The Effect of Conflict and Knowledge Sharing on the Information Technology Project Team Performance

Abstract

The existent literature lacks papers that explored the proposed model, which examines how process, relationship, and task conflict impacts knowledge sharing and the subsequently perceived team performance in the information technology (IT) development process. The proposed research model adds knowledge sharing to prior studies that explored how the types of conflict impacted team performance. The hypotheses were tested using a field survey, which was distributed to IT project team members. While team members who experience task conflicts tend to share more knowledge and perform better, members who experience more process or relationship conflicts are less likely to share knowledge, and the team performance is also impacted. The results offer insights to explain how the different types of conflict can affect knowledge sharing and subsequently group processes within IT project teams and, ultimately, improve or degrade performance.