A Qualitative Analysis of Conflict Types : An Intragroup Conflict

This paper provides the results of an empirical study of empirical research on of the conflict within teams. The ability to face the conflict and to resolve problems efficiently is the most important factor for the success or failure of a group. Conflict is a powerful instrument of organizational change which, if managed in an opportune way, leads to the an evolution of a working group. We conducted an experiment with 147 students in 28 working groups from the Department of Management, University of Molise, Italy. In this study we analyzed the existing correlations between the level of conflict within the group and the characteristics of the team structure in terms of: friendship of the members (1st dependent variable); level of trust in the group (2nd dependent variable); diversity (3rd dependent variable). We examined the links between diversity and conflict and how different kinds of diversity influenced group conflict. We looked at two aspects of demographic diversity, age and gender and at two aspects of background diversity, educational level and work experience. The paper is presented as follows: first we analyzed the foundations of conflict within the group, our model and hypothesis. Second we develop our hypothesis. Third we describe the methodological and qualitative approach, empirical model and econometric methods as statistical analyses. Following this, we present our results and finally we draw the principal conclusions implications and limitations of our research