Things Are Not Always What They Seem: The Origins and Evolution of Intragroup Conflict

Shah, P P, Peterson, R S, Jones, S L and Ferguson, A J (2021) Things Are Not Always What They Seem: The Origins and Evolution of Intragroup Conflict. Administrative Science Quarterly, 66 (2). pp. 426-474. ISSN 0001-8392

Abstract

Teams scholars have historically conceptualized and measured intragroup conflict at the team level. But emerging evidence suggests that perceptions of intragroup conflict are often not uniform, shared, or static. These findings suggest important questions about the microfoundations of intragroup conflict: Where does conflict within teams originate? And how does it evolve over time? We address these and other questions in three abductive studies. We consider four origination points—an individual, dyad, subgroup, or team—and three evolutionary trajectories—conflict continuity, contagion, and concentration. Study 1, a qualitative study of narrative accounts, and Study 2, a longitudinal social networks study of student teams, reveal that fewer than 30 percent of teams experience team-level conflict. Instead, conflict more commonly originates and persists at individual, dyadic, or subgroup levels. Study 2 further demonstrates that traditional psychometric intragroup conflict scales mask the existence of these various origins and trajectories of conflict. Study 3, a field study of manufacturing teams, reveals that individual and dyadic task conflict origins positively predict team performance, whereas traditional intragroup task conflict measures negatively predict team performance. The results raise serious concerns about current methods and theory in the team conflict literature and suggest that researchers must go beyond team-level conceptualizations of conflict.

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Item Type:	Article
Subject Areas:	Organisational Behaviour
Additional Information:	© 2020 by Johnson Graduate School, Cornell University. Re-use of this article is restricted to non-commercial and no derivative uses.
Date Deposited:	08 Oct 2020 14:21
Date of first compliant deposit:	07 Oct 2020
Subjects:	Conflict Groups
Last Modified:	21 Dec 2024 02:31
URI:	https://lbsresearch.london.edu/id/eprint/1473

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