TEMPORAL CONFLICT IN TEAMS: ANTECEDENTS, REGULATORY MECHANISMS, AND OUTCOMES
Open Access
- Author:
- Zhang, Yang
- Graduate Program:
- Psychology
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- June 24, 2009
- Committee Members:
- Susan Mohammed, Dissertation Advisor/Co-Advisor
Susan Mohammed, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
James Lewis Farr, Committee Member
Alicia Ann Grandey, Committee Member
Mary Beth Rosson, Committee Member
Rosalie Ocker, Committee Member - Keywords:
- Time
teams
temporal
conflict
culture - Abstract:
- Temporal issues in team research have received increased attention, but empirical research with an explicit temporal focus is still limited (e.g., McGrath & Argote, 2001; Kozlowski & Bell, 2003). In response to the call for greater integration of time into team research (Mohammed, Hamilton, & Lim, 2009), this study followed 60 partially-distributed student teams (PDTs) that worked under weekly deadlines over a 4-week period and examined the influence of diversity in two temporal individual differences—time urgency and pacing styles—on temporal conflict and the role played by temporal planning and time awareness norms on this relationship. Results found no direct effect of diversity in time urgency and pacing styles. Instead of mitigating the detrimental effect of diversity as hypothesized, temporal planning intensified temporal conflict as diversity increased. Results on time awareness norms were mixed; in some cases, it had a positive effect on reducing conflict, while in other cases it did not demonstrate the hypothesized effect. These results suggested that, instead of mitigating the detrimental effects of diversity as hypothesized, activities that are rich in temporal cues, such as temporal planning and establishing temporal norms, can make certain deep-level individual differences more salient. Team effectiveness—performance quality and timeliness of delivery—was found to be largely unrelated to either diversity or temporal conflict. Although it was suggested that over time the relationship between diversity in time urgency and temporal conflict would become stronger, this hypothesis was not supported given the analysis conducted.