Intragroup conflict and team performance: the revised 4ICS predicts team performance assessed by supervisors and team members

Abstract

Team-based work has become increasingly important in organizations and in education, yet the challenges to working successfully in teams are substantial. Prior research indicates that intragroup conflict in particular may increase or decrease team performance. The aim of the present study was to first explore the factor structure and psychometric properties of the revised version of the 4IC scale (4ICS-r), which is a measurement of intragroup conflict. Furthermore, to investigate the relationship between the intragroup conflict dimensions measured with 4ICS-r and team performance based on data collected from two different sources; the ratings from the team supervisor and the team members own assessments. An explorative factor analysis was conducted on a sample of 1269 team members. Four factors were identified to be in accordance with previous studies the 4ICS: emotional person conflict, cognitive task conflict, emotional task conflict, cognitive person conflict. The psychometric properties of the 4ICS-r were found to be satisfactory and comparable with previous findings. Based on team members assessment of team performance only two of the four conflict types measured with 4ICS-r was significant related to team performance; cognitive task conflict (positive) and emotional person conflict (negative). When supervisors rated their team on performance, the only conflict type significantly predicting top team performance was emotional task conflict. These findings suggest that the only factor that has a negative effect on team performance is emotional person conflict. Cognitive task conflict and emotional task conflict (both task conflicts) may in fact rather have a possible positive effect on team performance.