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How management teams can have a good fight.
K M Eisenhardt1, J L Kahwajy, L J Bourgeois
1Stanford University, CA, USA.
Harvard Business Review
|June 6, 1997
Summary
Effective management teams harness constructive conflict over issues to improve decision-making. High-performing teams use six tactics to keep conflict productive and avoid detrimental interpersonal disputes and groupthink.
Area of Science:
- Organizational Behavior
- Management Science
- Decision-Making Processes
Background:
- Conflict over issues is natural and necessary for management teams.
- Unmanaged conflict can devolve into interpersonal disputes, hindering decision quality.
- High-performing teams require strategies to maintain constructive conflict.
Purpose of the Study:
- To identify tactics used by high-performing management teams.
- To understand how to foster constructive conflict while preventing interpersonal conflict.
- To explore the relationship between conflict, politics, and decision-making speed.
Main Methods:
- Research on the interplay of conflict, politics, and decision-making speed in management teams.
- Distillation of characteristic tactics from high-performing teams.
- Analysis of how these tactics focus conflict on issues and foster collaboration.
Main Results:
- High-performing teams utilize six key tactics: more information, multiple alternatives, common goals, humor, balanced power, and consensus-free resolution.
- These tactics keep conflict issue-focused, promote collaboration, and ensure fairness.
- Lack of conflict leads to apathy, disengagement, and groupthink.
Conclusions:
- Constructive conflict is essential for effective management team decision-making.
- Specific tactics enable teams to leverage conflict productively.
- Avoiding conflict can lead to poor outcomes, including groupthink and corporate failures.