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There is mounting evidence that effective top management teams engage in cognitive conflict but limit affective conflict. Cognitive conflict is task-oriented disagreement arising from differences in perspective. Affective conflict is individual-oriented disagreement arising from personal disaffection. This study of 48 TMTs found that team size and openness were positively related to cognitive conflict. While team size was also associated with greater affective conflict, when teams had high levels of mutuality, greater openness led to less affective conflict. The findings have implications for improving strategic decision making through the use of conflict.

Research has sought to explain the multi-dimensionality of conflict and its paradoxical effects on decision making (Amason, 1996; DeDreu and Weingart, 2003; Jehn, 1995). The primary prescription to emerge from this work has been for teams to seek the benefits of cognitive (task) conflict while simultaneously avoiding the costs of affective (emotional) conflict. The problem is that these two types of conflict often occur together and researchers have offered few explanations as to why this happens or guidance as to how it can be avoided. In this paper, we provide empirical evidence that cognitive conflict can contribute to affective conflict. As a result, by encouraging cognitive conflict, teams may inadvertently provoke affective conflict. We provide evidence that behavioural integration can mitigate this tendency. Copyright Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2007.

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