Variant Conflict Management: Conceptualizing and Investigating Team Conflict Management as a Configural Construct
type: CreativeWork
description: The key purpose of this dissertation was to empirically test a new conceptual model of team conflict management (Tan, 2011). Central to this model is a configural team-level construct called variant conflict management (VCM), which refers to the relative levels of cooperative and competitive conflict management among members in a team. This model also identifies three key antecedent categories likely to predict VCM in teams: salient conflict-relevant member characteristics, team contextual determinants, and divergent team dynamics. Three archetypal profiles of VCM, i.e., distinct distributional patterns in members' conflict management approaches, are also proposed: minimum, moderate and maximum VCM profiles. These three profiles are further organized into five sub-types: minimum cooperative, minimum competitive, moderate cooperative, moderate competitive, and maximum VCM profiles. Specifically, this study sought to assess whether the proposed VCM profiles are present in 79 student project teams. It also compared the effects of VCM (based on teams' standard deviation scores) and of mean team conflict management (based on teams' means scores) on three team outcomes: team conflict efficacy, members' satisfaction with their teams' conflict management process, and team effectiveness. This study also investigated the relative effects of the proposed VCM profiles on each of the three team outcomes. Three indicators representing each of the antecedent categories, i.e., gender role diversity, team goal interdependence, and subgroup formation, were also examined as potential predictors of VCM. Using qualitative content coding analyses, it was revealed that all five VCM profiles proposed in the model, i.e., minimum cooperative, minimum competitive, moderate cooperative, moderate competitive, and maximum VCM profiles, were indeed evident in the teams sampled. Three additional profiles described as `distributed,' `multiple clusters' and `midpoint cluster' were also uncovered in …
abstract: The key purpose of this dissertation was to empirically test a new conceptual model of team conflict management (Tan, 2011). Central to this model is a configural team-level construct called variant conflict management (VCM), which refers to the relative levels of cooperative and competitive conflict management among members in a team. This model also identifies three key antecedent categories likely to predict VCM in teams: salient conflict-relevant member characteristics, team contextual determinants, and divergent team dynamics. Three archetypal profiles of VCM, i.e., distinct distributional patterns in members' conflict management approaches, are also proposed: minimum, moderate and maximum VCM profiles. These three profiles are further organized into five sub-types: minimum cooperative, minimum competitive, moderate cooperative, moderate competitive, and maximum VCM profiles. Specifically, this study sought to assess whether the proposed VCM profiles are present in 79 student project teams. It also compared the effects of VCM (based on teams' standard deviation scores) and of mean team conflict management (based on teams' means scores) on three team outcomes: team conflict efficacy, members' satisfaction with their teams' conflict management process, and team effectiveness. This study also investigated the relative effects of the proposed VCM profiles on each of the three team outcomes. Three indicators representing each of the antecedent categories, i.e., gender role diversity, team goal interdependence, and subgroup formation, were also examined as potential predictors of VCM. Using qualitative content coding analyses, it was revealed that all five VCM profiles proposed in the model, i.e., minimum cooperative, minimum competitive, moderate cooperative, moderate competitive, and maximum VCM profiles, were indeed evident in the teams sampled. Three additional profiles described as `distributed,' `multiple clusters' and `midpoint cluster' were also uncovered in …
author: Tan, Yunzi
language: English
keywords: Organizational behavior, Psychology, Industrial, Social psychology
date published: 2013
date modified: 2026-07-24T01:44:27Z
provider: Columbia University
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: Columbia University

PropertyValue
property ID: DOI
value: 10.7916/D8RB7BTV