Conflict Is Good

Table 2 around presents descriptive statistics and correlations among the variables evaluated in this study.

Table 2. Means, standard deviations and correlations.

The correlation between the two types of conflict is positive and significant. The high correlation between relationship and task conflict is well documented in the literature. In their meta-analysis, De Dreu and Weingart reported a mean corrected correlation of 0.54 between the two types of conflict. Both types of conflict have a negative and significant correlation with teamwork quality, the highest being for relationship conflict (−0.57). Both task and relations oriented leadership styles also have a positive and significant correlation with group processes, with relations oriented leadership having by far the strongest positive association with group processes. However, this pattern of results changes when the covariance between the two leadership styles is accounted for.

In order to test the hypotheses, a hierarchical regression (OLS) with group processes as dependent variable was performed. Group size was not entered in the regression equation due to the small correlations with the other variables considered in the study (see Table 2). The two types of conflict (task and relationship related) were entered in the first step of the regression analysis, the two leadership styles (relations oriented and task oriented) were entered in the second step and the cross product terms were entered in the last step of the regression. In order to minimize multicolinearity the cross product was based on the centered values of the variables (task, relationship and process conflict as well as relations and task oriented leadership styles). The variance inflation factors (VIF scores) were all below 1.87 and therefore multicolinearity was not a serious problem in the analyses. The results of the regression analyses are summarized in Table 3.

Table 3. Regression analysis of teamwork quality by type of intra-group conflict and leadership styles.

Legend: Standardized regression coefficients are reported for the respective regression steps, N = 37, *p < 0.10, **p < 0.05, ***p < 0.01.

As shown in model 1, although both relationship and task conflict have a negative impact on teamwork quality, only the effect of relationship conflict is significant, therefore Hypothesis 1 is partially supported. Further, as shown in model 2, when the two leadership styles are added to the regression equation, the impact of the intra-group conflict on teamwork quality decreases, indicating an interaction between intra-group conflict and leadership styles. The direct effect of relations oriented leadership style on teamwork quality is positive and significant, while the impact of task oriented leadership style is negative and marginally significant. These results fully support Hypothesis 2. When the cross product terms are added to the regression equation in model 3, the impact of task oriented leadership also becomes significant, but negative. It can be concluded that task oriented leadership has a negative impact on group processes. Concerning the standardized beta coefficients for the cross product terms, only the interaction between relations oriented leadership with both task and relationship conflict is significant. In order to be able to check whether the moderation hypothesis is supported we plotted the regression slopes for this particular interaction (see Figure 1 and Figure 2). Based on the visual inspection of the slopes, it can be concluded that indeed, high relations oriented leadership attenuates the negative impact of relationship conflict on group processes. The interaction between task conflict and relations oriented leadership is different. For groups with leaders scoring high on relational orientation, the relationship between task conflict and teamwork quality is negative, while for groups with leaders scoring low on relational orientation the association between task conflict and teamwork quality is positive.