Does conflict shatter trust or does trust obliterate conflict? Revisiting the relationships between team diversity, conflict, and trust

Abstract

This article explores the interplay between trust and conflict as antecedents of team effectiveness. In the first cross-sectional study, two alternative path models are tested in a sample of 174 teams (897 participants) with the emergent states of task conflict, relationship conflict, and trust acting as mediators between team demographic diversity (gender and nationality) on the one hand and perceived team effectiveness on the other. In one model trust is considered as an antecedent for the two types of conflict, while in the other the two types of conflict precede the emergence of trust. Although the fit indices for the model in which trust is considered the antecedent of conflict were slightly better, both models fitted the data well. The interdependence of trust and conflict was further explored in a second longitudinal study (49 teams), and the results showed that trust emerging in the initial team interaction phases is a good predictor for the emergence of both task and relationship conflict in further stages of team development.