Conflict management in an organization: A case study of the Korle Bu Teaching hospital.

Conflict is considered an inevitable part of organizational life, particularly in hospitals in the health sector. However, there has been limited attention to conflict management and transformation in hospital within the Ghanaian setting, despite evidence of conflicts among employees in health institutions. The study provided answers to the following research objectives: (i) the nature of conflict among employees; (ii) the factors influencing the occurrence of conflicts among employees; and (iii) how conflict among employees at the Korle-bu Teaching Hospital. The study adopted a descriptive qualitative case study design with a sample of 8 participants who were selected using a purposive sampling technique. Primary data was collected using a semi-structured interview guide. Data analysis was done thematically. The study found that though conflict was seen as positive, a general negative perception was found. The nature of the conflict was shown to be multidimensionally characterized by relational, task, vertical, and horizontal conflicts. Themes identified in terms of the factors causing conflict included: individual (differences in employee values and negative employee behaviors); organizational factors (differences in organizational and individual values, perceived organizational support, unsafe working environments, task interdependence, and disregard for subordinates); and societal factors (tribalism and gender role expectations and conformity). Furthermore, conflict management and transformation reflected two major themes: actor-related strategy; relational strategy and rule modification

Models of Intragroup Conflict in Management: A Literature Review

The study of intragroup dynamics in management studies views conflict as a contingency process that can benefit or harm a group based of characteristics of the group and context. We review five models of intragroup conflict in management studies. These models include diversity-conflict and behavioral negotiation models that focus primarily on conflict within a group of people; social exchange and transaction cost economics models that focus primarily on conflict within a group of firms; and social dilemma models that focus on conflict in collectives of people, organizations, communities, and generations. The review is constituted by summarizing the insights of each model, foundational papers to each model; the most recent uses and developments of the models in the last decade; the complementarity of these models; and the future research directions

Explaining Implicit and Explicit Affective Linkages in IT Teams: Facial Recognition, Emotional Intelligence, and Affective Tone

Over 80 percent of task work in organizations is performed by teams. Most teams operate in a more fluid, dynamic, and complex environment than in the past. As a result, a growing body of research is beginning to focus on how teams’ emotional well-being can benefit the effectiveness of workplace team efforts. These teams are required to be adaptive, to operate in ill-structured environments, and to rely on technology more than ever before. However, teams have become so ubiquitous that many organizations and managers take them for granted and assume they will be effective and productive. Because of the increased use of team work and the lack of sufficient organizational and managerial sufficient best practices for teams, more research is required. Team Emotional Intelligence (TEI) is a collective skill that has been shown to benefit team performance. However, measures for TEI are relatively new and have not been widely studied. Results show TEI is a viable skill that affects performance in IT teams. In technology-rich environments, the teams’ coordination can vary on levels of the expertise needed when TEI behaviors are employed. Cooperative norms play an important role in team interactions and influence TEI. Physiological measures of team emotional contagion and TEI, as well as psychometric measures of team affective tone results show causal affective linkages in the emotional convergence model. These results suggest that combined physiological and psychometric measures of team emotion behavior provide explanatory power for these linkages in teams during IS technology system use. These findings offer new insights into the emotional states of IS teams that may advance the understanding team behaviors for improved performance outcomes and contribute to the NeuroIS literature

A Dual-Identity Perspective of Obsessive Online Social Gaming

Obsessive online social gaming has become a worldwide societal challenge that deserves more scholarly investigation. However, this issue has not received much attention in the information systems (IS) research community. Guided by dual-system theory, we theoretically derive a typology of obsessive technology use and contextually adapt it to conceptualize obsessive online social gaming. We also build upon identity theory to develop a dual-identity perspective (i.e., IT identity and social identity) of obsessive online social gaming. We test our research model using a longitudinal survey of 627 online social game users. Our results demonstrate that the typology of obsessive technology use comprises four interrelated types: impulsive use, compulsive use, excessive use, and addictive use. IT identity positively affects the four obsessive online social gaming archetypes and fully mediates the effect of social identity on obsessive online social gaming. The results also show that IT identity is predicted by embeddedness, self-efficacy, and instant gratification, whereas social identity is determined by group similarity, group familiarity, and intragroup communication. Our study contributes to the IS literature by proposing a typology of obsessive technology use, incorporating identity theory to provide a contextualized explanation of obsessive online social gaming and offering implications for addressing the societal challenge

Voluntary contributions to public goods:A multi-disciplinary examination of prosocial behavior and its antecedents

The four essays collected in this Ph.D. dissertation concern prosocial motivations in different social contexts, applying conceptual, experimental, and survey methodologies to investigate how the complex and diverse interaction between psychological attributes and the social environment shapes prosocial behaviors. The first essay provides a conceptual framework on how cognition links relevant stimuli with innate moralities to construct Public Service Motivation (PSM) and guild various social behaviors. The second essay builds on the first essay and provides empirical evidence for the essential role of innate moralities in shaping Public Service Motivation and affecting behavioral consequences. The third and fourth essay apply methods from experimental economics to investigate the role of contextual stimuli in affecting prosocial motivation in a lab experiment of the volunteer’s dilemma game. The third essay first extends the classic volunteer’s dilemma game and develops novel treatments to examine pro-social risk-taking and competitive behavior in a lab experiment. The fourth essay then incorporates the PSM theory in the extended volunteer’s dilemma game to explore the role of PSM in self-sacrifice behavior and its relationships with external contextual factors

A Comprehensive Model Of The Intragroup Work Conflict Framework: Examining Substantive Conflict, Information Exchange, Task And Relationship Conflict, and Conflict Management in Relation to Performance Effectiveness

The current study was designed to empirically test components of the conflict dynamic within the context of groups or teams. A model was proposed in an attempt to clarify existing construct confusion and misapplication of terminologies throughout the field (e.g., task conflict) as well as to consolidate literatures (e.g., informational diversity, information exchange, task and relationship conflict perceptions, and conflict management) and ultimately clarify several contradictory empirical conclusions regarding the equivocal nature of conflict in relation to team effectiveness outcomes. Information exchange and conflict management processes were proposed to be more directly responsible for the proposed theoretical benefits derived from task conflict than the presence of conflict itself, which may be more accurately described as a byproduct, or emergent state, resulting from these processes. Collectively, the proposed model attends to cognitive inputs, behavioral processes, and perceptual emergent states comprising the conflict dynamic and examined how these relate to group effectiveness, particularly when effectiveness outcomes relate to innovation, creativity, or group decision-making quality. The sample of the current study was comprised of university undergraduate and graduate student volunteers working in project teams embedded in the design of their courses. Participant data was collected electronically using a 73-item survey with a reward incentive offered. Hypotheses were tested using Pearson product-moment correlations, t-tests, regression analyses, and hierarchical linear modeling. Results suggest that predictors vary in utility based on team effectiveness appraisal source (e.g., relationship conflict predicted only student-provided outcomes whereas informational diversity predicted only instructor-provided outcomes). Also, in general, collaborative conflict management predicted intragroup affective- and cognition-based trust, reduced relationship conflict, and student-provided team effectiveness outcomes. Relationship conflict was positively related to task conflict, with cognition-based trust moderating this association. A focal conclusion of this research is to highlight qualitative and quantitative dissimilarities between task conflict and information exchange; while task conflict was negatively associated with most outcomes, information exchange was generally positively associated. An in depth discussion of these findings and their implications are provided

The Emergence of Group Dynamics from Contextualised Social Processes: A Complexity-Oriented Grounded-Theory Approach

A formal group, within a University, is typically created to accomplish work goals through on-going coordination, combination, and integration of member resources. Group behaviour emerges from the confluence of individual and social forces and behaviours enacted to pursue desired goals. Interactions between group members in context create patterns of group processes and behaviours, and how these patterns change over time creates group dynamics. However, group dynamics do not simply reflect intra-group processes; they also reflect influences that arise from larger contexts within which the group is embedded. Group behaviour can, therefore, be argued to reflect emergent self-organisation, sensitivity to time and initial conditions, and causal ambiguity, properties associated with complex, dynamic and adaptive systems. Much of the research into group dynamics and behaviour (especially experimental social psychology research employing a positivist reductionist theoretical perspective) has tended not to look at groups through such a complexity lens. The research reported in this thesis was intended to push into this frontier. The fundamental question addressed in this thesis is: 'What occurs during group interactions associated with the emergence and maintenance of different types of group dynamics and how do those dynamics tend to unfold over time?' I argue in this thesis that a deep and contextual understanding of the complexity of group dynamics can be achieved using an interpretivist/constructivist perspective coupled with a grounded theory approach employing methodologies that permit the deeper exploration of the meaning of individual as well as collective group behaviours. To achieve the depth of learning needed in this research, I focused on a single long-standing group, a committee that existed within a larger university. I gathered qualitative data using three distinct data gathering strategies: (1) participant observation of the group at its regular monthly meetings over a 12- month period; (2) semi-structured interviews with current and former individual group members; and (3) the review of historical documents (e.g., minutes of meetings, discussion papers) relevant to the group's initial genesis and evolution over the time period prior to this research as well as my own field notes amassed over the duration of the study. I employed MAXQDA 11 Plus to support my analyses of the qualitative data amassed using these three strategies and to aid the development of grounded theory that accounted for the group's contextual dynamics. The results of this study revealed that when the focal group was addressing routine group tasks, systematic and consistent patterns of behaviour were observed. However, when the group was exposed to or perceived an internal or external shock, some interesting and unexpected emergent patterns of behaviour were observed. These behaviours could be traced to the desire for a select few members to maintain the historically based group identity, function, and direction. This maintenance process was accomplished through the application of varying types of power to offset possible bifurcation. For example, one class of such behaviours focused on 'leadership hijacking', where control over the group's consideration of an issue was taken over by a person who was not the discussion leader but for whom that issue was 'hot' and perceived to be strongly threatening. Of the number of external shocks observed, the interplay between the university's and other larger contextual agendas and the group's agenda was visible and often vigorous. This type of shock caused confrontation and escalation behaviours to emerge with the goal, once again, to maintain the historically based group identity and agenda. The addition of data gathered from semi-structured interviews with current and former group members and the review of historical documents relevant to the group provided further evidence relevant to how members strived to maintain the historically based group agenda through the application of their unique brand of group dynamics. In some cases, depending upon the issue at hand, the maintenance of this historically based group agenda centred upon one group member and, in other cases, involved the creation of shorter- and longer-term coalitions. Thus, an understanding of the dynamics of interaction within this group was achieved through close examination of the various contexts within which the group was embedded as well as the contexts of the individual group members. The results support the need to employ a complex adaptive systems perspective when trying to unpack group dynamics as they play out in real time. This research also reinforces the value of adopting an interpretivist perspective to enhance the depth of this learning

Learning Takes Teamwork - The Role of New Venture Teams in Entrepreneurship Education

Doctoral thesis (PhD) - Nord University, 2022publishedVersio