团队内部人际冲突、面子对团队创造力的影响研究

【作者】 赵卓嘉；

【导师】 宝贡敏；

【作者基本信息】 浙江大学 ， 企业管理， 2009， 博士

【摘要】 置身于一个变革的时代,当今社会中的大多数组织所面对的都是高度不确定的竞争环境。市场需求的快速变化、生产技术的不断改进与革新、经济增长的日益趋缓以及人们对于持续发展的热望与不懈追求——所有的一切挑战的不仅仅是组织的生存能力,更是它们各自的创新能力。与此同时,组织成员个人拥有的知识和技能已经无法满足多元化的任务需要,由来自不同专业领域的个体组成的自我管理式任务团队正逐步发展成为组织创新的基本单元;尤其是那些具备智力型特质,聚焦于复杂问题或突发性新问题的创造性解决的知识密集型任务团队(以下简称知识团队)更进一步构成了组织创新的中坚力量,成为组织的重要资源。但正所谓“一人成龙,三人成虫”,“三个和尚没水喝”的故事告诉我们:团队合作并非总能产生“1+1+1＞3”的协同效应,“三个臭皮匠顶个诸葛亮”也只不过是人们的美好愿望罢了。因为,只要是有人的地方就会有冲突,而冲突的结局如何却往往没有定数:“真理越辩越明”固然可喜,“君子和而不同”也是理想的局面,不幸的是由冲突引发的负面情绪所导致的破坏性结果却是现实生活中的常态——惟有辅以特殊的处理方式,团队运作与群体创造才能取得事半功倍的效果。一般情况下,华人对于面子的顾虑以及相应的保护性需要都会在冲突事件的演进过程中发挥至关重要的作用,由冲突引申出的面子威胁将会对知识团队成员的冲突应对选择造成决定性的影响。与此同时,冲突主体基于双方关系展开的心理距离判断也会改变他们对面子威胁信息的解读和释义,进而左右其后续的行为。也就是说,民族/社会文化因素的作用在团队作业过程中尤其不可小觑。厘清此类要素的作用机理,找到团队内部人际冲突事件的处理模式与团队创造之间的作用规律,不仅有助于提升知识团队整体的冲突处理能力,更能实现冲突的“有效利用”,在尽可能消除负面影响的基础上充分发挥它的“创造性破坏”作用。本研究在国内外现有的理论与经验研究成果基础上,从团队层面出发,沿着“团队内部人际冲突→感知面子威胁→冲突处理风格→团队创造力”的逻辑思路,对知识密集型任务团队内部的人际冲突过程及其对团队创造力构成的积极/消极影响进行了深入的探讨与剖析。1)参考认知心理学领域的S-C-R模型,寻找打开“刺激—反应”黑箱的钥匙,探索面子因素在冲突事件处理过程中的作用机理。本研究聚焦于特定的社会文化现象,从团队内部的面子氛围及冲突过程中的面子威胁感知角度切入,再现了面子顾虑对个体冲突应对行为的影响作用过程。研究结果表明:团队成员共享的面子需要和认知(即面子氛围)会通过他们对特定冲突事件的强度感知以及特定冲突情境中的面子威胁感知作用于不同的行为反应模式,也就是说:感知面子威胁在“冲突事件—冲突处理行为”之间扮演了部分中介传导的角色;具备不同需要的个体对冲突事件中包含的面子威胁信息有着不同的认识和理解,并因此而表现出不同的行为反应。与此相类似的是,在面对不同的冲突对象时,有关心理距离的主观判断也会影响冲突主体对于环境信息的释义。团队内部的自己人认同会通过团队成员的冲突易解决性感知以及特定的面子威胁感知间接作用于他们的冲突应对行为,且此类认同之于不同冲突处理模式的作用效应和作用方向将随冲突情境的变化而改变。由此可见,文化因素的影响作用并不能简单地一概而论;作为人际互动过程中的“潜规则”,其之于个体行为的引导、支配作用实际上是“情境依赖”的。除上述结论之外,本研究还发现:互动双方彼此之间的好感及关系的亲密程度对个体的面子顾虑有着直接的影响,且这一影响与其对感知面子威胁的直接影响作用恰好相反。这说明关系的亲密性判断事实上也包含了多重意义:如果将自己人关系的亲密性理解为“熟稔”,那么互动双方在冲突过程中会因为彼此了解而给予情境信息正确的释义,从而降低相应的威胁感知,即社会距离与感知面子威胁正相关;若是在亲密的定义中纳入情感依赖或是“喜爱”的成分,便极有可能激发个体的面子保全和印象整饰动机,进而提升成员的保护型面子需要以及与之相关的行为倾向。2)参考国内外学者的观点,结合本人前期的研究成果,提出感知面子威胁概念定义以及与此相关的四维度测量模型,剖析华人社会文化背景下面子威胁的具体来源。研究结论指出:华人在团队内部人际冲突过程中感知到的面子威胁至少包含四个方面的内容,即能力、人际关系、个人品德和自主需要;感知面子威胁的四个子维度之间存在不同程度的两两相关,其中尤以关系性面子威胁感知和品德性面子威胁感知最为明显(r=0.41),这一点恰好体现了儒家文化之于华人社会的根本性影响。冲突主体感知到的面子威胁乃是冲突事件类型特征(涉及冲突内容、性质)、强度特征(包括有关冲突激烈程度和冲突事件严重性的判断)和解决难易性特征共同作用的结果:不同类型的冲突情境将会激发不同性质、不同程度的面子威胁感知,而冲突主体形成的有关冲突强度和冲突解决可能性的判断也会在不同程度上影响不同性质的面子威胁感知。例如冲突主体感知到的利益冲突的强度只会对品德性和自主性面子威胁感知构成直接影响,且前者的标准化路径系数(β=0.290,p＜0.01)明显高于后者(β=0.146,p＜0.05)。3)参考诸多经典的西方冲突处理模式测量量表,综合、改良之后提出适用于华人社会冲突情境的测量工具,在验证Blake和Mouton(1964)五因子模型跨文化适用性的同时,揭示华人团队的冲突处理风格。数据分析结果表明,任意冲突情境下,团队成员的冲突处理行为选择都不是非此即彼的“单项判断”,而是存在多个备选答案的“多项组合”。经过长期的实践,这一组行为模式会固化成为相对稳定的冲突应对风格,从而构成某种意义上的“条件反射”。华人的冲突处理风格也可表现为感知面子威胁与冲突应对行为的特定组合,例如感知能力性面子威胁的提升易导致竞争行为,人际关系威胁的增强易导致协作行为,而品德性威胁的激化则相对更容易导致顺从行为等,这也说明不同性质的感知面子威胁在不同的冲突情境下有着不同的作用机制。除此之外,研究分析结果还表明:无论是在何种冲突情境下,同一性质的面子威胁感知与折衷模式之间的标准化路径系数始终高于协作,这似乎能在某种程度上证实华人之于“公平”的无上推崇。4)参考匹配理论的基本思想,探索特定冲突情境与冲突应对行为模式之间的匹配效应,考察冲突事件及其处理过程之于团队创造的作用效应。研究发现,冲突事件对团队创造表现的建设/破坏性影响并不是由事件内容,即冲突类型决定的,冲突处理模式的选择才是左右冲突进程及其最终结果的关键所在。运用不同的方法应对不同类型的冲突,才能确保将团队创造力维持在一个较高的水平。三组样本数据的模型拟合结果表明,冲突类型要素与其他反应冲突水平特征的因素(如冲突强度、冲突解决可能性)之间存在明显的交互作用——与不同类型的冲突事件有关的强度感知和解决预期会对相应的感知面子威胁造成不同性质及不同程度的影响:与此同时,冲突事件的具体内容还直接决定了不同冲突处理行为模式的有效性,其二者之间有着某种与身俱来的匹配关系,在它们的共同作用下,知识密集型任务团队将展现出截然不同的创造能力。研究结果再一次证实了协作模式的相对优越性,但另一方面也不能忽视竞争模式在认知和价值观冲突情境中的适用性。这说明冲突处理的具体方法本身并无绝对的好恶之分,关键要看如何运用以及在什么情况下运用;即便是妥协、退让、回避、屈从,在特定的情境下也可能有其积极、有利的一面。综合来看,本研究的主要内容之中有相当一部分属于探索性研究,由此得出的结论有助于丰富和完善团队内部人际冲突及相应的冲突处理理论、面子理论、自己人认同理论和团队创造理论,并能为知识密集型任务团队的管理实践提供一定的理论指导和借鉴。更多还原

【Abstract】 Organizations today are emerging from an era of change,and embarking upon a stage of uncertainty.Rapid market changes,technological advances,economic slowdowns, and eagemess for continuous improvement-challenge lies not only in their ability to survive,but also in capacity to innovate.Nevertheless,staff members, leaning upon individual knowledge and skill,can no longer meet the needs of diverse challenges.Self-directed teams,which consist of individuals coming from different areas of expertise,have contributed to the origins of innovation for every organization. This is especially for the knowledge-intensive ones,with a set of intellectual characteristics and working at creative resolutions to complicated problems and emergencies further constitute the backbone and key resources of organizations.At the same time,as an old saying goes ’too many cooks spoil the broth’, teamwork will not always lead to an expected outcome as ’1+1+1＞3’.’Two heads are better than one’ is only a good wish,since conflict is ubiquitous among people and concequency following up is out of control.Sometimes truth becomes clearer through debates,and courtesy can be affable but not adulatory,whereas negative emotion can lead to conflict are problems that affect our lives.Only with some certain methods, can a group get twice the result with half the effort.In general,Chinese people take ’face’(Mianzi) seriously,and their need to protect that ’face’ plays a crucial role in dealing with conflicts.The perceived threat to yourself and others will decide the strategy required to deal with the conflict.In addition,participants’ assessments of interpersonal relationship can also influence their interpretation of threats to their status,which then affect sequential behaviors.In other words,socio-culture means a lot to a working team.To clarify the functioning of cultural factors,finding out how to deal with intragroup conflict,and discovering the regular pattern of group creation,not only contributes to the capacity of conflict management,but also the full use of conflict itself;not only conduces to the elimination of negative effects,but also the encouragement of ’creative destruction’.Based on previous theoretical and empirical studies,this paper presents an in-depth analysis of both positive and negative influences imposed by interpersonal conflict in knowledge-intensive task group.It is an exploratory research operating at aggregated group-level,and following the logic line of ’intragroup interpersonal conflict→perceived face threat(s)→conflict handling style/modes→group creativity’. 1) Draw lessons from ’Stimulus-Cognition-Response’(S-C-R) model in cognitive psychology,this study attempts to explore the function of face in the process of conflict management.By focusing on specific socio-cultural phenomena and taking a unique perspective of group atmosphere of face-saving and perceived face threats throughout conflicts,conclusions demonstrate that:face concern and relevant face needs shared among team members will act on their behavioral responses through intensity and face-threatening perception of given cases.In other words,perceived face threat will work as a partial mediator and conductor between an interpersonal conflict and following response.Individuals with different face-saving needs will decode a face threat in various ways,and then react distinctly as a result.Similarly, when conflicted with different counterparts,the individuals’ subjective assessments of psychological distance between both sides will exert notable impact upon their interpretations of the environment.Ingroup identification among ’zijiren’ influences team members’ conflict-handling behaviors both through perceived solvability of conflict and induced face threats.The conductive paths between them differ in direction and strength as well.Therefore,mechanism of socio-cultural elements might be over-generalized.As hidden rules of personal interaction,their guiding effects on individual behavior are situation-dependent in nature.Furthermore,this study also looks at how mutual favor and intimacy between both parties will directly affect their face concern,and the direction of the effect is opposite to that imposing on perceived face threat.It is concluded that ’intimacy’ actually contains several meanings.When defined as ’familiarity’,due to understandings between each other,participants of an intragroup conflict can bring out correct interpretations to contextual information,which then lower the perceived threat.However,if mixed into liking or emotional dependence,it is more likely to trigger the motive of face-saving and impression management,which further intensifies pertinent needs and behavioral orientations.2) With reference to predecessors’ viewpoints and author’s preceding research, this study puts forward a definition for perceived face threat,and builds up a 4-dimention measuring model,in order to find out specific sources of face threats in Chinese background.It is indicated that face-threatening perceptions caused by intragroup interpersonal conflict events can be classified into at least four types: capability-based,relationship-based,morality-based and autonomy-based.There are significant pairwise correlations between each two of them,among which the most evident one is present between threat perceptions on interpersonal relationship and individual morality(r=0.41).Face threats recognized by individuals should be ascribed to the combining effects of type(refer to content and property of conflict events),intensity(refer to severity and importance of conflict events) and solvability of conflicts.Different circumstances usually cause different perceptions with different characters,and estimates relating to intensity and solvability of conflicts will exert impacts in different ways as well.For example,experienced intensity of an interest conflict can only cast influence on individual moral- and autonomy-based face-threatening perceptions,and standardized coefficient of the former(β=0.290, p＜0.01) is significantly higher than that of the latter(β=0.146,p＜0.05).3) Based on various classical measuring tools of conflict handling modes,this study summarize and integrates them into a new one,which is translated and revised to apply to Chinese context.It proves that the Five-Factor model raised by Blake and Mouton(1964) achieves adequate robustness.According to this model,we can easily uncover specific conflict-handling patterns and styles formed by every working group. Data analyses show that,under any circumstances,conflict management is no way a ’simple selection’,but rather a ’multiple combination of various alternatives’.After repeated practices,a set of behavioral modes will solidify into a more stable style,and then turn into ’conditional response’ to some extent.For Chinese,conflict-handling style also can be viewed as a combination of perceived face threats and consequential behavioral reactions.For example,enhancing threat perception on capacity will lead to competition,threat perception on relationship will develop cooperation,and threat perception on morality will result in obedience,etc.That means,perceived face threat functions variously in different kinds of intragroup conflicts.At the same time,results of data analysis manifest that,no matter what kind of conflict it is,the standardized coefficient for tradeoff behavior is always higher than that for cooperation.It seems to confirm the supreme pursuit of ’fair’ in Chinese society.4) In line with the fundamental idea of match theory,this study explores the match effect between specific circumstances of intragroup interpersonal conflicts and sets of handling modes,in order to disclose the impacts casted by conflicts and following processes upon the creative performance of a working group.The study concludes that the effects of constructive or destructive conflicts are not due to the content of the events,but rather in the selection of peculiar strategies,which in turn dominates the evolvement and outcome of the events.When applying different tactics to deal with different types of conflicts,can working group maintain creativity in a relative high level? Comparisons of three samples demonstrates that there is a significant interaction between type and level properties of a conflict event.Different perception of intensity and corresponding expectation of solvability,concerning different types of conflict,will impose various effects on individual perceptions of face threat.Additionally,the content of a conflict event also determines the effectiveness of different behaviors,and the two matches each other.As a result, knowledge-intensive groups will exhibit distinct performance on creative jobs.It is confirmed that cooperative handling mode is superior to other modes.However,on the other hand,the constructive function of competitive behaviors should not be ignored as well,especially in cognitive and value conflicts.There is no simple and clear division between right and wrong.The key point is how to make appropriate choice under specific circumstances,because even compromise,retreat,avoidance or obedience can be advantageous sometimes.In summary,this study is mainly an exploration.The conclusions obtained will help contribute towards a set of theories,such as theory of interpersonal conflict and conflict management,face and face concern,ingroup identification,and group creativity,which in turn give rise to valuable advice for the management of knowledge-intensive groups.更多还原