Skewed task conflicts in teams: what happens when a few members see more conflict than the rest?

Task conflict has been the subject of a long-standing debate in the literature—when does task conflict help or hurt team performance? We propose that this debate can be resolved by taking a more precise view of how task conflicts are perceived in teams. Specifically, we propose that in teams, when a few team members perceive a high level of task disagreement while a majority of others perceive low levels of task disagreement—that is, there is positively skewed task conflict, task conflict is most likely to live up to its purported benefits for team performance. In our first study of student teams engaged in a business decision game, we find support for the positive relationship between skewed task conflict and team performance. In our second field study of teams in a financial corporation, we find that the relationship between positively skewed task conflict and supervisor ratings of team performance is mediated by reflective communication within the team

Celebrating the Work of Keith Murnighan

In this tribute, four scholars highlight research published during the career of 2015 International Association for Conflict Management Lifetime Achievement Award Winner Keith Murnighan. In the four sections of the paper, each scholar highlights one of Keith’s published papers and discusses the impact it had on them, as well as the field of organizational behavior more generally. The authors close by going beyond each article to identify common themes that emerge across the works

Genome-wide analysis of self-reported risk-taking behaviour and cross-disorder genetic correlations in the UK Biobank cohort

Risk-taking behaviour is a key component of several psychiatric disorders and could influence lifestyle choices such as smoking, alcohol use, and diet. As a phenotype, risk-taking behaviour therefore fits within a Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) approach, whereby identifying genetic determinants of this trait has the potential to improve our understanding across different psychiatric disorders. Here we report a genome-wide association study in 116,255 UK Biobank participants who responded yes/no to the question “Would you consider yourself a risk taker?” Risk takers (compared with controls) were more likely to be men, smokers, and have a history of psychiatric disorder. Genetic loci associated with risk-taking behaviour were identified on chromosomes 3 (rs13084531) and 6 (rs9379971). The effects of both lead SNPs were comparable between men and women. The chromosome 3 locus highlights CADM2, previously implicated in cognitive and executive functions, but the chromosome 6 locus is challenging to interpret due to the complexity of the HLA region. Risk-taking behaviour shared significant genetic risk with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, and post-traumatic stress disorder, as well as with smoking and total obesity. Despite being based on only a single question, this study furthers our understanding of the biology of risk-taking behaviour, a trait that has a major impact on a range of common physical and mental health disorders

The dynamics of intense work groups : a study of British string quartets / 1689

Includes bibliographical references (p. 37-38)

Intravention : third-party intervention with a clout

Includes bibliographical references (p. 27-29)

Mediator behavior and interest: Effects on mediator and disputant perceptions

Experimental research on mediation has largely ignored the impact that mediator behavior can have on mediator perceptions. In this study, a model of the mediation process is proposed which organizes past research on mediation, as well as highlights the potential importance of behavior in determining mediator perceptions. Two laboratory experiments were conducted. In Study 1, Carnevale's strategic choice model (Negotiation Journal, 2, 41-56, 1986) was used as an implicit theory of mediation to test the influence of mediator behavior and interest on mediator self-perceptions of concern and mediator perceptions of the likelihood of agreement. It was hypothesized that mediators with high interest, feeling greater pressure to justify their actions, should report perceptions of concern and likelihood of agreement that are more consistent with the Carnevale model than would mediators who did not feel such pressures to justify their actions. Subjects served as mediators in a simulated organizational dispute, and chose messages to send to disputants that were previously identified as representing one of the four strategies proposed by Carnevale (1986). In Study 2, subjects served as disputants, and received from their mediator messages representing one of the four strategies.Results indicate that Carnevale's model of mediation was best supported when subjects were disputants who received a strategy, rather than mediators who sent the strategy. The results are consistent with attribution and self perception models which suggest that observers will interpret behaviors as stemming from internal dispositions of the actor, whereas the actor often interprets his or her own behavior as a function of external or uncontrollable forces.U of I OnlyETDs are only available to UIUC Users without author permissio

The mind and heart (Literally) of the negotiator: personality and contextual determinants of experiential reactions and economic outcomes in negotiation

The authors developed and tested a model proposing that negotiator personality interacts with the negotiation situation to influence negotiation processes and outcomes. In 2 studies, the authors found that negotiators high in agreeableness were best suited to integrative negotiations and that negotiators low in agreeableness were best suited to distributive negotiations. Consistent with this person-situation fit argument, in Study 1 the authors found that negotiators whose dispositions were a good fit to their negotiation context had higher levels of physiological (cardiac) arousal at the end of the negotiation compared with negotiators who were "misplaced" in situations inconsistent with their level of agreeableness, and this arousal was in turn related to increased economic outcomes. Study 2 replicated and extended the findings of Study 1, finding that person-situation fit was related to physiological (heart rate), psychological (positive affect), and behavioral activation (persistence) demonstrated during the negotiation, and these measures in turn were related to the economic outcomes achieved by participants. © 2011 American Psychological Association