Explaining Team Performance Through Conflict Patterns Over Time

This study aims to analyze the development patterns of intragroup conflict over time (task conflict, relationship conflict and process conflict) and to investigate whether these different patterns influence team overall performance. It was expected that high performance team have, over time, a distinct pattern of intragroup conflict from average and low performance teams. The participants of this study consisted of 101 teams who participated in a management competition for five weeks. The participants answered two different surveys during the competition. Results revealed that with regard to relationship conflict and process conflict, high performance teams were significantly different from low performance teams. For task conflict, there were no significant differences between teams. Moreover, ANOVA with repeated measures revealed the existence of a stable pattern of intragroup conflict over time, regardless teams’ final performance. In our view, these results suggest the importance that the first moments of interaction have to team overall performance. Planning activities to guide team accomplishment and planning the way team will work together seem to be crucial to future successful performance of team work