Conflict Management,Team Coordination,and Performance Within Multicultural Temporary Projects: Evidence From the Construction Industry

Abstract

The purpose of our study is to enhance the understanding of relationships between conflict management style, team coordination, and performance in multicultural project team contexts. We investigate how conflict management can contribute to team effectiveness through the mediation of the level of team coordination by collecting data from 126 team leaders and supervisors and 378 members nested in different multicultural projects in the construction industry. Our results show that, contrary to the findings from prior research in other team contexts, an avoiding style of conflict management can have a positive impact on the performance of multicultural project teams.

Keywords

conflict management style construction projects team coordination Malaysia team performance temporary project organizations

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Ayoko

O. B.

(2016). Workplace conflict and willingness to cooperate: The importance of apology and forgiveness. International Journal of Conflict Management, 27(2), 172–198.

Banks

G. C.

Pollack

J. M.

Seers

(2016). Team coordination and organizational routines: Bottoms up—and top down. Management Decision, 54(5), 1059–1072.

Baron

R. A.

(1988). Attributions and organizational conflict: The mediating role of apparent sincerity. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 69, 272–279.

Blake

R. R.

Mouton

J. S.

(1964). The managerial grid. Houston, TX: Gulf Publishing.

Chen

A. S.

Hou

Y.-h.

I.-h.

(2016). Handling conflict at work—The impact of active and agreeable conflict styles. International Journal of Conflict Management, 27(1), 50–61.

Chen

Tjosvold

(2002). Conflict management and team effectiveness in China: The mediating role of justice. Asia Pacific Journal of Management, 19(4), 557–572.

Chen

S.-Y.

Uen

J. F.

Chen

C.-C.

(2016a). Implementing high performance HR practices in Asia: HR practice consistency, employee roles, and performance. Asia Pacific Journal of Management, 33(4), 937–958.

Chen

Y. Q.

Zhang

Y. B.

Zhang

S. J.

(2014). Impacts of different types of owner-contractor conflict on cost performance in construction projects. Journal of Construction Engineering and Management, 140(6), 04014017.

Cheung

C. C.

Chuah

K. B.

(1999). Conflict management styles in Hong Kong industries. International Journal of Project Management, 17(6), 393–399.

10.

Chin

W. W.

(1998). Issues and opinion on structural equation modelling. MIS Quarterly, 22(1), vii–xvi.

11.

Chin

W. W.

(2010). How to write up and report PLS analyses. In Vinzi

V. E.

Chin

W. W.

Henseler

Wang

(Eds.), Handbook of partial least squares: Concepts, methods and application (pp. 645–689). New York, NY: Springer.

12.

Chiocchio

Forgues

Paradis

Iordanova

(2011). Teamwork in integrated design projects: Understanding the effects of trust, conflict, and collaboration on performance. Project Management Journal, 42(6), 78–91.

13.

Coetzer

G. H.

Trimble

(2010). An empirical examination of the relationship between adult attention deficit, cooperative conflict management and efficacy for working in teams. American Journal of Business, 25(1), 25–34.

14.

De Dreu

C. K. W.

(2007). Cooperative outcome interdependence, task reflexivity, and team effectiveness: A motivated information processing perspective. Journal of Applied Psychology, 92(3), 628–638.

15.

De Dreu

C. K. W.

Gelfand

M. J.

(2008). The psychology of conflict and conflict management in organizations. New York, NY: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

16.

Department of Statistics Malaysia. (2018). Retrieved from https://www.dosm.gov.my/v1/

17.

Deutsch

(1990). Sixty years of conflict. International Journal of Conflict Management, 1(3), 237–263.

18.

Efron

Tibshirani

R. J.

(1993). An introduction to the bootstrap (Monographs on statistics and applied probability, #57). New York, NY: Chapman & Hall.

19.

Fehr

Gachter

(2000). Cooperation and punishment in public goods experiments. The American Economic Review, 90(4), 980–994.

20.

Fisher

Ury

Patton

(2011). Getting to yes: Negotiation agreement without giving in. New York, NY: Penguin Group.

21.

Fisher

R. J.

(1990). The social psychology of intergroup and international conflict resolution. New York, NY: Springer-Verlag.

22.

Fornell

Larcker

D. F.

(1981). Evaluating structural equation models with unobserved variables and measurement error. Journal of Marketing Research, 18, 39–50.

23.

Gefen

Straub

D. W.

Boudreau

M.-C.

(2000). Structural equation modeling and regression: Guidelines for research practice. Communications of the Association for Information Systems, 4, 1–79.

24.

Gobeli

D. H.

Koenig

H. F.

Bechinger

(1998). Managing conflict in software development teams: A multilevel analysis. Journal of Product Innovation Management, 15(5), 423–435.

25.

Green

S. B.

(1991). How many subjects does it take to do a regression analysis? Multivariate Behavioral Research, 26(3), 499–510.

26.

Gross

M. A.

Guerrero

L. K.

(2000). Managing conflict appropriately and effectively: An application of the competence model to Rahim’s organizational conflict styles. International Journal of Conflict Management, 11(3), 200–226.

27.

Hackman

J. R.

(1983). The design of effective work groups. In Lorsch

W. W.

(Ed.), Handbook of organizational behavior (pp. 315–342.). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

28.

Hair

J. F.

Hult

G. T. M.

Ringle

C. M.

Sarstedt

(2014). A primer on Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

29.

Harmon

K. M. J.

(2003). Conflicts between owner and contractors: Proposed intervention process. Journal of Management in Engineering, ASCE, 19(3), 121–125.

30.

Hirst

(1999). The relationship between team communication and R&D project performance: A five factor model of team communication. Melbourne, Australia: University of Melbourne.

31.

Chen

Huang

Liu

(2017). Conflict and creativity in inter-organizational teams: The moderating role of shared leadership. International Journal of Conflict Management, 28(1), 74–102.

32.

James

L. R.

Demaree

R. G.

Wolf

(1984). Estimating within-group interrater reliability with and without response bias. Journal of Applied Psychology, 69(1), 85–98.

33.

Jehn

Mannix

(2001). The dynamic nature of conflict: A longitudinal study of intragroup conflict and group performance. Academy of Management Journal, 44(2), 238–251.

34.

Jia

Yang

Wang

Hong

You

(2011). A study of mega project from a perspective of social conflict theory. International Journal of Project Management, 29(7), 817–827.

35.

Qin

(2016). Boundary conditions of the emotional exhaustion-unsafe behavior link: The dark side of group norms and personal control. Asia Pacific Journal of Management, 33(1), 113–140.

36.

Kleinman

Palmon

Lee

(2003). The effects of personal and group level factors on the outcomes of simulated auditor and client teams. Group Decision and Negotiation, 12(1), 57–84.

37.

Kozan

M. K.

(1989). Cultural influences on styles of handling interpersonal conflicts: Comparisons among Jordanian, Turkish, and U.S. managers. Human Relations, 42, 787–799.

38.

Kuhn

Poole

M. S.

(2000). Do conflict management styles affect group decision making? Evidence from a longitudinal field study. Human Communication Research, 26(4), 558–590.

39.

Lawrence

P. R.

Lorsch

J. W.

(1986). Organization and environment: Managing differentiation and integration. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press.

40.

Leung

M.-Y.

Liang

(2014). Analysis of the relationships between value management techniques, conflict management, and workshop satisfaction of construction participants. Journal of Management in Engineering, 30(3), 1–11.

41.

(2009). Top management team conflict and entrepreneurial strategy making in China. Asia Pacific Journal of Management, 26(2), 263–283.

42.

Liu

(2009). Conflicts in top management teams and team/firm outcomes: The moderating effects of conflict-handling approaches. International Journal of Conflict Management, 20(3), 228–250.

43.

Liu

W.-H.

Cross

J. A.

(2016). A comprehensive model of project team technical performance. International Journal of Project Management, 34(7), 1150–1166.

44.

Lohmöller

J.-B.

(1989). Latent variable path modeling with partial least squares. Heidelberg, Germany: Physica-Verlag.

45.

Loosemore

Dainty

A. R. J.

Lingard

(2003). Human resource management in construction projects, strategic and operational approaches. London, England: Spon Press.

46.

Lundin

R. A.

Soderholm

(1995). A theory of the temporary organization. Scandinavian Journal of Management, 11(4), 437–455.

47.

Marks

M. A.

Mathieu

J. E.

Zaccaro

S. J.

(2001). A temporally based framework and taxonomy of team processes. Academy of Management Review, 26(3), 356–376.

48.

Mitkus

(2014). Causes of conflicts in a construction industry: A communicational approach. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 110, 777–786.

49.

Mitropoulos

P. T.

Cupido

(2009). The role of production and teamwork practices in construction safety: A cognitive model and an empirical case study. Journal of Safety Research, 40, 265–275.

50.

Müller

Turner

J. R.

Andersen

E. S.

Shao

Kvalnes

Ø.

(2016). Governance and ethics in temporary organizations: The mediating role of corporate governance. Project Management Journal, 47(6), 7–23.

51.

Northouse

P. G

. (2011). Introduction to leadership: Concepts and practice (4th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

52.

O’Leary-Kelly

A. M.

Martocchio

J. J.

Frink

D. D.

(1994). A review of the influence of group goals on group performance. Academy of Management Journal, 37(4), 1285–1301.

53.

Project Management Institute (PMI). (2017). A guide to the project management body of knowledge (PMBOK^® guide) – Sixth edition. Newtown Square, PA: Author.

54.

Prieto-Remón

T. C.

Cobo-Benita

J. R.

Ortiz-Marcos

Uruburu

(2015). Conflict resolution to project performance. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 194, 155–164.

55.

Pruitt

D. G.

Kim

S. H.

Rubin

J. Z.

(2004). Social conflict: Escalation, stalemate, and settlement. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

56.

Rahim

M. A.

(2002). Toward a theory of managing organizational conflict. International Journal of Conflict Management, 13(3), 206–235.

57.

Rahim

M. A.

Magner

N. R.

(1995). Confirmatory factor analysis of the styles of handling interpersonal conflict: First-order factor model and its invariance across groups. Journal of Applied Psychology, 80(1), 122–132.

58.

Raiden

A. B.

Dainty

A. R. J.

(2006). Human resource development in construction organisations: An example of a “chaordic” learning organisation? The Learning Organization, 13(1), 63–79.

59.

Rico

Sánchez-Manzanares

Gil

Gibson

(2008). Team implicit coordination processes: A team knowledge-based approach. Academy of Management Review, 33(1), 163–184.

60.

Rousseau

D. M.

(1985). Issues of level in organizational research: Multi-level and cross-level perspectives. Research in Organizational Behavior, 7, 1–37.

61.

Rubin

J. Z.

Pruitt

D. G.

Kim

S. H.

(1994). Social conflict: Escalation, stalemate, and settlement. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

62.

Sanders

Schyns

(2006). Trust, conflict and cooperative behaviour: Considering reciprocity within organizations. Personnel Review, 35(5), 508–518.

63.

Sobel

(1982). Asymptotic confidence intervals for indirect effects on structural equation models. In Leinhardt

(Ed.), Sociological methodology (pp. 290–312). New York, NY: Jossey-Bass.

64.

Stott

Walker

(1995). Teams, teamwork and teambuilding. Singapore: Prentice Hall.

65.

Sun

Shang

(2014). Transformational leadership, team climate, and team performance within the NPD team: Evidence from China. Asia Pacific Journal of Management, 31(1), 127–147.

66.

Tabassi

A. A.

Bakar

A. H. A.

(2009). Training, motivation, and performance: The case of human resource management in construction projects in Mashhad, Iran. International Journal of Project Management, 27(5), 471–480.

67.

Tabassi

A. A.

Ramli

Bakar

A. H. A.

(2012). Effects of training and motivation practices on teamwork improvement and task efficiency: The case of construction firms. International Journal of Project Management, 30(2), 213–224.

68.

Tabassi

A. A.

Ramli

Roufechaei

K. M.

Tabassi

A. A.

(2014). Team development and performance in construction design teams: An assessment of a hierarchical model with mediating effect of compensation. Construction Management and Economics, 32(9), 932–949.

69.

Tabassi

A. A.

Roufechaei

K. M.

Bakar

A. H. A.

NorAini

(2017). Linking team condition and team performance: A transformational leadership approach. Project Management Journal, 48(2), 22–38.

70.

Tazelaar

Snijders

(2010). Dispute resolution and litigation in the construction industry: Evidence on conflicts and conflict resolution in the Netherlands and Germany. Journal of Purchasing and Supply Management, 16(4), 221–229.

71.

Tenenhaus

Vinzi

V. E.

Chatelin

Y.-M.

Lauro

(2005). PLS path modeling. Computational Statistics and Data Analysis, 48(1), 159–205.

72.

Thomas

K. W.

(1976). Conflict and conflict management. In Dunnette

M. D.

(Ed.), Handbook of industrial and organizational psychology (pp. 889–935). Chicago, IL: Rand McNally.

73.

Tjosvold

(1985). Implications of controversy research for management. Journal of Management, 11(3), 21–37.

74.

Tjosvold

(2008). The conflict-positive organization: It depends upon us. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 29, 19–28.

75.

Tjosvold

Cho

Y.-H.

Park

H.-H.

Liu

W.-C.

Sasaki

(2001). Interdependence and managing conflict with sub-contractors in the construction industry in East Asia. Asia Pacific Journal of Management, 18, 295–313.

76.

Tjosvold

Hui

Z. Y.

(2003). Conflict management and task reflexivity for team in-role and extra-role performance in China. International Journal of Conflict Management, 14, 141–163.

77.

Tjosvold

Poon

Z. Y.

(2005). Team effectiveness in China: Cooperative conflict for relationship building. Human Relations, 58, 341–367.

78.

Tuncdogan

Boon

Mom

Bosch

F. V. D.

Volberda

(2017). Management teams’ regulatory foci and organizational units’ exploratory innovation: The mediating role of coordination mechanisms. Long Range Planning, 50, 621–635.

79.

Vollmer

(2015). Conflicts in innovation and how to approach the “last mile” of conflict management research—A literature review. International Journal of Conflict Management, 26(2), 192–213.

80.

Wall

J. A.

Callister

R. R.

(1995). Conflict and its management. Journal of Management, 21(3), 515–558.

81.

Walton

R. E.

McKersie

R. B.

(1965). A behavioral theory of labor relations. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

82.

Wetzels

Schroder

G. O.

Oppen

V. C.

(2009). Using PLS path modeling for assessing hierarchical construct models: Guidelines and empirical illustration. MIS Quarterly, 33(1), 177–195.

83.

Wold

(1985). Partial least squares. In Kotz

Johnson

N. L.

(Eds.), Encyclopedia of statistical sciences. New York, NY: Wiley.

84.

Zhao

Zuo

(2017). Effects of inter-organizational conflicts on construction project added value in China. International Journal of Conflict Management, 28(5), 695–723.

85.

Yammarino

F. J.

Dansereau

(2008). Multi-level nature of and multi-level approaches to leadership. The Leadership Quarterly, 19(2), 135–141.

86.

Yang

M.-Y.

Cheng

F.-C.

Chuang

(2013). The role of affects in conflict frames and conflict management. International Journal of Conflict Management, 26(4), 427–449.

87.

Yiu

K. T. W.

Cheung

S. O.

(2006). A catastrophe model of construction conflict behavior. Building and Environment, 41(4), 438–447.

88.

Yousefi

Hipel

K. W.

Hegazy

(2010). Attitude-based strategic negotiation for conflict management in construction projects. Project Management Journal, 41(4), 99–107.

89.

Yukl

(2006). Leadership in organizations. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice-Hall.

90.

Zalesny

M. D.

Salas

Prince

(1995). Conceptual and measurement issues in coordination: Implications for team behavior and performance. Research in Personnel and Human Resources Management, 13, 81–115.

91.

Zartman

Touval

(1985). International mediation: Conflict resolution and power politics. Journal of Social Issues, 41, 27–45.

92.

Zhang

X.-A.

Cao

Tjosvold

(2011). Linking transformational leadership and team performance: A conflict management approach. Journal of Management Studies, 48(7), 1586–1611.