A Longitudinal Study Of The Effects Of Task Conflict And Relationship Conflict On Team Creativity

This paper focused on exploring the long-term effects of two types of conflicts-task conflict and relationship conflict-on team creativity, which was rarely researchedby precious studies. Based on the social cognitive theory, we established a cross-timemodel, in which team potency was introduced as a mediator and team collectivism wasemployed as a moderator between team conflict and team potency.To examine the research model, we conducted a two-wave survey study, theintern of which was three months, using a sample of104teams in10IT companies inShenzhen. The valid sample of the first period was93teams and the valid rate is89.4%while the valid sample of the second period was86teams and the valid rate is92.5%.We employed SPSS18.0, AMOS6.0and R to analysis the data, and tested thehypotheses, rooted in the Baron and Kenny Approach (1986) and MMR method. Theresults shows that:(1) both of task conflict and relationship conflict have long-termeffects on team creativity and the process partial mediated by team potency, and (2)team collectivism can weaken the negative effect of relationship conflict on teampotency. Some limitations and future directions of conflict were discussed in the end.