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The influence of membership change on team
conflict: what are the mediating factors?
A literature review
Master Thesis, MSc Business Administration, Change Management University of Groningen, Faculty of Economics and Business
13. February 2015 V. Konopitzky Hoekstraat 43 8971 AM Groningen +31 6 44 79 41 81 v.konopitzky@student.rug.nl Student number: S2209691
Under supervision of: Dr. H. Grutterink
Dr. J. Rupert
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The influence of membership change on team conflict: what are the
mediating factors?
Abstract Research on team member change indicates that membership changes are disruptive for team routines and processes. Moreover, research findings state that member changes influences teams on a social level, as team familiarity and team trust. Membership change can evoke team conflict, which in turn has negative effects on team outcomes. The purpose of this research is to discover which influence team member change has on team conflict and what mediates this relationship. A systematic literature review was used to analyse articles on team member change and team conflict. To cover both business and social science literature, the search for relevant articles was conducted in two databases. This research contributes to the literature by taking a first look – since no research has been done on it - at the relationship between membership change and team conflict, and what the mediating factors are. The findings show that team familiarity and trust mediate the relationship between team member change and team conflict. The literature review lead to two propositions.
Keywords: Team member change; Team conflict; Team work; Team familiarity; Team trust;
Introduction
Through the constantly changing environment and the globalisation organisations are facing continually new challenges. In order to be able to cope with those new challenges, organisations need new approaches to stay up to date and ahead of their competitors. The most common technique of performing an organisations job is to divide all the people representing it into groups (Zoltan, Bordeianu & Vancea, 2013). A group can be defined as “a number of people who (1) interact with one another, (2) are psychologically aware of the other group members and (3) perceive themselves as being a group” (Schein, 1965; In: Zoltan et al., 2013, p. 119). From a sociologic and psychological perspective the terms group and team are synonyms. The majority of authors in the organisational research field agree that all teams are groups but not all groups are teams. A group consists of people who are working together, they can work without each other. Contrary to that, a team is a group in which people depend on each other. In a team people cannot work effectively without the other members of their team, they need to collaborate in order to achieve common goals (Cohen & Bailey, 1997; Mathieu et al., 2013; Zoltan et al., 2013).
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One of the most common types of change in teams is membership change. There are many reasons for a change of members, as for example new opportunities for a departing member, low performance or lack of critical skills. Many authors focus their research on membership change in teams as a stimulating effect for team creativity, but do not concentrate on the potential disruptive effect of change on teamwork (Summers et al., 2012).
A membership change may have positive as well as negative effects on a team, and therefore its performance. Some studies show that membership change enhances the creativity of a team (Gruenfeld et al., 2000; Mathieu et al., 2014). Higher creativity can lead to more unique ides and better solutions. Furthermore, fluidity of team members can provide knowledge transfer, e.g. best practices, and other resources. Many aspects of a team’s knowledge is stored within individuals. Changes of team membership affects the acquisition, preservation, distribution and deprecation of team knowledge. When a new member joins a team the team knowledge gets affected, the new member carries unique information and knowledge which gets added to the team knowledge (Gruenfeld et al., 2000). Moreover, team member changes can increase a team’s diversity. Informational diversity in teams can evoke task conflict (Jehn et al., 1999).
However, membership change also means a disruption of the team work, which causes the team to reassess how they operate. The re-evaluation can have positive effects and trigger new and better team processes which are beneficial. But there is also the danger of triggering negative effects on team outcomes, as lower team performance but also evoking conflicts or chaos (Mathieu et al., 2014). Teams which are stable in their membership experience a higher degree of internal communication and cohesiveness than more fluid teams (Dineen, 2005). Furthermore, the change of members in a team affects the team on a social level (Lewis et al., 2007). Research shows that familiarity in teams leads to trusting relationships between team members (Edmondson & Nembhard, 2009; Huckman et al., 2009). In familiar teams, members have interpersonal knowledge about each other, and interact in ways that promote shared social norms as a normal part of work. Familiarity is built up through time spent with one another, opportunities for this to happen are informal interaction, as unplanned conversations, and multipurpose interactions. Team members learn about the personalities, concerns and work processes of each other. Several scholars’ state that a lack of familiarity in a team increases the risk of conflict (Hinds & Bailey, 2003; Okhuysen, 2001). Moreover, trust in others is higher if team members are familiar with each other. In a team with an existing trusting relationship members can talk openly, share their ideas and be more confident. Without the trusting relationship within a team the potential of intra-team conflict is higher (Langfred, 2007). The results of those studies show that relationships play an important role for team work and that relationships in a team effect the occurrence of conflict and its resolution. The focus of this research is on the relationship between membership change and team conflict.
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Dijkstra, 2004). In the literature 3 categories of conflicts in groups or teams can be found. I) Relationship conflict is an emotional conflict and scholars describe it as interpersonal incompatibilities. The conflict concerns insights and information which are unrelated to the performed task, as tension, animosity and annoyance among team members; negative emotions, threaten one’s personal identity and feelings of self-worth. For example differences in personal taste, political preferences, values and interpersonal style (De Dreu, 2006; De Dreu & Vianen, 2001; Janssen & Veenstra, 1999; Jehn, 1995; Jehn, Northcraft & Neale, 1999; Simmons & Peterson, 2000). II) Task conflict is a cognitive conflict, which is defined in the literature as disagreements about the content of the task being performed. Examples for this type of conflict are differences in viewpoints, ideas, and opinions, distribution of resources, procedures and policies and judgments and interpretation of facts (De Dreu, 2006; Janssen & Veenstra, 1999; Jehn, 1995; Jehn, Northcraft & Neale, 1999; Simmons & Peterson, 2000). III) “Process conflicts are disagreements about delegation of task responsibilities and resources within the team; in other words, who should do what and who should get what” (Jehn, Rispens & Thatcher, 2012, p. 135). Not only can the occurring type(s) of conflict in a team vary depending on the antecedent, but they are also interrelated. Previous research shows that team conflict has a powerful and often detrimental effect on the effectiveness of a team (Korsgaard et al., 2008). In general conflict in teams lead to poorer task performance and less positive feelings among team members (O’Connor, Gruenfeld & Mcgrath, 1993).
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provide insight for managers how to manage membership change. The research question for this literature review is:
“How does a membership change influence team conflict and what are the consequences?”
Sub questions for this research:
- What are consequences of membership change? - What are antecedents of team conflict?
- What are possible mediators between team member change and team conflict?
The literature review is structured as followed. First the used methodology of the literature review is explained. Followed by the definition of the most important terms for this review. After that the existing literature of team membership change will be reviewed, followed by the literature on team conflict and the consequences of conflict (see Figure 1). Subsequently the findings of the reviewed literature will be discussed and liked together to explain the influence of membership change and team conflict.
Figure 1: Research framework
Methodology
Opposed to a heuristic review, a systematic review uses a specific algorithm to perform a search and critical assessment of the literature. By using a transparent and reproducible procedure the quality of the review process and outcome of a systematic review is improved. The aim of a systematic review is to identify key scientific contributions to a field or question. (Tranfield, Denyer & Smart, 2003) In general the process of a systematic review consists of three stages, data collection, data analysis and data synthesis.
Data collection Researchers have different possibilities to collect the data for their research, as for example conducting a panel of experts to identify relevant papers, using knowledge of the existing literature to select articles and searching various databases using keywords. After articles have been selected for the review the data analysis follows.
Data analysis Different ways on how to proceed with the data analysis exist. The reviewer chooses a procedure depending on the objectives of the review. Reviews which are aimed at consolidating the results of multiple empirical studies can rely on either a quantitative or a qualitative analysis of the
Membership change
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results. Methodologically this paper is limited to a descriptive rather than a statistical method in the analysis of the results.
“Data synthesis is the primary value-added product of a review as it produces new knowledge based on thorough data collection and careful analysis.” (Crossan & Apaydin, 2010, p.1157)
Data collection
In order to find studies for this review, literature was searched using terminology which is usually associated with team conflict and team member change. Specifically, two databases were searched: Business source premier and Web of science. This was done to cover literature of the business as well as the social science field on this topic. The used key words with the number of findings in each data base can be found in Appendix 1. Note that there were some overlaps in the findings of the two databases. The amount of articles was huge, in order to narrow down the number and get the for this review relevant articles the following steps were taken. The results contained Articles in different languages, therefore every article which was not written in English or German (non in the final list) were excluded. After that the abstracts of the remaining articles were coded, this reduced the number of articles dramatically. In order to keep this research focused, articles which only focus on virtual and distributed teams, and conflict management were excluded. In order to secure that the articles for the review are actual contributions to the literature the number of citations of an article were taken into account. Crossan and Appadin (2010) suggest that an article should be cited at least 5 times per year of its existence to be considered relevant, e.g. a 6 year old article should be cited at least 30 times.
Data analysis
Coding scheme. The preliminary coding scheme with which the coding started was based on
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Table 1: Example coded article
Code Example
Author: De Wit, Greer & Jehn 2012
Title: The Paradox of Intragroup Conflict: A Meta-Analysis Research method: Meta-analysis
Source: De Wit, F.R.C., Greer,L.L. & Jehn, K.A. (2012). The Paradox of Intragroup Conflict: A Meta-Analysis. Journal of Applied Psychology, 97(2), 360–390. DOI:
10.1037/a0024844
Research aim: “The purpose of the current meta-analysis is to examine the impact of relationship, task, and process conflict on proximal group outcomes (i.e., emergent states, such as trust, and group viability, such as group member satisfaction and group member commitment) and distal group outcomes (i.e., group performance) as moderated by differences between studies in terms of context (e.g., task type or cultural context) and methodology.” (p.363)
Team conflict/ Definition:
“Intragroup conflict can broadly be defined as the process emerging from perceived incompatibilities or differences among group members (De Dreu & Gelfand, 2008).“ (p.360)
Team conflict/ Types of conflict/ Relationship conflict:
“Relationship conflicts involve disagreements among group members about interpersonal issues, such as personality differences or differences in norms and values.” (p.360)
Team conflict/ Types of conflict/ Task conflict
“Task conflicts entail disagreements among group members about the content and outcomes of the task being performed…” (p.360)
Team conflict/ Types of conflict/ Process conflict
“…whereas process conflicts are disagreements among group members about the logistics of task accomplishment, such as the delegation of tasks and responsibilities (Jehn & Bendersky, 2003).” (p.360)
Team conflict/ Consequences/ Team outcomes
“…when examining the effects of intragroup conflicts on group outcomes, we distinguish between two types of outcomes: distal group outcomes and more proximal group outcomes.“ (p.361)
Team conflict/ Consequences/ Co-occurrence:
“Co-occurrence of conflict types. One important moderator of the relationship between task conflict and both proximal and distal group outcomes (i.e., group performance and group member satisfaction) was the association between task conflict and relationship conflict.” (p.373)
Results
Definitions
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In the context of membership change and team stability two categories of teams can be found in the literature, closed and open teams. Closed teams remain stable over the course of a series of tasks. Contrary to that the membership in open teams changes over time, as for example a member leaves the team and at the same time a new member joins (Baer et al., 2010).
Many definitions of conflict exist in the literature. Jehn (1995) states that conflict are perceived incompatibilities or “perceptions by the parties involved that they hold discrepant views or have interpersonal incompatibilities”(p.257). Sawer (2001) defines conflict as” difference between two or more people about the meaning of some information (such as a requirement or need an idea, or a decision)”(p.157). De Dreu and Gelfand (2008) provide a definition which characterises conflict as a perceptual state, conflict is “a process that begins when an individual or group perceives differences and opposition between itself and another individual or team about interests and resources, beliefs, values, or practices that matter to them”(6). For this research team conflict is defined as the process emerging from perceived incompatibilities or differences among team members (De Dreu & Gelfand, 2008).
Team member change. In order to become or stay competitive organisations need to be dynamic
and adjust itself to cope with all the challenges. One way to be dynamic and adjust to the changing environment is membership change. Membership change can be described as the occurrence when a new member joins a team or one or more original team members leave the team. (Baer et al., 2010; Lewis et al., 2007). Chandler et al. (2004) found in their research that teams are more likely to add new members in unstable environments. Several reason exist for why an organisation decides to make changes in team membership, as for example due to turnover, transfers or structural changes in the organisation. Open teams are profoundly different from closed team, because membership change affect the social relationships, structure, processes and knowledge of a team severely, and consequently the team performance (Lewis et al., 2007; Lim et al., 2013). It is argued that a change of team members can be beneficial for team learning, it can increase a team’s task focus, increase creativity, stimulate members to make functional change to routines and processes, increase and diversify team knowledge. On the other hand it disrupts routines of members for interacting and accomplishing their tasks, members are forces to spend time and effort to socialize with new members and it can eliminate the access to knowledge a departing member possessed (Lewis et al., 2007). Compared to that closed teams, which are stable in their membership, are less dynamic. Though this stability can have its benefits, e.g. members are experienced at working together which can make it easier for members to recognise each other’s strengths and weaknesses, to coordinate activities but also to build a shared social norms as well a shared understanding of how to perform tasks (Lewis et al., 2007).
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Types of team member change. In order to cope with the challenges an organisation faces it has different options of changes in the team member composition. Mathieu et al. (2013) describe in their research six different types on team composition change, 1) the addition, subtraction, or replacement of a single member, 2) replacing multiple team members simultaneously, 3) distribution of new personell simultaneously to multiple teams, 4) staffing a new team to address a problem or opportunity, 5) simultaneously staffing multiple such teams and 6) reconfiguration of members into teams as a resulting from an organisational redesign, merger or downsizing. According to Li and Hambrick (2005), there are several cases in which members do not join a team as an individual but as a representative fraction, as for example “(1) Following the merger of two companies, a merger integration team is formed, consisting of managers drawn from both sides. (2) Upon the signing of a joint venture (JV) agreement, each of the two parent companies assigns some of its own managers to be on the JV’s new management team. (3) A task force is formed to find ways to coordinate a company’s marketing and product development functions, consisting of members drawn from both areas… Instead of coming to a team as individuals, members of a factional group come as, say, a threesome or foursome, and they combine with another twosome or threesome to constitute the team.”(p.794).
Downsizing is one type of team member change, there are several reasons why a team is forced to work with fewer people. Downsizing can occur through organisational downsizing, as layoffs, or a reduction of team size in order to be able to address multiple work demands simultaneously, or if a team is overstaffed and needs a reduction of team members (De Rue et al., 2008).
Another possibility of changing team members, are temporary membership changes. In team member rotations two types of team members exist, members who leave their team of origin for a certain amount of time to join another team and members who stay in their team and interact with their temporary team member (Gruenfeld et al., 2000; Kane et al., 2005). The purpose of team member rotation is to enhance creativity as well as knowledge sharing between different teams in an organisation.
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restructuring a team. Most but not all team member changes are definite, team member rotation is a temporary change of team members. Teams who deal with complete restructuring teams, merging teams from two organisations as well as fluid teams deal with much bigger changes than teams where only one or two members get exchanged, therefore have a more severe impact on the team. There are also team types in which membership change is required in order to achieve high performance, e.g. fluid teams.
Literature review
Consequences of team member change. As mentioned before membership change can have
positive as well as negative effects. In the literature several consequences of team member change are found. First, the results of Gruenfeld et al.’s (2000) research show that during the change and after the return of rotating team members to their original team, the rotating members were more involved than prior to the change. The involvement of the rotating member in the visiting team did not differ from the involvement in the team of origin after the change. Additionally the argumentativeness of rotation team members increased after they returned to their team of origin.
Second, team member change influences team knowledge. If new members join a team they bring new skills and knowledge with them, which can diversify and enlarge the knowledge base of a team (Lim et al., 2013). Kane et al. (2005) found that the transfer of knowledge happens more likely if both, the recipient team and the rotating team members, share a superordinate social identity, as well as when the rotating team member has a superior rather than an inferior routine.
Third, a reason for changing team members is to enhance creativity. Baer et al. (2010) argue that membership change lowers team creativity due to a “us-versus-the-newcomer” mind-set, under which collaborative idea generation and participative decision making suffer. In Gruenfeld et al.’s (2000) research the results show that more unique ideas were generated by both rotating members and stable members after the rotating member returned to the team of origin, but not during the change. Furthermore, the influence of rotating members was diminished after they changed teams and had unique knowledge to share (Gruenfeld et al., 2000).
Fourth, a membership change in a team is disruptive and can trigger conflict (Langfred, 2006; Mathieu et al., 2013). One possible reason for that can be a lack of interpersonal chemistry between the original team members and the new arrivals. Lim et al. (2013) state that interpersonal chemistry plays an important role in carrying out tasks and team functioning. Team members who are familiar with each other know the personalities, values and beliefs of their team members, but when membership occurs this familiarity is not present, which can lead to conflict.
Fifth, Curseu et al. (2012) found that “groups without membership change had a higher psychological safety than groups with membership change.”(p.579)
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2007; Summers et al., 2012; van der Vegt et al., 2009). According to van der Vegt et al. (2009) the negative effect of membership change on team performance is due the disruption of key interaction processes. If a team fails to find actively to intervene and facilitate the necessary adaption of the team, team performance will suffer (De Rue et al., 2008). Another insight to why membership change can lead to lower performance of teams is given by Huckman et al. (2009), their research shows that team familiarity is positively related to team performance. Team member change decreases team familiarity which in turn can lead to lower performance.
Team conflict. A lot of research found on intra-team conflict focuses on the differentiation of
conflict types, the antecedent of conflict and its consequences. According to Korsgaard et al. (2008), in the early stages of conflict research two types of models were differentiated, structural models of conflict and process models of conflict. Structural models theorise that contextual factors such as task characteristics and social context are the cause for conflict. Whereas process models view conflict as a dynamic process, “emphasizing the intraindividual and interpersonal processes that link structural sources of conflict to manifestations of conflict” (Korsgaard et al., 2008, p.1225). In the current literature conflict is viewed as a dynamic process. Jehn and Mannix (2001) state the importance to examine conflict as a dynamic process rather than as a static event. They observed in their research that the amount of team conflict varies during the course of a project; especially in low performing teams, all three types of conflict increased dramatically in the final weeks of the project.
Types of conflict. In the reviewed literature scholars mostly differentiated between three types of team conflict, relationship conflict, task conflict and process conflict. Many stated the existence of those three conflict types, but most of them focused their research either on relationship conflict or task conflict or on both. Only few studies focus on process conflict. Several scholars (Behfar et al, 2011; Jehn, 1997; Jehn & Mannix, 2001; Korsgaard et al, 2008) state that it is difficult to distinguish process conflict empirically form task conflict and it is often highly correlated with relationship conflict, therefore it is often excluded from studies of intragroup conflict.
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personal taste, norms and value (De Dreu & Weingart, 2003; De Wit et al., 2012; Jehn & Mannix, 2001; Shaw et al., 20011.)
Task conflict. Task conflict, sometimes also referred to as cognitive conflict, is a task centred conflict. An example for a definition is the following, “task conflict refers to disagreement over task-relevant ideas, issues, and content“ (Korsgaard, Jeong, Mahony & Pitarui, 2008, p.1227). According to Pelled & Adler (1994), “if a disagreement between two colleagues is characterized not by hostility and anger but by relatively good-natured disagreement about work content or procedures, it may be described as an interpersonal task conflict”(p.22). Jehn (1995) states: “Task conflict exists when there are disagreements among group members about the content of the tasks being performed, including differences in viewpoints, ideas, and opinions“(p.258). Examples for task conflict are conflicts about the distribution of resources, procedures, and policies as well as discussions about pros and cons, consideration of alternative course of action, evaluation how conflicting evidence fits with team decisions (Behfar et al., 2011; De Dreu & Weingart, 2003). It is argued that task conflict is essential for effective decision making in a team (Korsgaard et al., 2008).
Process conflict. Jehn (1997) was the first to provide evidence for the existence of process conflict, therefore many scholars (e.g. Behfar et al., 2011; Bradley et al., 2012; Chun & Choi, 2014; Jehn & Mannix, 2001;) base their definition of process conflict on the definition of Jehn; who defined process conflict as, “conflict about how task accomplishment should proceed in the work unit, who's responsible for what, and how things should be delegated. Process conflict includes disagreements about assignments of duties or resources“(p.540).
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Peterson (2000) state that trust reduces the likelihood of misattribution of task conflict, which should therefore reduce the interaction effect of task conflict and relationship conflict. Low trust in one another cause members to question each other’s motives of disagreement on task related issues, leading to relationship conflict. Furthermore, Yang and Mossholder (2004) aruge that the “association between task conflict and relationship conflict will be stronger when significant negative emotionality is present”(p.593).
Antecedent of conflict. Several researchers suggest that conflict in team is a multilevel phenomenon. In general intrateam conflict can be analysed in three levels, individual level, team level and organisational level. Several of the reviewed articles analyse team conflict from the multilevel perspective, as for example Korsgaard et al. (2008), Pelled and Adler (1994) as well as Sawyer (2001). But not all studies analyse team conflict with a multilevel view. Kornsgaard et al. (2008) criticise that in most cases intrateam conflict has not been examined in a multilevel context, they argue that this leads to “significant ambiguities and misspecification of theory and methods” (Korsgaard et al., 2008, p.1236). The advantage of multilevel models is, that they shed light on within level relationships, bottom-up and top-down relationships as well as cross-level effects.
Numerous antecedent for team conflict exist, many of the reviewed articles focus on how diversity impacts conflict and team outcomes. Diversity in teams can be beneficial for team outcomes, but it also affects the team in less beneficial ways, as for example triggering conflict. In order to analyse diversity in teams, researchers use faultlines. Faultlines can be defined as “hypothetical dividing lines that split a group into relatively homogenous subgroups based on demographic alignment along multiple attributes” (Bezrukova, Jehn, Zanutto, & Thatcher, 2009, p. 35; In: Lim et al., 2013, p. 48). Members with similar characteristics in a group build a subgroup. Then based on the alignment of the subgroups characteristics faultlines emerge. Several categories of diversity in teams are discussed in the literature, as social category diversity, informational diversity and value diversity. Social category diversity refers to diversity in social category membership among team members, as gender, race, age or ethnicity (Jehn et al., 1999). Informational diversity concerns the differences of knowledge bases and perspectives each member of a team possesses (Jehn et al., 1999). Team members are likely to differ in their education, experience and expertise, and are therefore diverse from each other. And value diversity “occurs when members of a workgroup differ in terms of what they think the group's real task, goal, target, or mission should be”(Jehn et al., 1999, p.756).
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results. Pelled et al. (1999) discovered that similarity in age as well as the combination of diversity in race and tenure increases relationship conflict. Moreover, they argue that this happens because age is a career-related attribute, members with age similarity in a team compare their career progress to others, which increases jealousy and rivalry. The results of Thatcher and Patel’s (2011) study show a positive relationship between demographic faultline strength and relationship conflict. In the study of Li and Hambrick (2005) results showed a positive relation of age diversity with task conflict, gender differences had a positive relationship with relationship conflict and differences of tenure had a positive relationship with both task and relationship conflict. Choi and Sy (2010) argue that strong gender- age faultlines and age-race faultlines increase relationship. Furthermore, Chun and Choi (2014) reason that group size is a predictor for relationship conflict, the larger the group the more relationship conflict. According to Mohammed and Angell (2004) if team orientation of members is high it neutralises negative effects of surface-level diversity on relationship conflict.
Members of teams with strong faultlines tend to rather identify with their own subgroup than with the entire team, which induces favouring members and their opinions of the own subgroup and prejudgement against all the other team members, that in turn leads to relationship conflict (Lim et al., 2013). Moreover, Lim et al. (2013) state that partially overlapping faultlines have less negative effects, it is more likely that team members share their thoughts with members of other subgroups and are less judgmental. Another moderator for the effects of diversity on team conflict was found by Pelled et al. (1999), they state that longevity weakens the impact of diversity. The time spend to together in a team lets members with different backgrounds either develop a shared understanding of tasks or they learn to anticipate and deflect opposing opinions. In addition to that, it is possible that over time the borders of social categories become blurred, and subgroups merger.
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According to Curseu and Schruijer (2010), trust is an antecedent of conflict in teams. The lower the level of trust in a team the higher the level of task and relationship conflict. Their findings show that emerging trust in the first stages of team interaction most likely reduces intrateam conflict in later stages. Moreover, the findings of Simons and Peterson (2000) show that high levels of team trust reduce the likelihood of task conflict triggering relationship conflict. Additionally, Hinds and Bailey (2003) state that familiarity is associated with reduced conflict. They argue that lack of familiarity increases conflict about roles and responsibilities, and causes coordination problems.
Furthermore, the level of conflict in a team is influenced by the task type. O’Connor et al. (1993) differentiate three categories of tasks, collaborative tasks, cooperative tasks and mixed-motive tasks. They found in their research, that teams working on mixed-motive tasks experience the highest level of conflict, teams working on cooperative tasks experience a moderate level of conflict and teams working on collaborative tasks experience the lowest level of conflict.
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commitment. Contrary to that, Behfar et al. (2011) as well as Simons and Peterson (2000) argue that task conflict is associated with higher commitment.
In the reviewed articles most results for consequences of conflict were found on team performance. The findings on the relationship between task conflict and team performance were conflicting, some authors argue task conflict has a positive relation with performance and some say the relationship is negative. The article of O’Connor et al. (1993) shows that between the cluster of high-conflict groups and the cluster of low-conflict groups there is no significant difference in task performance. De Dreu and Weingart (2003) focused their research on how task and relationship conflict influences team performance. Their findings show some interesting patterns: “…for decision-making teams there is a sizable difference between the task conflict–team performance correlation and the relationship conflict– team performance correlation. No such difference was observed for other task types” (De Dreu & Weingart, 2003, p.745). Overall their results show that both relationship and task conflict are disruptive, none of the relationships between team performance and conflict type had a positive correlation. Contrary to that Jehn et al. (1995) found, that “in groups performing nonroutine tasks, disagreements about the task did not have a detrimental effect and, in some cases, were actually beneficial“(p.275). Jehn (1995) argues that the task a team performs indicates whether conflict is positive, negative or neutrally related with team performance and concludes that moderate levels of task conflict are constructive. Eisenhardt et al. (1997) argue that task conflict in top management teams is desirable, because it leads to more thorough and creative discussions.
While the findings on consequences of task conflict on team performance vary, all the results of relationship conflict are negatively related with team performance (e.g. De Dreu & Weingart, 2003; Jehn, 1995; Jehn & Mannix, 2001; Simons & Peterson, 2000). Curseu and Schruijer (2010) state “relationship conflict has a significant and negative impact on both perceived team effectiveness as well as on team performance”(p.73). According to Li and Hambrick (2005) relationship conflict impairs team performance through its effect on behavioural disintegration and through direct effects on performance. Most findings of process conflict correlate negatively with team performance (e.g. Behfar et al., 2011; De Wit et al., 2012; Greer et al., 2008;Jehn, 1997). As for example the research of Jehn (1995), who states “process conflict appears to have a direct negative relationship with group performance: low levels of process conflict are positively related to performance, while higher levels are increasingly detrimental to group performance“(p.551).
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likely to stick to suboptimal solution alternatives, than if relationship conflict is absent. It is argued that in these situations people are less motivated to systematically process information, and therefore are less likely to shift form their initial standpoint to a more correct or adopt another person’s standpoint (De Wit et al., 2003). According to Janssen et al.’s (1999) proposition “task conflict and person conflict interact in shaping the relationship between positive interdependence and team decision-making effectiveness”(p.125).
Discussion and Conclusion
In this section the results of the literature review will be discussed, beginning with the findings on the consequences of membership change, followed by the types of conflict and the antecedents of conflict. The types of conflict are important because as can be seen later in the discussion on the mediating factors between team member change and team conflict, not every mediator mediates each type of conflict. Through connecting the findings of the consequences of membership change and the findings of the antecedents of team conflict, possible mediators for the relationship between them will be identified. Followed by the discussion of the consequences of conflict and lastly the findings of this research will be concluded.
Consequences of membership change. The findings in the reviewed literature show that
membership change has an influence on the involvement of team members, team knowledge, creativity, team conflict, familiarity and team performance. On the one hand changes in team membership have negative effects as, lower familiarity, lower psychological safety, lower team performance as well as higher probability for conflict. After team member change occurred team members first need time to get to know each other before they can work effectively together (Lim et al., 2013). The process of getting familiar with the other team members’ personalities, habits and opinions, and the way how they work takes time. Familiarity between team members is built through interaction with one another, these include work related as well as non-work related interactions. Furthermore, it was found that low team familiarity leads to lower team performance (Huckman et al., 2009). Several of the reviewed articles found that team member change lowers team performance. Due to the disruptive effect of membership change the interaction processes of a team get disturbed (van der Vegt et al., 2009), which results in less effective ways of working.
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Types of team conflict. The reviewed literature revealed three main types of team conflict,
relationship conflict, task conflict and process conflict. Only a few of the reviewed articles focused on all three types of conflict, most of them either focused on relationship conflict or task conflict or both of them. The results of the review also show that the types of conflict are interrelated. Process conflict as well as task conflict can evoke relationship conflict (Befahr et al., 2011; Curseu & Schruijer, 2010; Greer et al., 2008; Korsgaard et al., 2008; Rispens, 2012; Simons & Peterson, 2000; Tidd et al., 2004) Even though process conflict plays an important role in teams and its conflicts, researcher tend to avoid it and focus on relationship and task conflict.
Antecedents of team conflict. The antecedents found in the reviewed articles are diversity,
representational gaps, power, trust, and task type. The findings show that most articles on antecedent of conflict are concerned with diversity in teams (e.g. Cronin & Weingart, 2007; Jehn et al., 1999; Lim et al., 2013; Pelled et al., 1999; Thatcher & Patel, 2011). Depending on the type of diversity it can have positive effects on teams, as for example bringing a big range of knowledge and expertise in a team. Nevertheless, diversity can also generate negative effects. According to the type of diversity, it can result in relationship conflict, task conflict or process conflict. Although task conflict is not always seen as a negative occurrence, in certain situations managers pursue diversity to generate task conflict in order to enhance discussions to make better decisions (Pelled et al., 1999). Power seems to be a predictor for conflict only in high-power teams, as less powerful teams experience less conflict (Greer et al., 2011). However, trust is a good example that it is necessary to analyse conflict as a dynamic process. The findings show that in order to keep conflict in a team low trust is very important in the early stages of a team. If trust is low at the beginning, conflict will be higher later on (Curseu & Schruijer, 2010). Trust does not only influence the level of conflict in later stages of team work, it is also a mediator between task and relationship conflict. With low levels make a transformation of task conflict into relationship conflict more likely, which will have negative effects on team outcomes. Last of all, task type was found to be a predictor of team conflict. Tasks in which team members collaborate the competition between team members is low, therefore the conflict level is lower. Contrary to that, in teams working on mixed-motive tasks a competition among team members exists, which yields potential for intrateam conflict (O’Connor et al., 1993). As the review of the articles about the antecedent of conflict show, very few examine conflict with a multilevel model. More research on antecedent of team conflict in a multilevel perspective should be done in the future, to gain a better insight on how conflict distributes across the different levels and which effects that has on team outcomes as well as the well-being of team members.
Possible mediators. Membership change has a high impact on team work, it disrupts routines and
18
change. With a membership change where only one team member gets exchanged, the effect on team trust and familiarity will be low. Team member change types which involve a complete restructure of a team or downsizing have a much higher influence on familiarity and trust. Time is essential for people to get familiar with each other, building up trust takes even longer. Restructuring may put people which are total strangers together in one team. Members need to get to know each other first before they can work together in an effective way. If members are not experienced at working with each other they are less likely to discuss openly their opinions and are less willing to share their ideas (Edmondson & Nembhard, 2009; Huckman & Staats, 2009). It is necessary that they first get familiar with each other and then build up some trust. Moreover, team with a complete new composition lack a shared team identity. Without a shared identity conflict in a team will arise (Mortensen & Hinds, 2001) Downsizing additionally creates competition among team members. If an organisation decides for downsizing teams, the fear of getting laid off will arise among team members. In order to prevent that, members will start to compete with each other, which creates negative emotions in a team and might lead to relationship conflicts (Yang & Mossholder, 2004).
In the literature of team conflict it is argued that low levels of familiarity and trust are antecedent for team conflict. If members are not familiar with each other and the work habits of their team members coordination problems in the team arise. Furthermore, the absence of familiarity shows increase conflict about roles and responsibilities in a team (Hinds & Bailey, 2003; Langfred, 2006). Team familiarity is built though working together over a period of time, but also through non work related, casual encounters, as conversations during a break. Through the work related and casual encounters members learn more about the others personalities, concerns and work processes (Hinds & Bailey, 2003). This suggest that teams with a longevity encounter less conflicts which are caused through levels of low team familiarity and trust. Moreover, findings in the literature state that trust mediates the relationship between task and relationship conflict. If a team with a low trust level experiences task conflict, while at the same time having a relationship conflict, the task conflict will be higher and will have a higher impact on team outcomes. In addition to that the presence of negative emotionality, as for example membership change might evoke, increases conflict in teams (Yang & Mossholder, 2004). In summary, membership change lowers team familiarity and trust, whereas low levels of familiarity and trust increase team conflict. I therefore propose:
Proposition 1: Familiarity and trust in a team mediate the relationship between membership change and team conflict. Membership change types which have a high impact on familiarity and trust will result in a higher level of team conflict.
19
and expertise among team members as well as different perspectives brought in by members (Jehn et al., 1999). This type of diversity is found to trigger task conflict in teams. Furthermore, if an organisation decides for a major change of team members, as restructuring all its teams, or if a merger happens and teams are built of members out of two companies, the chances of increasing social category diversity in teams are high. Social category diversity are for example differences in age, gender and race (Jehn et al., 1999). These differences can cause relationship conflict in teams. The evidence in the literature is not strong, but still it should be considered that diversity caused by membership change increases conflict in teams. Therefore I propose:
Proposition2: Team diversity mediates the relationship between team member change and team conflict. Membership changes that causes an increase of informational diversity in teams, will raise the level of task conflict. Membership changes that cause an increased level of social category diversity among team members, will increase relationship conflict.
In order to cope with team conflict, conflict management strategies can be applied. Conflict management a reactive method, it tries to resolve conflict or reduce the negative impact. Contrary to that teambuilding is a proactive method (Pelled & Adler, 1994). It tries to create a heathy environment before conflict arises. Team meetings right after team member changes have been introduced can be used for team building activities. These activities facilitate the process of getting to know each other, get familiar and start to build trust towards each other. Team building activities not only help members to get to know each other, but also to better cope with possible diversities among team members. As stated above, diversity is an antecedent for team conflict. Especially after big membership changes increased diversity in the team is possible. If an organisation restructures all its teams or after a merger, where teams get constructed from members of both companies, the chances of having a high diversity in the new teams are high. To conclude, team member change decreases the level of familiarity and trust in a team, while possibly increasing team diversity. Team building activities help to build familiarity and trust, additionally it helps to manage diversity in teams. Therefore I propose:
Proposition 3: Applying team building measures timely after the introduction of team member change lowers the negative influence of membership change on team conflict.
Consequences of team conflict. The literature on consequences of conflict is extensive. The results
task-20
related matters, in which more different opinions and possible solutions come up. Through the discussions better decisions will be made, because the decisions made will be more thought through, that in turn leads to improved team performance. Opposing authors argue that no real evidence has been shown that task conflict is actually beneficial. The results of most studies show a negative correlation between task conflict and team performance (e.g. De Dreu & Weingart, 2003; De Witt et al., 2012; Jehn 1997 ). Though in some articles is stated that team members associated task conflict with high involvement, and gave team members the impression of a high team commitment (Befahr et al., 2011; Simmons & Peterson, 2000). This is one of the few positive aspects found of team conflict. The findings on relationship and process conflict imply to have negative effects on teams and its outcomes. Relationship conflict lowers team trust, member satisfaction, team performance, and evokes negative feelings towards other team members. Process conflict has negative influence on creativity, trust and team performance.
Some researches took a look at the effect of co-occurring conflict types. The findings suggest that if the correlation between task and relationship conflict is strong, task conflict has a higher negative influence on team performance than if the correlation is weak. Furthermore, it is suggested that trust in teams mediate the relationship between task and relationship conflict. When task and relationship conflict co-occur and the level of task conflict is low, trust within the team is high (De Dreu & Weingart, 2003). This indicates that trust is an important factor in team settings, with a low trust level task conflict is higher and more destructive.
To conclude, team member change has positive as well as negative effects on team outcomes. The question if the positive effects outweigh the negative effects always depends on the type of membership change in combination with the situational factors. The higher the disruption of the team member change the higher the effect on the team outcomes. One of the factors which are affected by membership change is team conflict. Since many consequences of team conflict have a negative impact on team outcomes, team member change might even intensify these negative effects. After comparing the consequences of team member change and the antecedents of conflict three propositions were made on possible mediating factors. The first proposes that familiarity and trust mediate the relationship between team member change and team conflict. The second suggests that diversity is another mediator for the relationship between membership change and team conflict. And the third offers a possible solution, by recommending the usage of team building activities to take action before conflict occurs. The findings in the reviewed literature show that both, team member change and team conflict effect team outcomes. Contrary to membership change, team conflict has mainly negative effects on team outcomes, such as lower team performance.
Future research. Most studies avoid process conflict, future research should focus more on process
21
process conflicts, but also for understanding the interdependence of the conflict types. As the findings show process conflict causes an increase of both relationship and task conflict.
This research has made a first step to encounter the relationship between membership change and team conflict. But more research on that is needed to get a better view on it. The found propositions need to be tested in order to know if familiarity, trust and diversity really mediate the relationship between team member change and conflict.
Clearly both, membership change and team conflict have independently influence on team outcomes, the reviewed literature does not reveal if those two enhance or diminish one another’s effects on team outcomes. Further research needs to be done in order to know if team member change enhances the negative effects of team conflict on team outcomes and if team conflict increase negative effects or diminishes positive effects of membership change on team outcomes.
Practical implications. This research shows that different types of membership change are available
and that each type has different results. Membership changes which interfere highly with a team’s structure, in turn has a high impact on processes and routines in a team. In order to reduce the negative effects of team member changes and create a friendlier working environment, as well as increase familiarity among team members, managers should apply team building measures shortly after the team member change.
Limitations. This research is limited by using only published articles of journals for the literature
review, other sources might give additional information. Furthermore, the filtering process may have omitted a large stream by excluding all the literature on distributed and viral teams as well as literature on conflict management. However, the used method of downsizing the number of relevant articles included coding the abstracts of articles, therefore I doubt that articles on distributed, viral or conflict management would have altered the results of this review.
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Appendix
Appendix 1: Search terms and number of findings
Search term Number found: Business source premier
Number found: Web of science
Antecedents of conflict & team work
12 65
Team conflict & Team work
305 1349
Team member change & Team work
162 734
Membership change & Team work
16 57
Membership change & Team conflict
- 12
Fluid team & Team work 10 175 Stable team & team work 3 229 Task conflict & Team
work
180 375
Relationship conflict & Team work
104 498
Process conflict & Team work
120 495
Consequences of conflict & Team work
16 123
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Appendix 2: Coding scheme
Code Category Subcategory Description Example
Membership change
Definition If an article defines membership change,
code as definition.
“Membership change occurs when a new member joins and an existing member departs a group (Choi & Thompson, 2005; Ziller, 1965).” (Baer, Leenders, Oldham & Vadera, 2010, p.828)
Antecedents of member change
If an article states that member change was the result of a certain factor, code as antecedent of member change.
“Group membership change, due to turnover, promotions, and transfers, is inevitable in today’s dynamic organizations.” (Lewis et al., 2007, p.159)
Type of member change
Fluid teams If an article mentions fluid teams, then code as fluid teams.
“Fluid teams exist only for the duration of a single project and are composed of members who may join or leave a team during the course of that project.“(Huckman, Staats & Upton, 2009, p.85) Downsizing If an article mentions downsizing, then
code as downsizing.
“To identify the three structural approaches to team downsizing, we draw from literature on organizational downsizing.“ (De Rue, Hollenbeck, Johnson & Ilgen, 2008, p.183)
Temporary change If an article mentions temporary change, then code as temporary change.
“This study investigated the consequences of temporary membership changes for itinerant members (who leave their group of origin temporarily to visit a foreign work group) and indigenous members of those origin and foreign groups“ (Gruenfeld, Martorana & Fan, 2000, p.45)
Other If an article mentions any type of
membership change other than fluid teams, downsizing or temporary change, then code as other.
“Mathieu, Tannenbaum, Donsbach, and Alliger (2013) outlined six different types of human resource decisions concerning team composition.” (Mathieu et al., 2013, p.131)
Consequences of member change
Involvement If an article mentions that membership change has a consequence on of team members, then code as involvement.
“Itinerant members were no less involved in the groups they visited than in those to which they returned; in fact, they were more involved after these changes than they were beforehand.“( Gruenfeld,
Martorana & Fan, 2000, p.55) Team climate If an article mentions that membership
change has a consequence on team climate, the code as team climate.
