Intragroup Conflict and Conflict Management Approaches as Determinants of Team Performance and Satisfaction: Two Field Studies

The effects of intragroup conflict and conflict management on team outcomes were analyzed in two empirical studies with a multilevel approach. In the first study, 68 production teams from eight industrial companies were surveyed. In the second study, we analyzed 77 workgroups from 14 companies. Hierarchical regression analysis was computed to test the hypotheses at the team level, and hierarchical linear modeling was conducted to test the hypotheses at the individual level. The results revealed a negative impact of task conflict on team effectiveness and a positive effect of integrating. No moderator effects were found. Our results, being similar in both studies, come out against the importance of the type of task on the relationship between conflict and team outcomes. Furthermore, our findings suggest that reducing intragroup conflict and providing team members with the abilities to manage conflict cooperatively is a way to increase group performance and team members' satisfaction.