Understanding conflict in geographically distributed teams: the moderating effects of shared identity, shared context, and spontaneous communication.

Geographically distributed teams are increasingly prevalent in the workplace, and research on distributed teams is ever more available. Despite this increased attention, we still know surprisingly little about how the dynamics of distributed teams differ from those of their collocated counterparts and how existing models of teams apply to this new form of work. For example, although it has been argued that distributed as compared with collocated teams have more severe conflicts that fester longer and resist resolution, few comparative studies investigate dynamics such as conflict in both distributed and collocated teams. In this study, we examine conflict, its antecedents, and its effects on performance in distributed as compared with collocated teams. Our goal is to understand how conflict plays out in distributed and collocated teams, thus providing insight into how existing models of conflict must be augmented to reflect the trend toward distributed work.

We report the results of a field study of 43 teams, 22 collocated and 21 distributed, from a large multinational company. As expected, the distributed teams reported more task and interpersonal conflict than did the collocated teams. We found evidence that shared identity moderated the effect of distribution on interpersonal conflict and that shared context moderated the effect of distribution on task conflict. Finally, we found that spontaneous communication played a pivotal role in the relationship between distribution and conflict. First, spontaneous communication was associated with a stronger shared identity and more shared context, our moderating variables. Second, spontaneous communication had a direct moderating effect on the distribution-conflict relationship, mitigating the effect of distribution on both types of conflict. We argue that this effect reflects the role of spontaneous communication in facilitating conflict identification and conflict handling.

Key words: distributed teams; conflict; shared identity; shared context; team communication; distributed work

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Recent advances in telecommunication and information technologies offer new opportunities for engaging in geographically distributed work. Research and development laboratories rely on facilities around the globe (Brockhoff 1998), and software development teams are increasingly spread across multiple countries (Carmel 1999) to take advantage of resources at local sites. Although an increasing number of organizations are relying on technology-enabled geographically distributed teams (McDonough et al. 2001), these teams are often difficult to manage and fall short of performance expectations. Distributed teams frequently suffer coordination problems (see Cramton 2001), crises of trust (Jarvenpaa and Leidner 1999), and unhealthy subgroup dynamics (Armstrong and Cole 2002, Cramton and Hinds 2005). Despite an increasing amount of research examining the dynamics of distributed work (e.g., Gibson and Cohen 2003), it is not yet clear whether or not, and how, the dynamics of distributed teams can be predicted by existing models of teams that are based on decades of research on collocated teams. Some scholars have, in fact, questioned whether distributed teams are fundamentally different than collocated teams and thus deserving of separate study. With our study, we strive to address this question by comparing the dynamics of distributed and collocated teams, in particular their experiences with conflict, as a means of understanding the extent to which geographic distribution affects this important dimension of teamwork.

We focus on conflict because previous work suggests that distributed teams find conflict not only prevalent, but particularly difficult to isolate and manage (see Hinds and Bailey 2003, Mannix et al. 2002). Studies of geographically distributed teams report significant conflict between distant members as team members struggle to come to terms with different perspectives, unshared information, and tensions between distant subgroups (see Armstrong and Cole 2002, Cramton 2001). Existing empirical research, however, has typically included no collocated comparison teams and, for the most part, has not set out to study conflict. Another reason we study conflict is because of the well-established relationship between conflict and performance. Although some studies have reported a positive relationship between task conflict and performance (e.g., Pelled et al. 1999), a recent meta-analysis suggests that both task and interpersonal conflict are consistently linked with worse performance, particularly when teams are engaged in highly complex tasks (De Dreu and Weingart 2003). Conflict can interfere with performance, decrease satisfaction, and reduce commitment to the organization. If, as suggested, conflict is more prevalent in distributed teams, the ability of distributed teams to perform effectively may be endangered.

In this study, we aim to better understand the factors that mitigate conflict on distributed teams. Not all distributed teams experience crippling or even serious conflicts. We strive to understand why some do and others do not. With few exceptions (i.e., Lovelace et al. 2001), there has been surprisingly little empirical research that examines the factors that moderate the relationship between conflict and its antecedents. Recent research instead has tended to focus on the direct effect of diversity on conflict or on moderators of the conflict-performance relationship. Because of this, in their review of 40 years of research on diversity, Williams and O'Reilly (1998) call for more research into the moderators of diversity on group process. They, and others, suggest that the mechanisms through which diversity affects conflict fall into two categories: those related to social categorization or affective ties and those acting on informational factors. This is consistent with McGrath's (1984, Chapter 1) argument that group dynamics are affected by both interpersonal relations and task-related patterns. Regarding conflict, Jehn et al. (1999) argue that social categorization and differences in information mediate the relationship between diversity and conflict, although they do not actually measure either social categorization or differences in information. In theorizing about conflict in distributed teams, Hinds and Bailey (2003) argue that shared identity and creating similar contexts moderate the relationship between distribution and conflict. Thus, although numerous scholars have suggested that social categorization and informational factors are key to understanding conflict in teams, the exact nature of the relationships between social categorization, informational factors, and conflict remain vague.