Preoccupation or Internalization? Pruning Perspectives on Decoupling Conflict Through Temporal and Social Dynamics

A lack of consensus among scholars regarding the nature and directionality of conflict coupling sets the stage for inefficiencies in organizational interventions. We assert this dilemma can be attributed to insufficient attention to temporal and social dynamics in existing theoretical and empirical work on the emergence of conflict perceptions. We address these key issues by integrating theories of conflict with theories of team development to generate a temporally precise theory of conflict coupling. We also examine the role of social hierarchy in decoupling conflict. Finally, we synthesize dynamic theory to develop a parsimonious conceptual framework with a complementary statistical framework to enable greater volumes of dynamic conflict research than the field has hitherto experienced. Our efforts answer calls to prune the theoretical landscape regarding this central relationship and provide tools to stimulate research on dynamic conflict in work teams.