The vicious cycle of unfairness and conflict in teams

Abstract

Purpose Teams often cannot fulfill their managers’ expectations due to unfairness issues and dysfunctional conflicts with teammates. This paper aims to create a fair team environment, it is important to analyze the interrelationship between unfairness and conflict. However, only a few studies have done this and reported inconsistent results. Using negative reciprocity research as a theoretical foundation, this paper analyzes the interconnection between unfairness and conflict dimensions in the team context. This paper further integrates conflict management research to show employees and managers how to handle unfairness and conflict in teams. Design/methodology/approach The authors conducted a longitudinal survey study (three points in time) with 237 employees from different German organizations. Findings The results of cross-lagged structural equation modeling provide some evidence that interpersonal, procedural and informational unfairness predict relationship conflict and process conflict. Several of these effects become non-significant over time. Further, relationship and process conflict have several significant relationships with the unfairness dimensions, while task conflict did not have any significant relationship. The results also suggest that employees can break up the vicious cycle of unfairness and conflict by using a cooperative conflict management approach. Research limitations/implications This paper focuses on members of autonomous, interdependent and existing teams and the interpersonal relationship of a team member with her or his teammates. Future research could analyze leader-member relationships in different team types. Practical implications The application of cooperative conflict management enables employees to break up the vicious cycle of unfairness. Originality/value This paper clarifies the interrelationship between unfairness and conflict and shows that a team member can apply a cooperative conflict management style to handle effectively unfairness and conflict.