Conflict in Organizations: Beyond Effectiveness and Performance

A Special Issue of the European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology

Fred Zijlstra

• Publisher: Psychology Press
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000149937
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Careers

Conflict theory and research has traditionally focused on conflict management strategies, in relation to individual and work team effectiveness and productivity. Far less attention has been devoted to 'soft' outcomes including job satisfaction, organizational commitment, turnover intentions, and individual health and wellbeing. This state of affairs is unfortunate because it isolates conflict theory and research from broader issues in organizational sciences and practice. The individual contributions to this volume each in their own way deal with one of these issues in more depth, shedding light on how conflict theory and research can be connected to organizational psychology in general.

Intergroup conflict and intergroup effectiveness in organizations: Theory and scale development

Andreas W. Richter, Judy Scully, and Michael A. West

Aston Business School, Aston University, Birmingham, UK

Many see the absence of conflict between groups as indicative of effective intergroup relations. Others consider its management a suitable effectiveness criterion. In this article we demarcate a different approach and propose that these views are deficient in describing effective intergroup relations. The article theorizes alternative criteria of intergroup effectiveness rooted in team representatives’ subjective value judgements and assesses the psychometric characteristics of a short measure based on these criteria. Results on empirical validity suggest the measure to be a potential alternative outcome of organizational conflict. Implications for both the study of intergroup relations and conflict theory are discussed.

With increasing complexity and environmental demands, organizations specialize and diversify their workforce, adopting team-based structures, in order to bundle and focus efforts to most efficiently handle their subtasks (Lawrence & Lorsch, 1967b; McCann & Galbraith, 1981). The completion of subtasks is, however, only useful when organizations manage to coordinate and integrate these “parts” into a “whole”. Utilizing these combined resources can be a challenge for team-based organizations, due to structural and psychological barriers between groups that hinder effective intergroup relations (Lawrence & Lorsch, 1967b; Van Knippenberg, 2003; see also Alderfer, 1986): Groups pursue their own interests at the expense of the overall organizational goal (Tjosvold, 1991); they compete over scarce resources (Mohrmann, Cohen, & Mohrmann, 1995); and fail to manage the disruptive dynamics of social categorization (Terry & Callan, 1998). Dutton and Walton (1966) describe how manufacturing units’ preference for long, economic runs conflicts with sales units’ preference for quick delivery to good customers. Such conflicts of interest are frequently fostered by management rewarding group effectiveness at the expense of the development and maintenance of effective lateral relationships (see Hartley, 1996). But is there a difference between conflict-free and effective intergroup relations, and if so, how is organizational conflict related to intergroup effectiveness?

To answer this question we need a measure other than intergroup conflict to assess the quality and effectiveness of how dyads or sets of groups perform their collaborative tasks. In order to develop such a measure, we first need to clarify what exactly characterizes well-developed, effective relationships between groups.

In the following section we review existing approaches to intergroup effectiveness. We conclude this review by proposing four criteria that characterize the effectiveness of lateral relationships. These criteria are based on team representatives’ value judgements and represent potential alternative outcomes of organizational conflict. In the remainder of the article we examine the psychometric properties of a scale measuring these criteria.

WHAT IS INTERGROUP EFFECTIVENESS?

Existing conceptualizations of effective intergroup relations

Defining key concepts. Our search for intergroup effectiveness criteria was guided by our definitions of group, intergroup relations, intergroup transactions, and intergroup effectiveness. We define an organizational group as a set of individuals who perceive themselves and whom nonmembers perceive as constituting an identifiable social aggregate within the organization (Brett & Rognes, 1986). The terms team and group are used interchangeably, for the academic literature prefers the term group, but groups in organizations are frequently referred to as teams. We define intergroup relations as activities that occur between and/or among groups (Alderfer, 1986, p. 190). An intergroup transaction occurs “whenever individuals belonging to one group interact collectively or individually with another group or its members in terms of their group identifications” (Sherif, 1966, p. 9). Thus, intergroup transactions may occur between group representatives who represent their groups’ interests, not their own, on behalf of their group. Intergroup effectiveness is then the product of an intergroup transaction and consequently a concept that needs to be conceptually allocated at the intergroup level.

We will revert to two separate lines of literature deemed most fruitful in our search for candidates of effective intergroup relations: As intergroup effectiveness represents a layer of organizational effectiveness, we refer to the organizational effectiveness literature. Secondly, we review this body of the organizational intergroup relations literature that is most concerned with the exchange and output of dyads or sets of groups, the dispute resolution literature.

The organizational effectiveness literature. The empirical and theoretical literature on organizational effectiveness generally distinguishes three levels: Individual, group, and organizational effectiveness (Jones, 1997). The classical models of group effectiveness subsume groups’ relationships with other groups within the “input” or “context” category that impact on group processes and group effectiveness (e.g., Hackman, 1987). These models are therefore not suitable for capturing how interdependent groups operate as a functional synergistic entity, as a larger work unit (Mathieu, Marks, & Zaccaro, 2001). Others, mostly adopting an open system perspective, rather stress groups’ active role in shaping and managing their environment, thereby more actively integrating group members’ external strategies and boundary management into their models of group effectiveness (e.g., Gladstein, 1984). However, these models do not actually explicate how dyads or sets of groups co- and interact in pursuit of common goals either. Conceptually, as with other group effectiveness models, single group effectiveness is the only outcome variable.

Mathieu and colleagues (Mathieu et al., 2001) present a theoretical framework of Multi Team Systems (MTSs) that d...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Conflict in organizations: Beyond effectiveness and performance
• Responding to conflict at work and individual well-being: The mediating role of flight behaviour and feelings of helplessness
• Conflict stress and reduced well-being at work: The buffering effect of third-party help
• A contingency perspective on the study of the consequences of conflict types: The role of organizational culture
• Intergroup conflict and intergroup effectiveness in organizations: Theory and scale development
• Call for Papers