Group Conflict
Jefferson, Jenkins, Stehly & Walker
Empirical Project
MSM 510
Group Three
Jefferson, Jenkins, Stehly & Walker
Conflict is a part of daily life, especially in work groups, and conflict management is critical to ensure a leader or group is successful in their endeavors. Conflict means many things to many people; therefore our project focuses more on conflict in professional setting. As a group we evaluated four studies that evaluate conflict management style, emotion in conflict, conflict in teams and conflict and affect. Below you can review some of our findings.
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Group Conflict
Jefferson, Jenkins, Stehly & Walker
Conflict Management Style
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In general Conflict management style uses one of the following five techniques:
Integrating of which is a high concern for self and others, Obliging a low concern for self and high concerns for others, Dominating, a high concern for others, Avoiding, a low concern for self and for others, or Compromising, an intermediate concern for self and others.
A research study was conducted in 1993 by using comparisons of leaders in hierarchical
(Roman Catholic) verses Congregational (Southern Baptist) religious institutions. The purpose of this research was to access the leader’s conflict management style through measuring the degree of interpersonal conflict with church members. In the research the use of Leadership profile was used to measure leadership behavior by differentiating between transfer national and transactional leadership. Spiritual Gift Inventory was also another tool used in this research. The purpose of this method was to identify the leaders spiritual gifting.
The results from the research concluded that the Roman Catholic Church practices the hierarchical form of church government with supreme authority resting in the Pope. The congregational church, such as Southern Baptist Church practices government by the whole membership. The Roman Catholic model is organized in a way that the policies originate from the top and flow down to the congregation, while the Southern Baptist policy originates in each local congregation alone.
The purpose of this survey was to contribute to the scholarship of conflict management by expanding O’Connor’s research that explored the relationship Catholic Church and conflict management styles between churches with hierarchical (Roman Catholic) leadership models and

Group Conflict
Jefferson, Jenkins, Stehly & Walker congregational (Southern Baptist) leadership models while relating the leaders behavioral profiles to their conflict management styles.
Emotion’s Role in Group Conflict
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Emotion can also play a key role in group conflict processes. Research states that how members of a group handle emotion affects communications between them and has implications for task and relationship conflict. Jixia Yang And Kevin W. Mossholder show in their research by comparing previous studies, that there are three variables, collective emotional intelligence, intra group relational ties, and conflict-relevant interactional norms, force negative emotions and may decide whether task conflict results in damaging relationship conflict.
While recognizing other recent reviews pertaining to workplace emotional regulation issues, they used Arvey’s (1998) comprehensive model in selecting their moderation variables.
The model classifies workplace emotions into 3 categories: individual differences (e.g. predispositions to experience specific emotions), the stimulus environment (e.g., the physical or social context within which emotional responses occur), and social and organizational factors
(e.g., norms affecting how emotions are displayed). From this framework they identified a variable from each category with potential to reduce negative emotions within a group as a whole.
From the individual differences category, they selected a variable that has drawn much attention in regard to emotional control: emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence refers to capabilities that allow individuals to more effectively process conflict-related emotion. This has become of great interest in the capability of people to manage emotion during work place interactions. Collective or group emotional intelligence has been viewed as a group-level part of

Group Conflict
Jefferson, Jenkins, Stehly & Walker individual emotional intelligence (Druskat & Wolff, 2001). Although individual members may
4 vary in emotional intelligence, over time their interactions may promote qualities that classify the group as a whole (Ashkanasy & Daus, 2002). Collective emotional intelligence enables groups to devise creative solutions to disagreements and avoid escalating conflicts (George, 2002).
Greater levels of collective emotional intelligence will lower the correlation between task and relationship conflict in workgroups (Yang & Mossholder, 2004).
From the stimulus environment, Yang & Mossholder selected intra group relational ties, and in the absence of strong ties, members behavior is more likely governed my society norms that influence which emotions should be expressed, and determine the content, intensity, and meaning of the emotions conveyed (Rafaeli & Sutton, 1989). Where group members have strong ties, task conflicts are less likely to escalate into relationship conflicts. Strong ties allow individuals to obtain a shared knowledge of team objectives as well as information about members’ roles and interaction (Bartel & Saavedra, 2000). High trust is a feature of strong ties, which partly explains why they are effective in weakening and reducing task and relationship conflict (Brass,1995). Members could be expected to be less negative in addressing task conflicts, which would lessen the potential for relationship conflict. This suggests that the presence of strong ties in work groups will decrease the association between task and relationship conflict (Yang & Mossholder, 2004)
Finally from the social and organizational factors (Arvey, 1998), they selected norms for reducing or preventing negative emotionality. Norms represent expected behavior patterns within groups, implying group consensus. Even when norms exist, a minority of group members may actually deviate from them. This may actually make norms stronger (Hackman, 1992) because the attention that is focused on bringing those that deviate back into the norm reiterates to

Group Conflict
Jefferson, Jenkins, Stehly & Walker everyone that group norms are considered to be worth enforcing. An example of normalizing is
5 humor. Humor can cause amusement and helps maintain positive emotional conversations among group members. Observing the work of management teams, it was discovered that humor on the job was common in the teams experiencing low relationship conflict, and absent in teams marked by high relationship conflict. They also noted that humor may allow individuals to feel better about the group even though they are dissatisfied with certain members. (Eisenhardt,
1997). Appropriate norms for preventing and reducing negative emotionality will decrease the association between task and relationship conflict and workgroups (Yang & Mossholder, 2004).
The results of the study show that by looking at the comprehensive model, there are major implications that organizations should prepare employees to manage the dynamics of task conflict by providing training that supports the positive control of emotions. A two pronged approach could address both individual and group learning experiences. At the individual level it may be necessary to insure that employees have a foundation of emotional skills needed for group-level emotional functioning. At the group level, teaching groups more effective communication techniques could help members frame task disagreements as challenges to the whole group rather than to particular individuals.
Conflict in Teams
Studies have attempted to explain the effects that each conflict have on a team performance; the positive effects of task conflict and negative effects to relationship conflict, however, review has shown that both conflicts can be damaging to groups (Choi & Cho, 2011, p.
1106). It can be argued that task oriented conflict is better for team performance than with relationship conflict which has a negative connotation with team outcomes.

Group Conflict
Jefferson, Jenkins, Stehly & Walker
A study was conducted using a group of 388 undergraduate students, enrolled in eight
6 introductory organizational behavior classes, taught by the same instructor at a large university in the US, collecting information over four consecutive semesters. The students were assigned to a total of 74 groups and the groups consisted of four to seven members at the beginning of the semester and the original members stayed the same until the end of the semester over a 13 week term the members of each of the groups interacted with one another over project in which they had to spend a great amount of time with one another collaborating on the project. The research conducted was to measure the task and relationship conflict, the intra group trust, as well as negative group effects. The methods used to conduct the study were Gersick’s punctuated equilibrium model. This is a cross-lagged panel design, which is done in two waves, involving an identical survey procedure and instruments, since at different stages individuals will start to form opinions and exhibit behaviors based on interactions within their perspective groups.
Based on the several tests conducted from the data collected from the individuals in the group has shown that task and relationship conflict are closely related and that relationships conflict will flow into task conflict and it seems unlikely that task conflict will interfere with relationship conflict. From all the research it is safe to say that different methods will have to be used to conduct more studies because it seems that people look at the conflict and not much at the behavior to see where it is coming from.
A Closer Look at Perspective, Conflict and Affect
Valerie Sessa takes a closer look at conflict within organizations, more specifically conflict and affect, proposing these to be very separate concepts that have independent impacts to a team. This theory suggests that “conflict arises naturally in teams as a result of preexisting

Group Conflict
Jefferson, Jenkins, Stehly & Walker underlying conditions” these conditions being differences amongst the team members which
7 results in task or people oriented conflicts, which are said to have mixed impact to the team effectiveness, but overall a positive impact on team development (Sessa, 1996). Sessa’s theory states that “conflict is inevitable and underlies team effectiveness, we need to aim not at reducing conflict but at ensuring that the conflict and the corresponding affect are beneficial”.
In order to support and test her theory Sessa conducted a study of the various types of conflict and their influence and impact within a team, specifically focusing on the potential for perspective taking’s role in using conflict in a positive manner. The study looked at teams, of two or more individuals, who perform actions or functions that involve working together to make decisions or solve problems. The study breaks down task oriented and people oriented conflict, as well as affect, or the shared emotion of team members. The study also tests the use of perspective taking, understanding the whys and how’s of people’s reactions, feelings and behaviors to a situation, in relation to conflict and affect.
Three hypotheses were tested in the study--
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Arousal within the team is higher during a conflict episode than it is during a nonconflict episode.
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People-oriented conflict is associated with a more negative affective tone within the team than is a task-oriented conflict.
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Teams using perspective taking are more likely to perceive the conflict as a task oriented and less likely to perceive the conflict as people oriented than teams not using perspective taking. (Sessa, 1996)

Group Conflict
Jefferson, Jenkins, Stehly & Walker 8
The study was conducted using thirty nursing work teams, varying in size, from care hospitals in a large metro area, ninety-eight percent female, with average career tenure of 15.5 years and team tenure of 3.6 years, varied races and varied roles within the team/organization. The study procedure involved a case study in which each subject was required to read/answer questions about themselves as well as complete questionnaires which measured their perspective taking, and then randomly assigned one of two conditions, one group receiving a three hour perspective training session prior to starting their assigned decision making project (Sessa, 1996). As you can determine from the above summary each group is being staged in order to effectively test all three hypotheses, including hypothesis three, which is why the perspective training is necessary.
Each group was tasked with reviewing and coding videotapes for both areas of conflict and effect, with separate coding for conflict and a secondary set for affect. Hypothesis one was tested to determine the amount of conflict and its influence on arousal, observing and measuring arousal during times of conflict and non-conflict and the results support the theory that the amount of conflict impacts arousal. Hypothesis two was tested to demonstrate that people conflict results in a negative affect than task conflict. Finally hypothesis three was tested, with the results indicating the higher levels of perspective taking the greater perception of conflict as task oriented versus people oriented. The results of the study support the three hypotheses and reflect that conflict and negative affect are not always directly associated with one another, and it is people driven conflict that primarily results in negative affect and emotions. And finally the study shows that perspective taking can be a valuable asset to determine types of conflict and their effect on the team, and overall outcomes.

Group Conflict
Jefferson, Jenkins, Stehly & Walker
Conclusion
Conflict arises in all situations and is a complex concept. There are many attributes of
9 conflict management including personal management style, emotion, individual or team, perspective, cause and effect. When conducting our analysis of the studies reviewed we can see that in order to effectively manage conflict one must determine their style and approach, consider the emotions involved, evaluate the dynamics of the conflict as well as put things into perspective and determine the actual impact of the conflict in order to effectively manage the issue. Based on the studies we have come to the conclusion that team conflict has a more negative effect than task conflict, however, both can have adverse effects. Since the subject of conflict management is so broad it would be critical to conduct more research to actually discover all links and integration points of task and team conflicts as well as emotions and perspective in relation to conflict management. We encourage you to read further on this topic as it may help you when dealing with conflict within your teams.

Group Conflict
Jefferson, Jenkins, Stehly & Walker
References
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Bartel, C. A., & Saavedra, R. (2000). The collective construction of work group moods. Administrative
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Choi, K., & Cho, B. (2011). Competing hypotheses analyses of the associations between group task conflict and group relationship conflict. Journal of Organizational Behavior , 32 (8), 1106-1126.
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Sessa, Valerie I. (1996). Using perspective taking to manage conflict and affect in teams. The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 32, 1; pg. 101
Warren, K. (2005). Differences in Conflict Management Styles of Leaders in Hierarchical and
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