Conflict in the Classroom: An Exploration of the Role of Conflict in Engineering Teams

Open Access
- Author:
- Patel, Krina
- Area of Honors:
- Engineering Science
- Degree:
- Bachelor of Science
- Document Type:
- Thesis
- Thesis Supervisors:
- Kathryn Jablokow, Thesis Supervisor
Lucas Jay Passmore, Thesis Honors Advisor - Keywords:
- Team Dynamics
Team Conflict
Engineering Design
Psychological Safety - Abstract:
- With teamwork comes potential positive and negative consequences of conflict. Engineering is a high-reliability organization (HRO): unresolved conflict could result in negative consequences such as failed products, thus resulting in a low-performing team (Baker et al., 2006). On the contrary, a positive outcome for increased intragroup conflict offers different perspectives throughout the design process. Conflict is the awareness of differences among team members (Jehn and Mannix, 2001). According to De Wit et al. 2012, there are three types of conflict states: relationship conflict— disagreements over interpersonal problems— task conflict— disagreements over work or project-related issues—and process conflict—disagreements due to logistical problems (Jehn and Mannix, 2001, and De Wit et al., 2012). This study also observes the influences of temporal style conflict— disagreements over time allocations for specific tasks or meetings (Mohammed et al., 2017). However, status conflict— disagreements about the member’s position in a team, was not observed at all because the specific team roles were not explicitly measured nor identified (Lee, Choi, and Kim, 2018). A meta-analysis comparing 116 empirical studies reported that relationship and process conflict are negatively related to team performance, while task conflict was not correlated. Team performance is a component of team effectiveness in which teams yield superior outcomes (De Wit et al., 2012). Many of the studies exploring intragroup conflict have observed management teams for one period of time, with only a few observing engineering teams. This paper discusses the findings from the study to better understand team collaboration amongst student engineering designers over time. This thesis explores the influence of intragroup conflict on engineering student teams, both undergraduate and graduate students, as they collaborate for a longer time to solve a design problem, like how engineers typically collaborate in the industry. To better map the team experiences longitudinally, this study comprises two survey sets: the background and reflection survey. The background survey includes questions that assess the individuals’ demographic, academic, and personality traits. The reflection survey evaluates the team and individual experiences. Explicitly this study observes the longitudinal relationships among intragroup conflict states (relationship conflict, task conflict, process conflict, and temporal style conflict) and other variables. The participants completed the second survey multiple times throughout the team's lifespan to measure the longitudinal effect— surveying subjects more than two times— of conflict and better assess the asymmetrical changes in team conflict. The surveys were sent out to 75 students (~20 teams) enrolled in Engineering Design courses at the undergraduate and graduate levels. These courses prioritize teamwork and have incorporated long-term team projects throughout the semester. The models used to assess the intragroup conflict state and other variables consisted of interval Likert scale questionnaire models that have been derived and verified by various previous studies in fields of organizational psychology, management, and even a few in engineering. Descriptive analysis tools and statistical tests (i.e., Pearson correlation) were performed on the group-level data constructed from the individual-level responses from the participants. The conclusions derived from this study will help us better understand how perceptions of conflict influence relationships amongst student engineers as they collaborate over time and how it influences their experiences, performance, and intragroup relations.