Intra-team Conflict Research Articles

A dynamic systems theory of intrateam conflict contagion.

Recognizing the challenges that conflict poses, organizational researchers have invested considerable energy toward investigating the processes by which conflict occurs and spreads within a team. However, current theoretical frameworks of conflict contagion posit a static growth trajectory in which members become engaged in conflict and stay in conflict. While this trajectory is certainly possible, the broader conflict literature outside of the organizational sciences has shown evidence for a more varied set of potential trajectories of conflict contagion. To advance theory on team conflict, we integrate conflict research from micro-level (interpersonal) to macro-level (interstate) perspectives into a formal theory of intrateam conflict contagion. Drawing from conflict stage and social contagion theory, we theorize that team members move through three stages of conflict (disengaged, at-risk, engaged) at rates determined by four process mechanisms (faultlines, forgiveness, frustration, integration) such that disengaged individuals become at-risk of engaging in conflict, engage in conflict, then disengage, only to potentially become at risk of reengaging at a later point in time. Using computational modeling, we demonstrate the generative sufficiency of our theory to account for conflict trajectories observed in the broader conflict literature. To facilitate the interpretation of such trajectories, we present a typology of contagion trajectories, discuss the dynamic properties of these trajectories (e.g., stability, bifurcations), and provide implications for future theory building and practice. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

From intra-team conflict to interpersonal strain: the role of leader’s interpersonal modulation of emotional responses and sex

PurposeBy integrating the conservation of resources and the emotion-as-social-information theories, this study aims to question whether the leader’s effort to calm down when team members perceive intra-team conflict (ITC) may have a counterproductive effect on their interpersonal functioning. Specifically, the authors investigated whether team members with higher individual perceptions of ITC would be more likely to experience interpersonal strain (ISW) when their team leaders downregulate or suppress their emotional responses (i.e. high interpersonal modulation of emotional responses [MER]). A further objective of the study was to examine whether this exacerbating effect would be conditional on the leader’s sex.Design/methodology/approachData were collected from 236 white collars nested in 48 teams (Msize = 6.23; SDsize = 2.69) and their respective team leaders (56.7% men) of a large organization providing financial services.FindingsMultilevel model results showed that team members confronted with higher ITC experienced higher ISW levels, especially when the leader’s interpersonal modulation of team members’ emotional responses was high (vs low). This effect was stronger when the interpersonal modulation was enacted by women (vs men) team leaders.Originality/valueThis study moves an important step forward in the conflict and ISW literature, as it is the first to identify a leader’s MER and sex as key boundary conditions under which ITC is related to team members’ ISW. The implications of these findings for theory and practice are discussed.

Team conflict at the core: Exploring the influence of critical team member conflict on team creative functioning

AbstractScholars have long been intrigued by the relationship between intrateam conflict and team creativity, though findings to date have been mixed. Recent research suggests that traditional conceptualizations of intrateam conflict as a property that is shared uniformly by team members (e.g., averaging members' overall conflict perceptions), rather than a more nuanced phenomenon between individual members with unique network positions, have limited our understanding of its influences. These advances, however, have yet to be substantively applied to the intrateam conflict‐creativity literature. Accordingly, we integrate network views of conflict with creativity theory and group motivated processing models to explore how task and relationship conflicts involving critical members' (i.e., members central to a team's workflow network) influence team creative functioning beyond overall conflict perceptions. We theorize that critical member task conflict is positively associated with team creativity by way of team reflexivity, and this positive indirect effect is accentuated by team shared goals. Further, we posit that critical member relationship conflict is negatively associated with team creativity by way of reduced team cohesion, though this effect is mitigated by critical member emotional intelligence. Analyses of 70 new product development teams support most hypotheses while also highlighting interesting nuance and future research opportunities.

What hinders team innovation performance? Three-way interaction of destructive leadership, intra-team conflict, and organizational diversity.

This paper aims to clarify the impact of destructive leadership on team innovation performance. It also explores the relevant conditions that maximize the above relationship. Specifically we examine how intra-team conflict organizational diversity moderate the relationship between destructive leadership team innovation performance. Finally the three-way interaction between destructive leadership intra-team conflict organizational diversity is analyzed for the worst conditions to maximize the negative effect of destructive leadership on team innovation performance. This paper used a cross-sectional design with questionnaires administered to 87 teams with 479 team members working in Korean manufacturing service firms. It applied a hierarchical regression analysis to test the hypothesized relationships including three-way interaction effect among destructive leadership intra-team conflict organizational diversity on team innovation performance. This paper provided empirical insights about how destructive behaviors of team leader hindered team innovation performance. The three-way interaction effects also revealed that the higher the levels of both intra-team conflict organizational diversity the greater the negative effect of destructive leadership on team innovation performance. This paper demonstrates how team leaders’ behavior team organizational conditions result in discouraging overall innovation outcomes. This paper contributes to the innovation leadership literatures by identifying possible leadership type hindering innovation performance at team level the specific conditions their dynamic interaction strengthening the negative effect of destructive leadership on team innovation performance.

Mediating Role of Intra-Team Conflict between Paternalistic Leadership and Decision-Making Quality among China University's CMT during COVID-19.

Universities across China have set up crisis management teams (CMTS) to deal with the crisis brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. This study focuses on how the paternalistic leadership practices of a Chinese university CMT influence crisis strategic decisions by managing conflict. These relationships were verified using hierarchical regression analysis on 312 samples from the surveyed university during the pandemic and found the following: benevolent leadership and moral leadership have positive effects on decision quality. However, unlike most studies on paternalistic leadership, in crisis situations, the negative effects of authoritarian leadership disappear under the mediating effect of affective conflict. This means that affective conflict within CMT fully mediates the relationship between authoritarian leadership and decision quality, and partially mediates the relationship between moral leadership and decision quality, while cognitive conflict partially mediates the relationship between benevolent leadership and crisis decision quality. It indicates that a CMT must stimulate and maintain a certain level of cognitive conflict while suppressing affective conflict to achieve high-quality crisis decision-making. This state can be achieved by practicing lower levels of authoritarian leadership and maintaining high levels of moral and benevolent leadership practices.

Intra-team conflict in the nascent venture crucible

Conflict within organizational teams is inevitable. We propose that conflicts within nascent venture leadership teams (NVLTs) differ from those within established organizations due to the ambiguous, dynamic, high-risk context and the potential impact on both the team and the venture. Drawing on existing literature and a content analysis of eleven interviews and 74 surveys, we identify four ways in which misalignments among NVLT members manifest as conflicts: over respective contributions and rewards (e.g. equity division), over resource allocation (e.g. how to spend money), over decision-making processes, and over personality and values. These conflicts can have positive or negative repercussions for the team and for the venture, depending on the misalignment at the root of the conflict and on the how the team members attempt to manage the conflicts.

A united front: Coach and teammate motivational climate and team cohesion among female adolescent athletes

Based on theory and research on athlete motivation and sport cohesion, this study examined the concurrent association of perceived coach and peer motivational climates with team cohesion among female adolescent athletes. Participants ( N = 235) included 14- to 18-year-old competitive volleyball players who completed self-report measures of motivational climates and team cohesion in the latter part of the season. Canonical correlation analysis revealed that all coach and peer task-involving dimensions were positively related, and peer intra-team conflict (ego-involving dimension) was negatively related, to team cohesion. Task-involving dimensions of coach cooperative learning and peer effort and relatedness support contributed most strongly to the relationship as did task cohesion. Multiple regression analyses showed that elements of both coach and peer climates were related to task and social cohesion. Findings extend past research by simultaneously examining coaches and peers as social sources of team cohesion among female adolescent athletes. Specific strategies are offered for how coaches can enhance team cohesiveness by directly shaping a task-involving climate, minimizing an ego-involving climate, and fostering a teammate task-involving climate that promotes positive peer interactions and relationships.

Coordination Cost and Super-Efficiency in Teamwork: The Role of Communication, Psychological States, Cardiovascular Responses, and Brain Rhythms

To advance knowledge on the psychophysiological markers of “coordination cost” in team settings, we explored differences in meta-communication patterns (i.e., silence, speaking, listening, and overlap), perceived psychological states (i.e., core affect, attention, efficacy beliefs), heart rate variability (i.e., RMSSD), and brain rhythms (i.e., alpha, beta and theta absolute power) across three studies involving 48 male dyads (Mage = 21.30; SD = 2.03). Skilled participants cooperatively played three consecutive FIFA-17 (Xbox) games in a dyad against the computer, or competed against the computer in a solo condition and a dyad condition. We observed that playing in a team, in contrast to playing alone, was associated with higher alpha peak and global efficiency in the brain and, at the same time, led to an increase in focused attention as evidenced by participants’ higher theta activity in the frontal lobe. Moreover, we observed that overtime participants’ brain dynamics moved towards a state of “neural-efficiency”, characterized by increased theta and beta activity in the frontal lobe, and high alpha activity across the whole brain. Our findings advance the literature by demonstrating that (1) the notion of coordination cost can be captured at the neural level in the initial stages of team development; (2) by decreasing the costs of switching between tasks, teamwork increases both individuals’ attentional focus and global neural efficiency; and (3) communication dynamics become more proficient and individuals’ brain patterns change towards neural efficiency over time, likely due to team learning and decreases in intra-team conflict.

Aggregate Perceptions of Intrateam Conflict and Individual Team Member Perceptions of Team Psychological Contract Breach: The Moderating Role of Individual Team Member Perceptions of Team Support

We seek to contribute to our very limited knowledge base about a relatively new type of psychological contract: team psychological contracts. We argue that aggregate perceptions of intrateam task and relationship conflict are positively associated with individual team member perceptions of team psychological contract breach. We also argue that individual team member perceptions of team support mitigate the respective relationships between aggregate perceptions of intrateam task and relationship conflict and individual team member perceptions of team psychological contract breach. Using 306 team members across 76 teams from 18 organizations, we find that aggregate perceptions of intrateam task and relationship conflict are both positively associated with individual team member perceptions of team psychological contract breach. However, we find that individual team member perceptions of team support only mitigate the relationship between aggregate perceptions of intrateam relationship conflict and individual team member perceptions of team psychological contract breach. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

The Performance of Diverse Teams: Evidence from U.S. Mutual Funds

We examine team diversity and performance in the asset management industry through the lens of identity. Focusing on political ideology as the relevant dimension of identity, we find that diverse teams outperform homogeneous teams. The mechanism involves both improved decision-making due to more diverse perspectives and increased monitoring by heterogeneous team members. The benefits of ideological diversity are undone when political polarization is higher, consistent with increased intra-team conflict. In examining why less diverse teams are prevalent in asset management, we find entrenched managers prefer homogeneous teams, and the local labor market supply of ideologically diverse managers is constrained.

Pediatric Chronic Critical Illness: Gaps in Inpatient Intrateam Communication.

The number of children with medical complexity and prolonged hospitalizations is rising. Strategies to adapt acute care approaches for this population are falling behind clinical demand. This study aimed to identify how inpatient team communication practices match the needs of teams caring for these patients and families, and to identify priority areas for improvement. Cross-sectional mixed methods survey. Academic children's hospital. Interdisciplinary healthcare professionals: physicians, nurse practitioners, nurses, resident and fellow trainees, respiratory therapists, clinical pharmacists, occupational therapists, physical therapists, social workers, and child life specialists. None. Four-hundred eight interdisciplinary healthcare professionals participated (33% response rate). Half (53%) worked in ICUs and 37% had greater than 10 years clinical experience. Three overarching themes emerged regarding communication during care of children with prolonged hospitalizations are as follows: 1) Dysfunctional team collaboration: the many involved healthcare providers for these children have inconsistent team meetings and few platforms for reaching clinical consensus; 2) Continuity gaps: time-limited clinician rotations and no designated longitudinal clinical leaders undermine relationships with families and key elements of shared decision-making; and 3) Inadequate communication skills and tools: healthcare professionals have inadequate training to address complex conversations and big picture concerns, and often default to daily management conversations. Nearly half (40%) perceived intra-team conflict to occur more commonly during care of these children compared with those with short hospitalizations, and many feel unskilled to address these conflicts. Healthcare providers working in ICUs were more likely than other healthcare providers to find care of children with chronic critical illness stressful "most of the time" (ICU 46%; 60/131 vs non-ICU 25%; 21/84; p = 0.02). Acute care inpatient communication practices require modification to meet the needs of healthcare professionals who provide longitudinal care to children with repeated and prolonged hospitalizations. Improvement strategies should prioritize building collaboration, continuity, and communication skills among healthcare professionals.

Power, IntraTeam Conflicts, Conflict Contagion and its Impact on Performance

The objective of this study is to examine the importance of power, intrateam conflict, conflict contagion and its impact on organizational performance. This study has used past literature to extend work on power, intrateam conflict, conflict contagion and its impact on performance by providing prepositions. The study demonstrates the importance of power and its impact on intrateam conflicts, which form the shape of conflict contagion and ultimately affect performance. Study found that power leads to more conflicts and its process of spreading hastens because of its contagious nature negatively influences the team’s performance. The paper has highlighted the untapped element of power and creates a bridge between power, conflict and its impact on organizational performance. Many researchers have focused separately on power, teamwork and conflict. However, still, there is a need to assess whether individual power interests also takes the form of conflict contagion, which might affect performance of the organization.

An IDEA: Safety Training to Improve Critical Thinking by Individuals and Teams.

Errors in thinking contribute to harm, delays in diagnosis, incorrect treatments, or failures to recognize clinical changes. Models of cognition are useful in understanding error occurrence and avoidance. Intra-team conflict can represent failures in joint cognitive processing. The authors developed training focused on recognizing and managing cognitive bias and resolving conflicts. The program provides context and introduces models of cognition, concepts of bias, team cognition, conflict resolution, and 2 tools. "IDEA" incorporates 4 de-biasing strategies: Identify assumptions; Don't assume correctness; Explore expectations; Assess alternatives. "TLA" presents strategies for resolving conflicts: Tell your thoughts; Listen actively, and Ask questions. A total of 4941 care providers participated in training using didactic presentations, group discussion, and simulation. Learners rated training effectiveness at 4.68 on a scale of 1 to 5 (5 as optimum) and perceived improvement in recognizing or managing errors. Nonphysician caregivers reported greatest improvement. Training to improve critical thinking is feasible, well received, and effective.

The Structure Underneath a Team’s Conflict: A Network-Based Typology of Intrateam Conflict

In this paper, I take a structural approach to intrateam conflict that sheds light on the variability and asymmetry inherent in a conflict situation. Because team members’ contributions to intrateam conflict could vary greatly, the equal amount of team conflict could have varying impacts on the teams’ performance and the solution to mitigate the conflict, depending on how their conflictual relationships are structured. Thus, in addition to knowing the content (e.g., task, relationship, or process conflict), identifying the patterns and variability underneath the conflict situation could yield a more extensive understanding of the conflict within the team. In this present study, I delineate intrateam conflicts into different prototypical structural patterns of relationships, especially negative ties among team members. I present a typology of within-team conflict, consisting of four prototypical configurations of negative networks: “Public Enemy,” “Duels,” “Rival Factions,” and “Battlefield.” In addition, I explore the sources of these conflict configurations, by delving into how various attributes of the team and the surrounding organizational environment contribute to the emergence of a particular type of intrateam conflict. Lastly, I suggest how positive ties in these four configurations could mitigate the severity of the conflict on team coordination and collaboration.

Intrateam Conflict and Team Member Perceptions of Team Support and Psychological Contract Breach

Our knowledge about team members’ perceptions of team support and team psychological contract breach is relatively limited. We seek to add to this limited body of knowledge by theorizing that aggregate levels of intrateam task and relationship conflict are interpreted by team members as how much their teams value the contributions and well-being of team members, like themselves, as well as how much their teams have broken promises to team members, like themselves. We also theorize that team members’ perceptions of team support and team psychological contract breach moderate the relationships between intrateam task and relationship conflict and the opposite team perception. We test our hypotheses in a sample of 306 team members across 76 teams and 18 organizations. We find that intrateam task and relationship conflict are negatively associated with team members’ perceptions of team support, and positively associated with team members’ perceptions of team psychological contract breach. We do not find that team members’ perceptions of team psychological contract breach moderate the respective relationships between intrateam task and relationship conflict and team members’ perceptions of team support. However, we do find that team members’ perceptions of team support weaken the positive relationship between intrateam relationship conflict and team members’ perceptions of team psychological contract breach. We discuss the theoretical and managerial implications of these findings.

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.

Clean up your network: how a strike changed the social networks of a working team

PurposeThis paper aims to analyse the impact of an intra-team conflict on the social relations within a team. The team conflict was triggered by a strike action which separated the team in two groups, the strikers and the worker, who continued to work. After the strike was settled, all had to work again cooperatively. This paper analyses how the strike action affects work and private social networks among workers.Design/methodology/approachThe authors combine a qualitative ethnographic approach with quantitative network data.FindingsThe authors find that the strike action led to a separation between the former group of strikers and non-strikers. While the subgroups become more cohesive and their social network density increased, the links between both groups diminished.Research limitations/implicationsThis study reveals that strikes and the accompanying separation of the workforce can improve social relations within the team, if individuals behaved alike during the conflict.Practical implicationsFor managers, the results raise questions concerning typical managerial behaviour during strikes, as managers frequently trigger separation by trying to convince some individuals to continue to work. Instead, groups may even improve their performance after a strike, if they were allowed to behave alike by all joining the strike or refraining.Originality/valueThis study is the first to analyse social relations after a conflict. The authors combine qualitative and quantitative data and show the evolution of a social network after a strike. Moreover, they separate private communication flows and work-related communication and show that both networks do not necessarily evolve equally after a conflict.

Team conflict dynamics: Implications of a dyadic view of conflict for team performance

This paper endeavored to resolve some of the inconsistencies in the intrateam conflict literature by proposing both that conflict can be conceptualized asan expression of dyadic interactions and that the study of conflict requires a dynamic perspective. We propose that the presence of relationship conflict in even a single dyad within a team can hinder information exchange, whereas the level of information exchange in teams can unlock task conflict. We argue that task and relationship conflict, due to this unfolding process, shift from an initially significant positive relationship to a null relationship over time. We further propose that task conflict and dyadic task conflict asymmetry combine to produce high performance in the teams. Our study of 219 individuals organized in 458 dyads within 51 teams – studied over 8weeks during the development of an entrepreneurial venture – provided support for our theoretical model. Our theory and findings demonstrate that the connection between task and relationship conflict is more complex that previously proposed, with task and relationship conflict differentiating over time.

The effect of team emotional intelligence on team process and effectiveness

AbstractTeam emotional intelligence is expected to have a significant impact on intrateam conflict and team effectiveness. However, to date, there has been a dearth of empirical evidence of this link. Taking a comprehensive approach, our study contributes to the literature on intrateam conflict and team emotional intelligence. Data collected from 79 teams in South Korean companies reveal that team emotional intelligence is negatively related to team process (i.e., task conflict and relationship conflict) and positively related to team effectiveness (i.e., team performance, innovation, and cohesion). In addition, team emotional intelligence has a moderating effect on decoupling task conflict and relationship conflict. Our findings also indicate that team emotional intelligence decreases the negative effects of task conflict on team effectiveness, and of relationship conflict on team cohesion. We conclude this study with a discussion of limitations and implications for future research.

The Effect of Conflict Perceiver’s Learning Orientation on Intra-team Conflict Transference

The Effect of Conflict Perceiver’s Learning Orientation on Intra-team Conflict Transference