CHAPTER 15
Hypotheses Development
We developed our hypotheses to test the alternative viewpoint that affective conflict emerges in large part due to the extent of cognitive conflict which the team experiences. Unlike the majority of studies in team conflict, we do not propose any direct effects on affective conflict. Rather, we propose several factors that based on past research we expect to relate positively to cognitive conflict. In so doing, we expect that these factors will indirectly promote affective conflict, with the rationale that cognitive conflict sparks affective conflict. Finally, we hypothesize conditions under which teams might be able to avoid the mutation from cognitive to affective conflict. These hypotheses are offered for decision-making in a project team environment, but are also likely to apply to other team environments.
Team-Level Attributes and Cognitive Conflict
When exploring what effects the amount of cognitive and affective conflict experienced by the team, the nature of the team itself plays an important role (Amason and Sapienza 1997). Teams differ across many attributes (for example size, composition, and norms) and these differences can affect the way in which team members interact.
A major thrust of this research rests on theory explaining the role of diversity in teams. Team members that have different demographic backgrounds tend to have different belief structures (Wiersema and Bantel 1992), which can impact the way they prioritize and understand tasks (Waller, Huber and Glick 1995) and make decisions (Hambrick and Mason 1984). As Pelled (1999) and colleagues explained, “Increased diversity generally means there is a greater probability that individual exchanges will be dissimilar with others. Members are more likely to hear views that diverge from their own, so intra-group task conflict may become more pronounced.”
In this research, we explore three team attributes likely to impact the amount of cognitive conflict team members experience during decision making—team size, functional diversity, and team turnover. These attributes were selected because they relate to different types of diversity a team may experience, and are particularly relevant to the project team environment as project teams tend to vary greatly along these lines. Moreover, they represent work-related attributes of team members, which have been found to have a stronger, positive, impact on cognitive conflict than less work-related attributes such as age or gender (Pelled et al. 1999).
Team Size
Several researchers have argued that larger teams have greater cognitive diversity than smaller teams, which enables them to process greater amounts of more complex information than smaller teams (Bantel and Jackson 1989; Eisenhardt and Schoonhoven 1990). With more people, team members are more likely to come from different backgrounds and have different experiences and opinions than smaller teams (Bantel and Jackson 1989; Smith et al., 1994). In a study of 48 top management teams, Amason and Sapienza (1997) found that larger teams experienced greater cognitive conflict. We also expect this to be true of project teams. Thus, we propose:
H1: Team size will relate positively to the cognitive conflict experienced during decision making in project teams.
Functional Diversity
Functional diversity, which refers to the degree to which team members belong to and represent different functional areas (for example, engineering, finance, information systems) (Bunderson and Sutcliffe 2002), should also promote cognitive conflict because different functions experience different environments, contain different skill sets, and embody different goals and objectives (Mitroff 1982). Team members bring with them their own set of “local perspectives” (Astley et al. 1982: 361) that they derive from the division of labor in the organization. This internal differentiation is believed to result in greater cognitive conflict because team members will develop different perspectives about how to accomplish tasks (Lawrence and Lorsch 1967; Pelled et al. 1999). Project teams have been shown to greatly vary in the extent to which they are functionally diverse (Brown and Eisenhardt 1995), and we expect that this functional diversity will be a relevant factor that will improve the project team’s ability to critically question decisions and engage in cognitive conflict.
H2: Functional membership diversity will relate positively to the cognitive conflict experienced during decision making.
Team Member Turnover
Project teams, especially those of longer duration, expand and shrink in size as members rotate on and off the team (Brown and Eisenhardt 1995). When confronted with new issues, individuals tend to rely on past issue interpretations, particularly when the results of those experiences led to positive outcomes (Dutton 1993). If turnover is high, there will be diversity during the time each member has spent on the team. Newer team members will bring fresh ideas and perspectives based on experiences elsewhere; whereas, incumbent team members will tend to view issues from experiences on that particular team (George and Bettenhausen 1990). High team member turnover also results in greater cognitive conflict because with turnover, the team essentially changes shape, requiring team members to adjust the delegation of tasks, reallocate resources, and adjust processes (Goodman and Leyden 1991), all of which is likely to spur task-related debate. Thus, we propose:
H3: Turnover will relate positively to the cognitive conflict experienced during decision making.
These hypotheses related to team attributes are presented along with the other hypotheses in Figure 15-1.
Task Attributes and Cognitive Conflict
One way of viewing decision-making in project teams is as an information-processing activity. That is, project teams bring together persons from different disciplines and functional areas that have disparate expertise. This expertise allows team members access to a vast store of knowledge and information. During decision-making, information is exchanged, processed, and acted upon. In this context, conflict (dissent) provides information. That is, the expression of divergent opinions regarding the implication of facts or differing courses of action, provides a richer base of knowledge from which decision-making can proceed. As the decision context increases in terms of uncertainty and complexity, so too does the requisite amount and variety of information needed for decision-making. Thus, the attributes of the team’s project or task represent another group of determinants likely to impact the amount of conflict the team experiences (Cohen and Bailey 1997; Hackman 1990). Projects that have high uncertainty and thus high information processing demands, and those requiring high levels of coordination may make conflict more likely (Neale and Bazerman 1991).
Goal Uncertainty
One factor affecting whether tasks have greater information processing demands is the degree to which the goals of the project have been clarified. Goals direct the attention, effort, and persistence of team members (Locke and Latham 1990). When teams are given clear, detailed goals, less debate is necessary because teams are in more of a position of directing the group efforts towards implementing the goals prescribed. That is, clear goals help team members process issues and accomplish tasks more easily (Cohen and Bailey 1997), leaving less need for task-related discussions and debate. On the other hand, when goals are not clarified, researchers have found that responsibilities such as resource allocations and planning (Earley and Northcraft 1989), as well as strategy formulation (Mitchell and Silver, 1990; Weingart and Weldon 1991) become more difficult and in need of constructive debate. Since goal-setting is such an important part of a project team environment, we expect that the nature of the goals in project teams will affect the way that they experience cognitive conflict. Specifically, we expect that when goals are less certain, project teams will experience more cognitive conflict.
H4: Goal uncertainty will relate positively to the cognitive conflict experienced during decision making.
Task Interdependence
The other project factor relevant to conflict in project teams is task interdependence, or the degree to which team members must rely on each other to accomplish the collective team task (Georgopoulos 1986; Goodman 1986). Task interdependence has been found to affect the level of cooperation within a group (Shaw 1973), team productivity (Steiner 1972), team performance (Shea and Guzzo 1987), and the nature of the interpersonal interactions among members of the group (Gersick 1989; Kelley and McGrath 1988). As task interdependence increases, so too do the requirements for information sharing, coordination, and cooperation in order for the team to perform well (Galbraith 1973; Gladstein 1984; Saavedra, Earley, and Van Dyne 1993; Slocum and Sims 1980; Wageman 1995). Moreover, since the success of one team member’s tasks will have a direct impact on whether another team member can successfully complete his or her tasks, project team members should be motivated to share task-related concerns and discuss differing points of view (Green, McComb, and Compton 2000). Thus, we propose that task interdependence will be positively related to cognitive conflict:
H5: Task interdependence will relate positively to the cognitive conflict experienced during decision making.
Organizational Attributes and Conflict
The effect of the organizational context on team processes and performance has recently gained prominence as an important class of determinants to be studied along with team and task-level determinants. For example, researchers have found firm strategy (Amason and Mooney, 2000) and past performance (Amason and Mooney, 1999) to relate significantly to the conflict experienced by teams during decision making.
In this study, we will explore two organizational factors that are likely to impact a project team’s dynamics, including the cognitive conflict that teams experience: the extent to which an organization’s culture and reward structure is team-oriented.
Team-Oriented Culture
Researchers suggest that an organization’s culture is likely to influence the nature of the interactions among its members. An organization’s culture is a system of attitudes, beliefs, and behavioral norms shared by organizational members (Shein 1985). Particularly when an organization has been in existence for a while, a distinct culture tends to emerge and persist over time. As Denison explains, an organization’s culture “…refers to an evolved context (within which a situation may be embedded). Thus, it is rooted in history, collectively held, and sufficiently complex to resist many attempts at direct manipulation.” (1996, p. 644).
Although an organization’s culture is indeed complex, researchers have shown that specific cultural traits may be useful predictors of performance and effectiveness (for example, Denison and Mishra 1995; Gordon and DiTomaso 1992). One cultural trait is the degree to which the organization’s culture is team-oriented. A team-oriented culture is one in which the organizational values, beliefs, and behavioral norms support work performed in teams. Organizations that have a more team-oriented culture (with norms that support collective rather than individual work) should be more likely to inspire organizational members to work effectively in teams (Pinto, Pinto, and Prescott 1993). That is, team members will be less likely to passively accept poor or mediocre decisions, as it will ultimately lead to sub-optimal team performance. Rather, with a strong team culture, team members should feel freer to discuss issues and develop and debate diverse, task-related perspectives, especially because a team-based culture is likely to have mechanisms, such as training and tasks procedures that support such efforts. Thus, we expect that project teams operating in more team-based cultures will experience greater cognitive conflict.
H6: A team-oriented culture will relate positively to the cognitive conflict experienced during decision making.
Team-Based Rewards
In recent years, team members tend to be at least in part rewarded based on the performance of the project teams in which they work (Brown and Eisenhardt, 1995). The more they contribute to positive project outcomes, the greater they are acknowledged (for example, through promotions, raises, bonuses, etc.). Linking rewards to performance is another organizational factor relevant to the study of conflict because team-based rewards are likely to encourage more careful debate about the tasks to be performed. Consistent with expectancy theory, individuals should be more motivated to work well in their teams if they expect to be rewarded according to their performance in the team (Nadler and Lawler 1977; Porter and Lawler 1968). Since team rewards provide incentive to maximize collective performance, team members should be more inclined to evaluate team decisions by critically questioning team members’ perspectives and offering alternative courses of action to the decisions at hand.
Although the empirical results are somewhat mixed (Cohen and Bailey 1997), researchers have linked team-based rewards to team performance. For example, Harrison, Price, Gavin, and Florey (2002) found that team reward contingencies stimulated collaborative behavior, and Cohen, Ledford, and Sprietzer (1996) found that recognition by management related positively to team performance. These findings are consistent with the cooperation theory (Tjosvold 1991), which predicts that team-based rewards should motivate team members to work together to effectively synthesize their individual perspectives into a solution that is superior to what any individual team member put forth. In short, we expect that team-based rewards and team-oriented organizational culture will promote cognitive conflict in project teams.
H7: Team-based rewards will relate positively to the cognitive conflict experienced during decision making.
The Spiraling Effect of Cognitive Conflict
If cognitive conflict leads to desirable team outcomes and affective conflict leads to undesirable team outcomes (Amason 1996), then the prescription for teams is to gain the benefits of cognitive conflict while avoiding the costs of affective conflict. However, as discussed previously, this is difficult to do (Amason and Sapienza 1997). As evidence of this, researchers have found that teams that report high levels of cognitive conflict also report high levels of affective conflict (Amason, 1996; Amason and Sapienza 1997; Jehn 1997; O’Reilly, Williams, and Barsade 1998; Simons and Peterson 2000).
The reason given for this strong association between cognitive conflict and affective conflict is that factors which stimulate cognitive conflict at the same time stimulate affective conflict (and vice-versa). For example, a team’s openness to disagreement has been found to encourage both forms of conflict (Amason and Sapienza 1997; Jehn 1995), while factors, such as value fit, value consensus (Jehn 1994), and mutuality (Amason and Sapienza 1997) have been found to discourage both cognitive and affective conflict.
Another reason for the strong association between cognitive and affective conflict is that what starts as cognitive conflict can spiral into affective conflict when cognitive conflict becomes emotional and is taken personally (Amason and Sapienza 1997; Simons and Peterson 1997). As Simons and Peterson (2000, p. 103) describe, “Relationship [affective] conflict, the perception of personal animosities and incompatibility, may be described as the shadow of task conflict.” Indeed, group members can interpret fellow team members’ task-related perspectives as personal attacks (Jehn 1997) or hidden agendas (Amason and Sapienza 1997; Eisenhardt and Bourgeois 1988), which in turn, stimulates affective conflict.
This means that the team, project, and organizational factors discussed previously may indirectly relate to affective conflict by influencing the level of cognitive conflict experienced by the team. Specifically, we expect that by encouraging cognitive conflict, team, project, and organizational factors will also encourage affective conflict because team members tend to take cognitive conflict personally.
Put simply (and as illustrated in Figure 15-1), we expect that cognitive conflict will mediate the relationship that affective conflict has with team, project, and organizational factors:
H8: Cognitive conflict will mediate the relationship between team attributes (size, functional diversity, turnover) and the affective conflict experienced during decision making.
H9: Cognitive conflict will mediate the relationship between project attributes (goal clarity and task interdependence) and the affective conflict experienced during decision making.
H10: Cognitive conflict will mediate the relationship between organizational attributes (team-oriented culture, team-based rewards) and the affective conflict experienced during decision making.