Principles of Organizational Behavior, 3rd Edition

20Manage Intrateam Conflict Through Collaboration

LAURIE R. WEINGART¹, KAREN A. JEHN², AND KORI L. KRUEGER³

¹Tepper School of Business, Carnegie Mellon University

²Melbourne Business School, University of Melbourne

³Tepper School of Business, Carnegie Mellon University

Intrateam conflict occurs when team members hold discrepant views or have interpersonal incompatibilities. This is especially likely in organizational teams comprised of members from different functional areas, disciplines, or diverse backgrounds. There has been debate in organizational research regarding whether conflict within teams is advantageous for overall performance. While recent large-scale analyses of prior research on team conflict (i.e. meta-analyses) found that, on average, relationship conflicts based on personality clashes and interpersonal antagonism are detrimental to team performance and morale, task conflicts can have positive or negative effects depending on other characteristics of the group (DeChurch, Mesmer-Magnus, and Doty, 2013; De Dreu and Weingart, 2003; De Wit, Greer, and Jehn, 2012; O'Neill, Allen, and Hastings, 2013). Importantly, conflict researchers have found that task conflicts can be beneficial if managed collaboratively (Amason, 1996; Ensley and Hmieleski, 2005; Jehn, 1995, 1997; Liang, Liu, Lin, and Lin, 2007; Matsuo, 2006; Olson, Parayitam, and Bao, 2007). Our central principle is that intrateam conflict can be leveraged through collaboration to reach positive team outcomes ...