Intragroup conflict dynamics and their linkages with horizontal power disparity configurations, upper management conflicts and coworker support
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Purpose This study aims to examine how changes in power disparity shape in-groups and upper-level management conflict are associated with intragroup relationship and task conflict variations. It also examines how workplace conflicts relate to focal employees’ perceptions of coworker support. Design/methodology/approach Data were collected from 3,343 respondents for nine years, comprising measurements taken on six occasions in 47 departments and stores of a Canadian retailer. The relationships between, within and across levels were tested using multilevel structural equation modeling. Findings The results showed that higher levels of power concentration vested by a few members or a single person are associated wih higher levels of intragroup conflict than usual. Furthermore, higher levels of task and relationship conflicts at upper management levels are associated with higher-than-usual task and relationship conflicts between nonhierarchical employees. Additionally, a higher-than-usual intragroup task conflict level was associated with lower-than-usual coworker support, supporting the proposed multilevel dynamic model. Research limitations/implications An important limitation of this study is that all variables are self-reported despite using the six-wave repeated measurements, thereby increasing the possibility of inflating some observed relationships. Future research should examine the emergence of a larger spectrum of power dispersion configurations and their role on process conflict. Practical implications Retail managers should legitimize why a high-power concentration occurs when the equal distribution of power is not possible and find ways to minimize the trickle-down effects of conflicts at upper levels on their subordinates. Originality/value This study examines the effect of variability on power configurations and conflict in upper management ranks on conflict dynamic. The findings show that a high-power concentration elicits increasing conflicts, and that there is no empirical evidence that intragroup conflict is associated with positive outcomes.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".