Name: Cooper J. Drose

Master’s Thesis Defense Meeting 

Date: Tuesday, January 16th, 2024 

Time: 12:00pm EST

Location:  Click here to join the meeting

Meeting ID: 271 987 000 689

Password: ekJShH

Advisor: Keaton A. Fletcher, Ph.D. (Colorado State University/Georgia Institute of Technology)  

Thesis Committee Members:
Christopher W. Wiese, Ph.D. (Georgia Institute of Technology) 

Jamie Gorman, Ph.D. (Arizona State University) 

Title: Conflict in Teams: An Episodic Approach to Assessing the Mediation of Conflict Behaviors on the Relationship between Personality and Team-Level Outcomes

Abstract: Conflict management behaviors have long been studied as critical components in successful teams because they may help to enhance positive and mitigate negative outcomes associated with conflict. Oftentimes, however, researchers evaluating conflict behaviors have assessed conflict as a static construct. Recent research has called for a more dynamic understanding of conflict; this study serves to answer this call by evaluating conflict as an emergent phenomenon using the IMOI model using an episodic methodological approach. Using a lab sample of 83 teams and 292 participants, this study looked at personality as a predictor of conflict behaviors and the subsequent impact these behaviors have on team performance and cohesion. Results from this study found that the Dark Triad was not a significant predictor of conflict behaviors in the first conflict episode. I then called upon the Conservation of Resources (COR) theory to predict conflict behaviors over time, finding that the use of individualistic and collectivistic conflict behaviors in the first episode significantly negatively predicted the continued use of these behaviors in subsequent episodes. Additionally, it was found that the use of individualistic and collectivistic conflict behaviors from the focal individual significantly negatively predicted the use of these behaviors in others within the team in subsequent episodes. While it was ultimately found that increased use of individualistic conflict behaviors negatively impacted team-level group cohesion, collectivistic and individualistic conflict behaviors were not found to be a significant mediator between the Dark Triad and team level outcomes of performance and group cohesion. This study contributes to our understanding of conflict as a dynamic construct within teams, as well as providing further evidence in support of COR theory.