Will Team Task Conflict Lead To Team Relationship Conflict?

Every culture has its own characteristics,which are manifested not only in daily life,but also at work.Based on the cultural dimension's theory,the aim of this paper is to get a deeper understanding of cultural differences between China and Russia.The results obtained in this work give a more profound knowledge of Hofstede's Hypothesis and superior comprehension of the social contrasts between these two countries.This study investigates the Power Distance,Collectivism,Masculinity and Uncertainty Avoidance in respect of the cultural values between Russia and China in detail.Moreover,the impact of the cultural differences on the relationship between the Team Task Conflict and the Team Relationship Conflict is statistically analyzed for 86 Russian and 79 Chinese work teams.The findings show a relationship between the Team Task Conflict and the Team Relationship Conflict is positive and statistically significant for China(?=0.615,p<0.001)and for Russia(?=0.856,p<0.001).This indicates that the Relationship Conflict of Russia is higher and stronger compared to China.The results also suggest that cultural dimension could have an impact on the relationship between the Team Task Conflict and the Team Relationship Conflict.Furthermore,the results indicate that the Power Distance might have a moderating effect on the Team Task Conflict and the Team Relationship Conflict and yield different results for both countries.Furthermore,the results show that the moderating effect of Russia and China are statistically significant(?=-0.395,p<0.05).Also,the study indicates that regardless from which nation the work teams are,their Team Task Conflict will have a unsimilar effect onto the Team Relationship Conflict.As a practical implication of these results,Russian managers should understand that with the low level of Power Distance they can decrease the amount of intragroup conflict.Chinese levels of Power Distance indicate better results compared to Russian,though their level is not so low.Therefore,in the case of Relationship Conflict,direct,immediate intervention is needed by management to prevent the problem from further decreasing employee productivity.Chinese levels of the Team Conflicts show which result in considerably less stress between employees and can be easier to manage.