The Roles and Interplay of Intragroup Conflict and Team Emotion Management on Information Seeking Behaviors in Team Contexts

Abstract

This study developed a cross-level model to study the effects of contextual factors, including team-level conflict and team-level emotion management (EM), on how individual team members seek information. Cross-level analysis using data collected from 175 individuals in 30 teams showed that team-level relationship conflict (TRC) had a negative effect on individual information seeking (IS) behavior, whereas team-level task conflict (TTC) did not have a significant effect. EM at both team and individual levels had positive effects on individual IS behavior. The same set of analyses conducted using a subset of 22 of these teams at an earlier time point confirmed the same pattern of relationships. In addition, team-level EM interacted with TRC in influencing individual IS behavior, although the patterns varied for the two time points of data collection. Theoretical implications are discussed.

Keywords

information seeking conflict emotion management cross-level analysis

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