Team conflict is conflict within a team. Conflicts may be caused by differing goals, values or perceptions of the team members. [1]
Team conflict is conflict within a team. Conflicts may be caused by differing goals, values or perceptions of the team members. [1]
"Hot conflicts" [2] [ further explanation needed ] have three common symptoms:
Allen C. Amason, of Mississippi State University, studied conflict and its role in decision-making. He stated that there are two kinds of conflict: cognitive — conflict based upon issues, ideas, processes or principles, and affective — conflict based upon personalities, emotions or values.
Researcher Thomas K. Capozzoli (1995) classified conflicts by whether the outcome was constructive or destructive. Conflicts are constructive when people change and grow personally from the conflict; the conflict results in a solution to a problem; the involvement of everyone affected by the conflict is increased; the team becomes more cohesive. Conflicts are destructive when no decision is reached and problem still exists; energy is diverted away from productive activities; the morale of the team members goes down; the team becomes divided.
Team conflict is common in the workplace where it may hinder productivity and the achievement of team goals. If management of conflict is not effective, it can disrupt group processes, but successfully-managed conflict may benefit the group. [3]
Lau and Murnighan identify what they call "faultlines" as a source of conflicts within groups. [2] As a supplement to traditional approaches of research that focused on diversity characterized by variance of demographic attributes across a population, [4] [5] faultlines are hypothetical dividing lines that split groups into multiple sets of subgroups with each set based on different attributes. These attributes may be demographics, but also may be characteristics such as personal values or personalities. This work builds on work in social identity theory and self-categorization theory, which explains the ways in which individuals favor other individuals with whom they share a common identity; [6] per this model, individuals evaluate members of their subgroups more positively than other members of the larger group, which may lead to conflict when disagreements occur across faultlines. Lau and Murnighan identify three compositional factors for faultlines within a group:
A group has weak faultlines if subgroups contain different members across sets, and strong faultlines if group members fall in the same groups across sets. For example, a team composed half of young male entry-level employees and half of older female executives has strong faultlines because each member falls in subgroups with the same other members across all three demographic characteristics. [2]
Subsequent work on the impact of these embedded subgroups, called "factions" when overlap in subgroups is structured into teams, has found significant negative impacts on group productivity stemming from task conflict, emotional conflict, and behavioral disintegration. [7] Faultlines were found to better predict variance in a variety of group self-perception metrics than traditional metrics of group heterogeneity, including perceptions of team-learning, psychological safety, satisfaction, and expected performance. [8]
It is important to note that while the concept of faultlines model may be seen as presenting diversity as a challenge to be overcome, diversity has been found to contribute significantly to team outcomes under certain circumstances. [9] [10] Respectful inclusion of the opinions of minority members can lead to increased creativity as the group incorporates their distinct perspectives. [11] The challenges associated with inclusivity are not insubstantial, and may require strong leadership and norms of tolerance and respect to overcome. [12]
Conflict is a normal part of working in teams, because it brings creativity and helps avoid groupthink. However, too much conflict can stop teams for doing their work and certain procedures should be followed to get back on track. Guffey, Rhodes, and Rogin describe their six-step process for dealing with conflict in teams: [13]
Organizational learning is the process of creating, retaining, and transferring knowledge within an organization. An organization improves over time as it gains experience. From this experience, it is able to create knowledge. This knowledge is broad, covering any topic that could better an organization. Examples may include ways to increase production efficiency or to develop beneficial investor relations. Knowledge is created at four different units: individual, group, organizational, and inter organizational.
The reputation or prestige of a social entity is an opinion about that entity – typically developed as a result of social evaluation on a set of criteria, such as behavior or performance.
Senior management, executive management, or upper management is an occupation at the highest level of management of an organization, performed by individuals who have the day-to-day tasks of managing the organization, sometimes a company or a corporation.
A virtual team usually refers to a group of individuals who work together from different geographic locations and rely on communication technology such as email, instant messaging, and video or voice conferencing services in order to collaborate. The term can also refer to groups or teams that work together asynchronously or across organizational levels. Powell, Piccoli and Ives (2004) define virtual teams as "groups of geographically, organizationally and/or time dispersed workers brought together by information and telecommunication technologies to accomplish one or more organizational tasks." As documented by Gibson (2020), virtual teams grew in importance and number during 2000-2020, particularly in light of the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic which forced many workers to collaborate remotely with each other as they worked from home.
A business alliance is an agreement between businesses, usually motivated by cost reduction and improved service for the customer. Alliances are often bounded by a single agreement with equitable risk and opportunity share for all parties involved and are typically managed by an integrated project team. An example of this is code sharing in airline alliances.
In sociology and organizational studies, institutional theory is a theory on the deeper and more resilient aspects of social structure. It considers the processes by which structures, including schemes, rules, norms, and routines, become established as authoritative guidelines for social behavior. Different components of institutional theory explain how these elements are created, diffused, adopted, and adapted over space and time; and how they fall into decline and disuse.
Greenberg (1987) introduced the concept of organizational justice with regard to how an employee judges the behavior of the organization and the employee's resulting attitude and behaviour. For example, if a firm makes redundant half of the workers, an employee may feel a sense of injustice with a resulting change in attitude and a drop in productivity.
Realistic conflict theory (RCT), also known as realistic group conflict theory (RGCT), is a social psychological model of intergroup conflict. The theory explains how intergroup hostility can arise as a result of conflicting goals and competition over limited resources, and it also offers an explanation for the feelings of prejudice and discrimination toward the outgroup that accompany the intergroup hostility. Groups may be in competition for a real or perceived scarcity of resources such as money, political power, military protection, or social status.
David R. Hekman is an associate professor of organizational leadership and information analytics at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Hekman's research focuses on improving organizational health, including the demographic pay gap and the demographic power gap. His work has been written about in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, The Chicago Tribune, The Atlantic, and Forbes.
Team composition refers to the overall mix of characteristics among people in a team, which is a unit of two or more individuals who interact interdependently to achieve a common objective. It is based on the attributes among individuals that comprise the team, in addition to their main objective.
Individualistic cultures are characterized by individualism, which is the prioritization or emphasis of the individual over the entire group. In individualistic cultures people are motivated by their own preference and viewpoints. Individualistic cultures focus on abstract thinking, privacy, self-dependence, uniqueness, and personal goals. The term individualistic culture was first used in the 1980s by Dutch social psychologist Geert Hofstede to describe countries and cultures that are not collectivist, Hofstede created the term individualistic culture when he created a measurement for the five dimensions of cultural values.
In organizational studies, and particularly new institutional theory, decoupling is the creation and maintenance of gaps between formal policies and actual organizational practices. Organizational researchers have documented decoupling in a variety of organizations, including schools, corporations, government agencies, police, and social movement organizations. Scholars have proposed a number of explanations for why organizations engage in decoupling. Some researchers have argued that decoupling enables organizations to gain legitimacy with their external members while simultaneously maintaining internal flexibility to address practical considerations.Other scholars have noted that decoupling may occur because it serves the interests of powerful organizational leaders, or because it allows organizational decision-makers to avoid implementing policies that conflict with their ideological beliefs. Recent research has also identified the reverse of decoupling: recoupling, the process whereby "policies and practices that were once decoupled may eventually become coupled."
In sociology, intragroup conflict refers to conflict between two or more members of the same group or team. In recent years, intragroup conflict has received a large amount of attention in conflict and group dynamics literature. This increase in interest in studying intragroup conflict may be a natural corollary of the ubiquitous use of work groups and work teams across all levels of organizations, including decision-making task forces, project groups, or production teams. Jehn identified two main types of intragroup conflict: task conflict and relationship conflict.
Psychological safety is the belief that one will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes. In teams, it refers to team members believing that they can take risks without being shamed by other team members. In psychologically safe teams, team members feel accepted and respected contributing to a better "experience in the workplace". It is also the most studied enabling condition in group dynamics and team learning research.
Sven Constantin Voelpel is a German organizational theorist and Professor of Business Administration at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Jacobs University in Bremen, Germany, known for his work in the field of strategic management, business models and knowledge management.
Team effectiveness is the capacity a team has to accomplish the goals or objectives administered by an authorized personnel or the organization. A team is a collection of individuals who are interdependent in their tasks, share responsibility for outcomes, and view themselves as a unit embedded in an institutional or organizational system which operates within the established boundaries of that system. Teams and groups have established a synonymous relationship within the confines of processes and research relating to their effectiveness while still maintaining their independence as two separate units, as groups and their members are independent of each other's role, skill, knowledge or purpose versus teams and their members, who are interdependent upon each other's role, skill, knowledge and purpose.
Functional diversity encapsulates the cognitive resource diversity theory, which is the idea that diversity of cognitive resources promotes creativity and innovation, problem solving capacity, and organizational flexibility. Functionally diverse teams “consist of individuals with a variety of educational and training backgrounds working together." This differs from social diversity, which in accordance with the similarity attraction (homophily) paradigm, is the idea that individuals who are more similar together are able to work together more effectively. There is a degree of ambiguity in academic literature in the definition of functional and social diversity due to many studies in this matter either focusing on one or the other or mashing up the different characteristics. Psychologists, economists, sociologists have conducted numerous studies on diversity within groups to examine the effects on group performance. There are debates about benefits and costs of working in a functionally diverse groups. Milliken and Martins (1996) concluded that “diversity appears to be a double-edged sword”.
Team diversity refers to the differences between individual members of a team that can exist on various dimensions like age, nationality, religious background, functional background or task skills, sexual orientation, and political preferences, among others. Different types of diversity include demographic, personality and functional diversity, and can have positive as well as negative effects on team outcomes. Diversity can impact performance, team member satisfaction or the innovative capacity of a team. According to the Input-Process-Output Model, team diversity is considered an input factor that has effects on the processes as well as on the team outputs of team work.
Dame Fiona Elizabeth Murray is the Associate Dean for Innovation at the MIT Sloan School of Management. She is a member of the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom's Council for Science and Technology and Vice-Chair of the Board of Directors of the NATO Innovation Fund.
Jin Nam Choi is a Korean organizational psychologist, researcher, author, and academic. He is a professor of Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management at the Graduate School of Business of Seoul National University.
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