Taking Advantage of Conflicts in Group Decision Making

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Taking Advantage of Conflicts in Group Decision Making
In past research it was often argued that group decision making (GDM) improves if task-conflicts are present.
Task-conflicts are different opinions about the content and outcomes of the task being
performed.
Why this positive effect? Because task-conflicts prevent premature consensus and encourage critical thinking. It seems obvious. But other studies found no such relationship or even a negative one. The relationship between tasks conflicts and good GDM is thus ambiguous.

De Wit, Jehn and Scheepers have recently discovered that another factor is playing an important role when we're analyzing the extent to which task-conflicts are beneficial for GDM: the presence (or absence) of a relationship conflict.
According to the authors, task conflicts are more likely to have a positive effect on GDM if relationship conflicts are absent in the company.

They suggest 2 possibilities in which a relationship conflict negatively affects the relationship between task conflict and GDM:
1. A relationship conflict causes rigidity: Frictions, negative emotions, or antipathy towards others leads to certain reactions in a debate that are likely to spill over to other group members. The flexible, open-minded attitude in debates becomes more rigid and closed as a result and the willingness to accord to opinions of other group members is reduced. Rather people will rigidly hold their initial opinions.
2. A relationship conflict creates processing information biases: In healthy decision-making processes, group members use their own information as well as information they can obtain from other team members. However, if relationship conflicts are present group members often decide to only use their own information when making decisions.
Both of these possibilities are hard to measure. However, the study of de Wit argues that in assessing the relationship between task conflicts and GDM it is important to take other factors into account that indirectly affect this relationship.
Source: de Wit, F. R., Jehn, K. A., and Scheepers, D. (2013). Task conflict, information processing, and decision-making: The damaging effect of relationship conflict. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 122(2), 177-189.

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		Jaap de Jonge Editor, Netherlands
	4 How to Benefit from Conflicts in Group Decision Making? I believe Bono's 6 Thinking Hats (6TH) might be quite useful to benefit from task conflicts and avoid emotional ones while analyzing problems in a group. Because in the 6TH approach all group members (...)

		Paramathmuni srinivas Kumar India
	5 Quality of Decision Making Depends on the Intent of the Individuals in the Group I believe the quality of the decision making depends on the intent of the people working in the group. If the intent of the members is good, then even though the views may differ, the quality of the (...)

		Ben Smith Manager, United Kingdom
	1 How to Measure Relationship Conflict? It must be difficult to measure the presence/absence of relationship conflict in studies of GDM as these are often masked over in the business world. Do you know how de Wit identified this? Or how it (...)

		Ruwan Bandara Manager, Sri Lanka
	0 Conflict can be a Source of Inspiration Conflicts motivate us to think in an extraordinary way. For example in the 1970s and 1980s during the cold war between USA and Soviet Russia. The Internet and the first man on the moon can be consid (...)

		Leena Bissoonauth, Mauritius
	3 How Relationship Conflict can Be Reduced for Better Decision Making Low levels of conflict in a group may improve the quality and creativity of decision making, but this effect vanishes when the conflict intensifies, because intense conflicts distract people because o (...)

		DANNY SUSIKWANA, Zambia
	1 Group Bonding and Tenure is Important Relationship conflicts may help enhance GDM. However this does not apply to all kinds of groups. Groups which benefit from relationship conflicts include those who have bonded due to having worked tog (...)

		Purna Chandra Business Consultant, India
	3 The 3rd Alternative in Conflicts: 'Our Way' The topic reminds me of the concept in the book "The 3rd Alternative" by Stephen Covey. Obvious enough, "Our Way" is superior to "My Way" or "Your Way"; however, it requires immense maturity and humi (...)

		Victor Manuel Monteiro Seco Entrepreneur, Portugal
	1 Our Way, Because we are not Alone @Purna Chandra: Indeed. we have no conflicts alone. So we must learn each other how to stop with our ambitious and egotistic positions. Conflicts are very important for organizational growth if we use (...)

		Willie Odemwingie, Nigeria
	0 Conflicts in GDM People that make up a group are usually from different backgrounds. They may be from different discipline, family, culture and have other inherent traits. So there is bound to be conflict. Some organi (...)

		Satya Narayan Strategy Consultant, India
	0 How to Benefit from Group Decision Making? 1. First the organisation needs to ensure conflicts do not arise from relationships. Implementation and maintenance of well defined processes, job descriptions, responsibility/authority matrix will en (...)