Team effectiveness in China: Cooperative conflict for relationship building

Groups are increasingly responsible for accomplishing critical, complex tasks for organizations, but understanding and developing effective teamwork have proved difficult. Findings from groups in Chinese enterprises supported recent theorizing that confidence in the group’s interpersonal relationships promotes team effectiveness. Results also suggested, in contrast to traditional theorizing about Chinese values, that conflict management was an important foundation for this confidence in relationships. Specifically, the structural equation analysis supported the reasoning that cooperative conflict builds confidence in relationships that, in turn, results in team effectiveness. Results were interpreted as providing support for the universalistic aspirations of the theory of cooperation and competition and that managing conflict cooperatively is a foundation for team effectiveness in China as well as in the West.