Conflict and creativity in inter-organizational teams

Abstract

Purpose This paper aims to examine the effects of task and relationship conflicts on team creativity, and the moderating role of shared leadership in inter-organizational teams. An inter-organizational team normally comprises employees from collaborated organizations brought together to conduct an initiative, such as product development. Practitioners and researchers have witnessed the prevalence of conflict in inter-organizational teams. Despite significant scholarly investigation into the importance of conflict in creativity, a deep theoretical understanding of conflict framework remains elusive. Design/methodology/approach A questionnaire survey was conducted in China to collect data. Consequently, 54 teams, which comprised 54 team managers and 276 team members, were deemed useful for the study. Findings By testing our hypotheses on 54 inter-organizational teams, we found that relationship conflict has a negative relationship with team creativity, whereas task conflict has an inverted U-shaped (curvilinear) relationship with team creativity. Furthermore, when shared leadership is stronger, the negative relationship with team creativity is weaker for relationship conflict, whereas the inverted U-shaped relationship with team creativity is stronger for task conflict. Research limitations/implications The main limitation is cross-sectional, which cannot establish causality in relationships. Despite this potential weakness, the present research provides insights into conflict, leadership and inter-organizational collaboration literature. Practical implications The findings of this study offer some guidance on how managers can intervene in the conflict situations of inter-organizational teams. Social implications Managers are struggling to identify ways to effectively manage team conflict when a team of diverse individuals across organizational boundaries are brought together to solve a problem. The findings of this study offer some guidance on how managers can intervene in the conflict situations of inter-organizational teams. Originality/value This paper provides understandings about how relationship and task conflicts affect team creativity in inter-organizational teams.

On the dimensionality of intragroup conflict

“…We choose employee innovative behavior as an outcome variable because, as innovation has been widely regarded as an important source of an organization's competitive advantage, it is essential to identify factors that increase team innovation performance (Shin et al, 2017). Scholars have increasingly suggested that conflict is an important perspective for studies on innovation (Hu et al, 2017). Previous studies on how conflict affected team innovation generated mixed results: some indicated that cognitive conflict could promote team innovation (Lu et al, 2011), whereas others proposed that both cognitive and affective conflicts negatively related to innovation (He et al, 2014;Yong et al, 2014).…”

“…Previous studies on how conflict affected team innovation generated mixed results: some indicated that cognitive conflict could promote team innovation (Lu et al, 2011), whereas others proposed that both cognitive and affective conflicts negatively related to innovation (He et al, 2014;Yong et al, 2014). To explain the inconsistent relationship between conflicts and innovation, researchers tried to investigate important moderators (He et al, 2014;Hu et al, 2017), but studies on the effects of the structural nature of conflict remain scant. We suggest that some of this inconsistency may be due to the unobserved conflict dimensions, interest-based conflict and behavioral conflict, which could affect team innovation performance as well.…”

“…However, some scholars argued that a high level of cognitive conflict might lead to cognitive overload, which is harmful to team creativity (Farh et al, 2010). Past research pointed out that excessive cognitive conflict hinders IJCMA 28,5 the ability and motivation of individuals to engage in effective communication and collaboration, which may in turn prohibit people from focusing on the problem and from open-mindedly generating ideas (Hu et al, 2017), leading to a decrease in team innovation performance. Therefore, we propose that intermediate cognitive conflict enhances team innovation, thereby resulting in a curvilinear, inverted U-shaped function.…”

Perception of Effective Multicultural Leadership: A Qualitative Study in Western Java

“…Di lain pihak, walaupun sudah lebih dari 70 tahun penelitian tentang konflik dalam bidang psikologi telah dilaksanakan (Brørby, 2013), pada saat ini penelitian dalam bidang ini masih terbatas pada topik-topik terkait kepemimpinan yang efektif dalam resolusi konflik antara kelompok budaya yang berbeda (Chrobot-Mason, Ruderman, Weber, Ohlott, & Dalton, 2007;Hu, Chen, Gu, Huang, & Liu, 2017), aspek budaya dari manajemen sumber daya manusia (Aza, 2017;Rodrigues & Sbragia, 2013), atau topik-topik kepemimpinan lintas budaya dalam hubungan dengan manajemen konflik (Grisham & Walker, 2008;Snaebjornsson, Edvardsson, Zydziunnaite, & Vaiman, 2015).…”

Interplay of relational governance, task conflict, opportunism and their effect on the performance of projects.

“…Task conflicts are related to rational behaviour due to which it doesn't cause tense relationship between teams (Jehn & Bendersky, 2003). Task conflict is positively related to team performance due to which it can improve team performance but if the level of task conflict is very high it can become destructive for team performance (Chen et al, 2014;De Dreu & Weingart, 2003;Hu, Chen, Gu, Huang, & Liu, 2017) .Task oriented conflict can be catalyst for cooperation (Lee, Huh, & Reigeluth, 2015). Conflicts can occur during all stages of construction project.…”