Conflict in the workplace can have positive consequences by spurring team members to examine other perspectives and information in order to reach a consensus. But conflict comes in different forms and not all of them are beneficial. Jing Zhu of HKUST and her co-authors examine the interaction between task conflict and relationship conflict and show how these can affect team performance and worker satisfaction.

Task conflict arises from differences in opinions, ideas and viewpoints among team members over task content, while relationship conflict comes from tensions and incompatibilities over such matters as beliefs, values, habits and personalities. The inclusion of relationship conflict is particularly important here because of its potential to color team members' abilities to handle their tasks.

"Our research is based on two key issues that have not been considered in the attempt to understand task and relationship conflict. First is how relationship conflict alters the attentional resources available to process information associated with critical debates of differing perspectives, considerations of alternative views, and the vetting of possible courses of action."

"And second is how relationship conflict alters the attributions that team members make about other team members' behavior in situations fraught with task conflict," they say.

The authors suggest relationship conflict can explain some of the discrepancies found in research focused solely on task conflict. On its own and in moderate amounts, task conflict has been shown to energize teams and make them more productive, but these same benefits do not occur with low and high levels of task conflict. In addition, the link between task conflict and team-member satisfaction has been unclear.

In these cases, it could be that relationship conflict is distracting team members from their tasks and erasing any advantages associated with moderate levels of task conflict.

To test this theory, the authors conducted two studies, one in Taiwan, the other in Indonesia, involving more than 200 work teams and their supervisors in 25 organizations. Participants were asked about the relationship conflict within their team, conflicts over the task and their satisfaction with their team, and the supervisors rated team performance.

The impact of relationship conflict on task performance was clear in both places: moderate levels of task conflict were associated with a higher team performance when the relationship conflict was low, but not when it was high.

"The teams in our samples included professions such as chemists, engineers and accountants who have high standards for performance and for whom errors are very costly. Team members who have high relationship conflict and interpersonal tensions are more likely to bicker so intensely that the slightest task conflict is associated with declines in performance," the authors say.

The results were more clear-cut on team member satisfaction. Relationship conflict exacerbated the negative effect of task conflict on team member satisfaction.

Taken together, teams reporting moderate task conflict and low relationship conflict performed well, but their team members were not highly satisfied. Those with low task and relationship conflicts were relatively satisfied but did not perform at the highest levels.

The authors say their findings suggest managers should foster respectful attitudes, provide guidelines for recognizing destructive conflict spirals, and learn to distinguish between constructive and destructive conflict in conflict-management training. This will help team leaders and managers to realize higher performance and team satisfaction benefits.