How Team-Level and Individual-Level Conflict Influences Team Commitment: A Multilevel Investigation

Area of Science:

• Organizational Behavior
• Social Psychology
• Management Science

Background:

• Workplace conflict, encompassing task and relationship types, can affect team dynamics and individual commitment.
• Understanding conflict at multiple levels (individual and team) is crucial for comprehending its impact on employee engagement.
• Team commitment is a key factor in employee retention and overall organizational success.

Purpose of the Study:

• To examine the influence of individual-level and team-level task and relationship conflicts on individual team commitment.
• To investigate the moderating role of team-level conflicts on the relationship between individual-level conflicts and team commitment.
• To derive theoretical implications for understanding conflict dynamics in teams.

Main Methods:

• Data collected from 193 employees across 31 branch offices of a Korean commercial bank.
• Hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) employed to analyze multi-level relationships.
• Statistical analysis to determine the significance and direction of conflict effects on team commitment.

Main Results:

• Individual-level relationship conflict negatively impacts team commitment.
• Individual-level task conflict does not significantly affect team commitment.
• Both team-level task and relationship conflicts negatively influence team commitment.
• Team-level relationship conflict moderates the association between individual-level relationship conflict and team commitment.

Conclusions:

• Relationship conflict poses a significant threat to team commitment at both individual and team levels.
• The context of team-level conflict dynamics is essential for understanding individual-level conflict effects.
• Findings highlight the importance of managing relationship conflict to foster higher team commitment.