Conflict Management Strategies as Moderators in the Antecedents to Affective Conflict and its Influence on Team Effectiveness

Chris Papenhausen ； Satyanarayana Parayitam

《Journal of Business and Management》 21卷1期 (2015/01) Pp. 101-119

https://doi.org/10.6347/JBM.201501_21(1).0006

摘要

Strategic decisions are of paramount importance to the success of an organization. Strategic decision making teams encounter various types of conflicts in the process of making decisions. Based on information processing theory, the present study is devoted to the study of affective conflict or the disagreement among team members due to personality clashes. While affective conflict generally has deleterious consequences, in this study the antecedents of affective conflict are studied. Also studied are the effects of cognitive conflict or the disagreements arising in teams regarding tasks or content. In addition, the study investigates the relationship between conflict management styles and affective conflict. Data from 348 undergraduate and graduate students from 94 teams reveal that there is a negative relationship between affective conflict and team effectiveness. The study also reveals that, 1) there is a positive relationship between cognitive conflict and affective conflict, and (2) there is a positive relationship between process conflict and affective conflict. Hierarchical regression results reveal that cooperative conflict management style moderates the relationship between cognitive conflict and affective conflict, and competitive conflict management style moderates the relationship between process conflict and affective conflict. The implications for strategic decision making literature are discussed.