Exploring The Underlying Mediating Processes Between Intragroup Conflict And Team Outcomes

This dissertation explores the underlying mediating mechanisms through which intragroup conflict (task conflict vs. relationship conflict) influences varied team outcomes. This research topic is important because it introduces a new perspective, the social information processing theory (SIP), into conflict literature and contributes not only to intragroup conflict theories but also to SIP theories. Using the SIP perspective, an integrated mediation model of conflict is proposed. This model presents three mediating processes between two types of conflict (task conflict and relationship conflict) and team outcomes: learning process of intragroup conflict, attribution process of intragroup conflict, and judgment process of intragroup conflict.The study also considers the transactive memory system (TMS) theory which is integrated into the learning process. The learning process presents that TMS mediates the effects of two types of conflict on the three team outcomes (team knowledge sharing, team innovation, and team standard job performance). Another theory, the attribution theory, is incorporated into the attribution process, which states that the relationships of task conflict with team outcomes are mediated by relationship conflict. Finally, similarity–attraction paradigm is incorporated into the judgment process, that is, group cohesiveness plays a mediating role in the relationships of two types of conflict with team outcomes.In addition, I explore the boundary conditions of the posited mediation model. Two team contextual variables are adopted as moderators (team task type and team learning orientation). It is expected that the mediating processes between relationship conflict and the team outcomes do not vary across levels of the moderators. However, the mediating processes between task conflict and team outcomes may be dependent on the two moderators. In other words, some mediating processes between task conflict and team outcomes may be more operative in the high level of the moderators than in the low level of the moderators.A longitudinal study is conducted to test the hypotheses. My study includes three waves of data collection, and the full sample includes 386 employees and 76 work groups. Findings show that TMS and group cohesiveness mediate the negative effects of relationship conflict on the three team outcomes. Furthermore, the results reveal that the mediations between task conflict and the three team outcomes are moderated by two moderators. Specifically, when task type moderates the three mediating processes between task conflict and the three team outcomes, the mediating effects of TMS are operative only in non-routine task groups rather than in routine task groups. The mediating effects of group cohesiveness and relationship conflict are operative only in routine task groups rather than in non-routine task groups. When team orientation moderates the three processes between task conflict and team outcomes, the task conflict-TMS-team outcomes sequences are operative only in high learning orientation groups rather than in low learning orientation groups. Moreover, task conflict-group cohesiveness-team outcomes sequences are operative only in low-learning orientation groups rather than in high learning orientation groups. This paper also involves a discussion on the theoretical and applied implications of these findings.