Interpersonal Conflict: The Importance of Clarifying Manifest Conflict Behavior

Managing conflict in organizations has long been a topic of interest to researchers because of its impact on performance. In particular, one of the goals of conflict research is to clarify how task and relationship conflict affect performance, but the exact nature of that role remains unclear. This conceptual work attempts to highlight the importance of more closely examining manifest conflict and developing a consistent behavioral taxonomy for use in conflict research. Conflict researchers propose that task conflict should have a mainly positive relationship with performance while relationship conflict should have a mainly negative relationship with performance. Empirically, however, there has been wide variation in the findings linking either type of conflict with performance and the development of consistent conflict behaviors may facilitate much needed clarity. Specifically, the use of Bales’ interaction process analysis (IPA) behavioral taxonomy will allow for broadening the focus of interpersonal conflict studies to include behavioral elements. This taxonomy is particularly relevant in this context as it identifies a small subset of behaviors that is broad enough to capture the range of behavioral interaction but narrow enough to be related to both conflict and performance which represents a reasonable compromise. This research adds value by proposing an option for clarifying the inconsistencies within the existing conflict literature through the use of a behavioral taxonomy. Conducting behavioral conflict research may help to clarify the mechanism through which interpersonal conflict affects performance.