Study On The Conflicts During The Decision-making Process Within A Knowledge-based Team

Knowledge is becoming a power source for economic growths, as well as adecisive factor for prolificacy development in this knowledge-based economy era of21st century, while the boundaries of different knowledge areas are getting more blurred.Once only single personal expertise was far from meeting the knowledge needs ofcomplex tasks, the knowledge-based team would be put on an important position insidean enterprise. Conflicts aroused normally during decision-making process inside theknowledge-based team, those positive ones might do some promotion work fordiscussion and innovation, but those negative one might do seriously damage on theteamwork’s decision-making quality, as well as the team’s work efficiency. So, it cameup to be an important research topic that how to reduce and control the negativeconflicts while moderately stimulate positive conflicts inside a knowledge-based teamduring decision-making to make a discussion more in-depth, as well as a team moreefficient.On the basis of the knowledge-based team’s work characteristics, thedecision-making process and its conflicts were analyzed; those conflicts were classifiedinto self-conflict, individual-different-conflicts and interactive-conflicts from the viewof organization behavior. The motivators of those conflicts were summarized, and asolving frame about their management was given.To solve the conflict in decision-making of knowledge-based team whileconsidering whose decision-making characteristics, controlling up the root causes ofconflict was proposed. Three important aspects of causes were analyzed to do theresearch, they were team role assignment, team member selection and teamcommunication mode: Team role assignment were researched by the experimentalmethodology of participant observation on role behaviors in team decision-makingprocesses, to know the real role requirements and corresponding role-capacitycharacteristics of the knowledge-based team; Team member selection were researchedthrough the fuzzy analytic hierarchy process on the basis of an index system with threeaspects of indexes, including the teamwork, personal ability, and personal qualities, toevaluate and select the team members; Team communication modes were researchedthrough designed experiment based on different group sizes, face-to-facecommunication and computer-mediated communication on different group sizes were compared to study how they influence the quality of team decision-making.Finally, it gave an actual practice case about a project team from a smallconsulting firm on its theory and method. When a variety of conflicts came up duringthe decision-making process, this project team had to restructured itself, selectedappropriate team members, reassigned their roles and re-planed the team’scommunication and process while decision-making discussion.