satisfaction with the team partially mediates the relationship between affective conflict and both training motivation dimensions, and fully mediates the relationship between cognitive conflict and both training motivation dimensions.Practical implicationsTo encourage future participation in teams, managers should explore ways to increase an individual’s satisfaction, such as increasing the cognitive conflict by incorporating diversity within teams and reducing the affective conflict within teams. Likewise, by increasing an individual’s satisfaction with the team, managers can increase both the motivation to learn and transfer new knowledge.Originality/valueThis paper illuminates the role that an individual’s satisfaction with the team has between conflict and training motivation. Moreover, this paper demonstrates that more research on an individual’s satisfaction with the team is needed.