Intra-group Conflict And Conflict Management: Method And Empirical Research

Conflict has been considered as an important group interaction variable in organization research. However, the research results over the relationship between conflict and group performance are not consistent. Few previous studies take into account the intra-group conflict and conflict management together which leads neglecting of the potential impact of conflict management on conflict. Based on the previous researchs, this article proposes a conceptual model to make better understanding of the intra-group conflict process.After that, from the group level aspect, with a sample of 76 teams, this study examines the relationship among group conflict, conflict management and performance in Chinese environment. We found that the interaction of conflict management and conflict has significantly impact on group performance. Competing conflict management behavior always leads to more relationship conflict, which in turn lead to lower team performance; avoiding conflict management behavior was negatively related to relationship conflict;. We also found that task conflict was positively related to group performance. Our findings appear to contribute to benefit of task conflict without the costs of relationship conflict.It is important for both manager and employee to master the skills to manage conflict. Previous studies usually focus on top-management groups or superior and subordinate while we put our eyes on peer-employees. Based on a survey of 333 questionnaires, we examined the effects of conflict management behavior on job satisfaction and innovation performance. Results show that:cooperation and compromising conflict management behaviors were positively related to job satisfaction; cooperation conflict management behavior was positively related to innovation performance, and avoiding conflict management behavior was negatively related to innovation performance.As the research on cross-culture group, conflict and performance is limited, especially in Chinese context, we adopt case study research to build the framework of this topic. Some propositions are given after the analysis. Meanwhile, emotional intelligence and conflict norm are included in our model.While the 3rd party is an important role in the conflict management process, take the complex-large group into account, the superiority of the 3rd party come onto surface. This paper advanced a new method for consistency adjustment of fuzzy preference relations matrix in Group Decision. This method presented a new target matrix R, as a result, more preference information was saved in the calculated mediation matrix in a certain extent. That is to say, more intentions of decision-makers of Group Decision were saved. A numerical example is given to illustrate the course of the proposed method and its predominance.This paper offers some useful suggestions for business managers as well as employees to improve group performance.