Don't Take It Personally: Exploring Cognitive Conflict as a Mediator of Affective Conflict

Abstract

Research has sought to explain the multi-dimensionality of conflict and its paradoxical effects on decision making (Amason, 1996; DeDreu and Weingart, 2003; Jehn, 1995). The primary prescription to emerge from this work has been for teams to seek the benefits of cognitive (task) conflict while simultaneously avoiding the costs of affective (emotional) conflict. The problem is that these two types of conflict often occur together and researchers have offered few explanations as to why this happens or guidance as to how it can be avoided. In this paper, we provide empirical evidence that cognitive conflict can contribute to affective conflict. As a result, by encouraging cognitive conflict, teams may inadvertently provoke affective conflict. We provide evidence that behavioural integration can mitigate this tendency. Copyright Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2007.

Swim or Sink Together

“…This finding adds to the growing stream in conflict research which investigates boundary conditions of the association between task and relationship conflicts. Prior investigations have demonstrated the quality of interpersonal relationships in a team to be important for the link between task and relationship conflicts (Mooney et al, 2007;Simons & Peterson, 2000). Collective team identification, however, goes beyond relationship quality in that it includes strong emotional ties and a feeling of common belonging among team members (Ashforth et al, 2008).…”

“…As a consequence, the positive potential of task-related conflicts to benefit team performance is at risk of being jeopardized by performance-impeding relationship conflicts. While prior studies have identified boundary conditions which attenuated the association between the two conflict types, they did not succeed in completely resolving the dilemmatic association (Greer et al, 2008;Mooney et al, 2007;Simons & Peterson, 2000). The purpose of this study was to scrutinize the promise of both collective team identification and team member alignment (i.e., the existence of shared team goals and team-based rewards) for separating task and relationship conflicts in teams.…”

“…The emphasis of our analysis, however, is on the influence task conflicts have proved to exert on the emergence of relationship conflicts (Choi & Cho, 2011;Mooney et al, 2007;Peterson & Behfar, 2003). This focus is due to pragmatic reasons: While task conflicts are preponderantly associated with a positive potential concerning team performance, relationship conflicts are considered to be generally detrimental to team effectiveness (De Wit et al, 2012); hence, preventing task conflicts from turning into relationship conflicts appears to be of particular interest for organizational research and practice alike.…”

“…Second, relationship conflicts can emerge from harsh behaviors in the course of task conflicts (Mooney et al, 2007;Simons & Peterson, 2000). In particular, passionate and heated debates about the best way for accomplishing a task can tempt team members to use aggressive language or even intimidation tactics for advancing their opinion (Pelled, 1996;Simons & Peterson, 2000).…”

“…This focus is due to pragmatic reasons: While task conflicts are preponderantly associated with a positive potential concerning team performance, relationship conflicts are considered to be generally detrimental to team effectiveness (De Wit et al, 2012); hence, preventing task conflicts from turning into relationship conflicts appears to be of particular interest for organizational research and practice alike. Accordingly, existing studies have also largely focused on moderators that buffer the influence of task on relationship conflicts (Greer, Jehn, & Mannix, 2008;Huang, 2010;Mooney et al, 2007).…”