The relationship between conflict and emotions on workgroups/teams

Abstract

With the present article we intend to clarify if the type of conflict present in work teams has significant impact on teams’ affective outcomes (positive and negative emotions). Moreover, we aim to test the hypothesis that the link between task conflict and team emotions is mediated by socio-affective conflict. Data was collected from 60 teams/groups of several different functions and organizational contexts, from industry, services and sports. The Intragroup Conflict Assessment Scale (EACI; Dimas, Lourenço & Miguez, 2005) was used to evaluate the kind of conflict emerging in the team/group; emotions were assessed using the Portuguese Job Related affective well-Being Scale (PJAWS; Ramalho, Monteiro, Lourenço & Figueiredo, 2008).We found that socio-affective conflict has a significantly higher connection with negative emotions than task conflict and that socio-affective conflict mediates the positive relationship between task and negative emotions as well as the negative relationship between task conflict and positive emotions.