IACM 2024 Abstract Book »
Organizational culture, leadership and employees' relational and task conflicts
Abstract: Team conflict, particularly relational rather than task-focused, impairs morale and work outcomes. Organizational culture and supervisor leadership are widely cultivated systems, but their contributions to employees' conflicts are understudied. In two surveys (Study1: N = 171, time lagged; Study 2: N = 163, partially time-lagged), passive leadership consistently correlated with more relational conflict, while transformational leadership correlated with less (study 1), or more (study 2) task conflict. The third survey (N = 300; cross-sectional) extended the former by demonstrating leadership's mediation of organizational culture effects. Clan-like, agile cultures (compared to competitive, hierarchical cultures) associated with higher transformational and lower passive leadership. In turn, transformational leadership associated with less relational conflict, while passive leadership associated with more conflict of both types. The studies provide new knowledge, but call for replications and extensions with more sophisticated research methods. Their presentation can hopefully foster more work.
Keywords: Team relational and task conflict, organizational culture, leadership styles