Exploring the Presence and Impact of Variability in Team Conflict Management on Team Effectiveness

Abstract

This paper investigates the presence of five proposed distinct configural patterns (or profiles) in cooperative and competitive conflict management within teams and their effects on team effectiveness. Data are collected from 79 undergraduate student teams in an online survey. The profiles are first identified using qualitative content coding analyses, then followed by quantitative latent class analyses. Planned comparison tests are then conducted to examine the profiles’ relative impact on team effectiveness. All five proposed team conflict management profiles are found in the content coding analyses but only two of them are uncovered in the latent class analyses. Three new profiles are also revealed in the qualitative content coding analyses. The planned comparison tests indicate that teams with majority cooperative profiles outperform teams with majority competitive profiles; teams with all or majority cooperative profiles also outperform those with all competitive profiles. Study implications, limitations, and future research directions are also discussed.