The link between task and relationship conflict is also affected by team members’ self-regulation tactics when they are confronted with conflicts. Team members can either follow a cooperative, competitive or avoiding approach.
Team members that follow a cooperative approach believe that their goals are positively linked. This approach promotes mutual goals and resolves the conflict for mutual benefit. Controversy, team members following a competitive approach believe that goals are negatively related and promote their goals at the expense of others. Avoiding is another conflict management approach, that attempts to smooth over conflicts and minimize discussion of them whereas openness encourages direct discussion. …show more content…
Behavioural integration is a concept developed by Hambrick
(1994) and refers to the extent to which team members engage in mutual and collective interaction. Such interaction ‘has three elements: (1) quantity and quality of information exchange, (2) collabourative behaviour, and (3) joint decision making’ (Hambrick, 1994, p.
189). A behaviourally integrated team is a team that actually works as a unit – the members share information and resources, work collabouratively on projects and tasks, and make decisions together. In essence, they exhibit a high degree of teamness (Ham- brick, 1998). A team with little behavioural integration is one where the members work independently – they share little information and resources, do not consult each other on tasks, and make more autonomous decisions.
We expect that in teams with high behavioural integration, cognitive conflict is less likely to trigger affective conflict. Research on behavioural integration by Hambrick
(1998) and Siegel and Hambrick (1996) demonstrates that integrated teams make better decisions. One reason for this may be that integrated teams are better able to …show more content…
Depending on whether the individuals’ effort to cope with stressful events focuses on the stressor itself or on the emotional stress caused by the stressor, two different coping strategies are used; labelled as problem-focused and emotion-focused strategies. Collective coping strategy refers to the extent to which team members use problem-focused or emotion focused coping strategies. Richmond and Skitmore (2006) identified intragroup conflict as an occupational stressor and found that IT managers used problem-focused coping strategies such as communication. This type of coping strategy is often used to cope with occupational stress (Folkman & Lazarus, 1980). However, for dealing with relationship conflicts, which are occupational stressors that involve interpersonal issues, emotion-focused coping strategies rather than problem-focused coping strategies are expected to be more effective. Therefore, it is critical to distinguish those types of conflict and view them as two different