The Paradox of Team Conflict Revisited: An Updated Meta-Analysis of The Team Conflict–team Performance Relationships

Authors:

Abstract: The possibility that team conflict, especially task conflict, might improve team performance has stimulated a large body of empirical research that continues to grow to this day. Accordingly, we provide an updated meta-analysis of the team conflict–team performance relationships. Moreover, to shed light on the contextual factors that may help explain effect size heterogeneity across situations, we examine a host of moderators pertaining to culture, team context, team conflict, and study design. Our results indicate that all four team conflict dimensions (i.e., task conflict, relationship conflict, process conflict, and status conflict) are negatively related to team performance. For task and relationship conflict, their relationships with team performance have substantial cross-situation heterogeneity. Of note, the four groups of moderators all play important roles in helping explain the mixed effects of team conflict on team performance. Overall, our quantitative synthesis has important implications for the next waves of team conflict research.

Track: TEAM

Keywords: task conflict, relationship conflict, process conflict, status conflict, meta-analysis