The research aims to answers some of the critical question which matter mainly to engineering team leaders, managers, project managers, and executives who lead teams that are active in engineering field. The research will try first to answer the question “Which conflicts do typically occur in Engineering MVTs?”, and through reviewing the literature, the main categories of the conflicts that occur in MVTs generally will be sorted out. After that, engineers who work in MVTs will be surveyed to understand which type of conflicts happen more often in engineering MVTs. Based on the survey, the possible causes of these conflicts will be investigated. Based on the identified causes, the possible measures will be suggested, inverted from literature, to mitigate or solve conflicts in engineering MVTs.
Table of Contents
TABLE OF CONTENTS
TABLE OF FIGURES
1 INTRODUCTION
2 LITERATURE OVERVIEW
2.1 Conflicts in Teams
2.2 Characteristics of MVTs
2.3 Conflict Management
3 HYPOTHESIS AND METHODOLOGIES
4 RESULTS AND FINDINGS
4.1 Research Findings
4.2 Implications for Management: Conflict Management in Engineering MVTs
5 CONCLUSION
5.1 Takeaways
5.2 Limitations
6 APPENDIX I: QUESTIONNAIRE
7 APPENDIX II: QUESTIONNAIRE RESPONSES
8 LITERATURE
Table of Figures
FIGURE 1: DISTRIBUTION OF PARTICIPANTS SORTED BY CATEGORY
FIGURE 2: PERCENTAGE OF MEMBERS WHO (HAVE MORE CONFLICTS VIRTUALLY THAN F-TO-F) BASED ON (TEAM SIZE)
FIGURE 3: PERCENTAGE OF MEMBERS WHO (HAVE MORE CONFLICTS IN VIRTUAL MODE THAN F-2-F) BASED ON (INTERCULTURAL TRAINING)
FIGURE 4: PERCENTAGE OF MEMBERS WHO (FIND IT HARDER TO SOLVE CONFLICTS IN VIRTUAL MODE THAN F-TO-F) BASED ON (INTERCULTURAL TRAINING)
FIGURE 5: MEMBERS WHO HAVE MORE/LESS CONFLICT WHEN WORKING IN MVT COMPARED TO F-TO-F BASED ON EACH CONFLICT TYPE
1 Introduction
Ever since the dramatic climate change took place on our planet around 300,000 years ago and the consequent appearance of our ancestors “Homosapien” in Africa and Eurasia took place, conflicts have been always a crucial and fundamental part of humans’ daily life. As conflicts occurred between different tribes to impose control on their own “territories”, they also occurred between the members of the same tribes. Whether it is over who will go hunting, getting a bigger share of a hunt, or even sometimes to have a better status or position inside the tribe, conflicts have always been a genuine part of human nature. After several millenniums, and even though we have made a breakthrough as humans in how to live and work together, still conflicts are a basic and natural part of our human and organizational life. According to (Abiodun 2014), conflicts in an organization can occur because of the same “historical” reasons, such as a lack of resources, the collision of authority or power, or due to different leadership forms. As the word conflict always has a negative echo, he claims that it can also include a positive side, if it is well and wisely managed by the responsible personnel. On the other side, if conflicts are not being addressed appropriately, it can have critical consequences on the performance and output of the team and eventually, the organization.
Conflict in the workplace typically refers to disagreements or opposition between individuals or groups regarding interests, beliefs, needs, or values (Mayer et al., 2012). These disputes can occur between individual employees and their employer, among individuals, and between groups of employees and their employer (Currie et al., 2017). It is inevitable to avoid these conflicts, especially when employees are from various backgrounds, which adds more complexity to the conflict, due to cultural differences and stereotypes of the team members from one side, and the need for managers who have a skill set of competencies and suitable leadership to solve these conflicts (Babu, 2022). Adding another level of complexity, when the multinational team is “virtual”, the challenge is even bigger due to the difficulty of building trust, hardship of motivation team members, technological challenges and differences in time zones (Smith et al., 2020). Lately, companies are embracing virtual work culture as it carries many benefits such as cost savings, global talent utilization and mitigation of immigration issues (Choudhury, 2020). The later measure has been applied in all business sectors including research, development and engineering. And as the tendency to form decentralized-geographically distributed teams grows, an effective analysis of the reasons of conflict occurrence inside engineering MVT’s from different dimensions and 4 an exploration of possible conflict resolution strategies is a crucial step towards a positive work environment and increased productivity.
The research aims to answers some of the critical question which matter mainly to engineering team leaders, managers, project managers, and executives who lead teams that are active in engineering field. The research will try first to answer the question “Which conflicts do typically occur in Engineering MVTs?”, and through reviewing the literature, the main categories of the conflicts that occur in MVTs generally will be sorted out. After that, engineers who work in MVTs will be surveyed to understand which type of conflicts happen more often in engineering MVTs. Based on the survey, the possible causes of these conflicts will be investigated. Based on the identified causes, the possible measures will be suggested, inverted from literature, to mitigate or solve conflicts in engineering MVTs.
2 Literature Overview
2.1 Conflicts in Teams
As an authentic and natural part of work life, conflicts have gained importance in research, especially to understand what the possible conflicts forms and classifications are. (Verma, 1998), has classified work conflicts into “ 1. Goal Oriented ”; which is related to setting the common team goals, assessing the team performance and defining the end results. “2. Administrative conflicts”, which focus on the managerial configuration of the team, setting roles and functions of the members, the decision making within the team levels and the reporting mechanisms. “3. Interpersonal Conflicts”, which mainly focuses on the disputes resulted from cultural discrepancies, inhomogeneous personality types, unmatching personnel ethics, language differences, and similar traits which stim from the uniqueness nature of the human personality. (Currie et al., 2017), has classified work conflicts into categories with a different philosophy, based on team levels on which the occurrence of these conflicts take place, such as “Inter-personal”, “Inter-department” and “Interorganization”.
Eventually, the most adopted conflicts classification is the one mentioned in (Abiodun 2014), that categorizes work conflicts into 3 major groups, each group embed various reasons of conflicts, which are: “1. Relationship Conflicts”, “2. Task conflicts” and “3. Process conflicts”. As the former classification is the most common in research, it will be the one incubated in this work. By understanding the meaning and the major examples of the most important conflicts listed under each category, a sufficient understanding of work conflicts in team can be understood.
“Relationship Conflict” has been reflected by (Gigol, 2019) as it is mainly an “emotional” dispute. He claims that the motives of relationship disputes are usually unrelated to work. (Abiodun 2014), claims that the main reasons of relationship conflicts are a lacking affinity and an existing dissonance in interpersonal traits between the team members. confrontations, tension and irritation can be listed under this category of conflicts. These types of disputes can generate further negative emotions within the team members such as nervousness and discontentment and fear of being rejected by the team. In a team where there are unresolved relationship conflicts, interpersonal conflicts will rise and it will be challenging to establish a healthy communication between the team member, and thus there will be a direct effect on team performance.
Unlike “Relationship Conflicts”, “Task Conflict” has a direct link to the nature of work being done by the team. For example, a team member can have contradicting points of view on the method of achieving a certain task, the steps of execution, and the concept of the final goal of the task. This contradiction can stem of different background, experiences or viewpoints (Abiodun 2014). It can also be produced by incompatible vision of perspectives or different sequence of tasks (Verma, 1998). It has been argued that task conflicts can have huge benefits if handled appropriately. (Lu et al., 2011), claims that task conflicts support open expression and thus leads to a better exchange of ideas and eventually a better result. The later result will have a positive effect on the performance of the team and consequently the performance of the whole organization. However, if this type of conflicts is being neglected, it can produce lack of teamwork and job satisfaction (Abiodun 2014).
The 3rd type of work conflicts is the “process conflict”. And while most of the work in work conflicts focused on “Task Conflicts” and “Relationship Conflicts”, “ process conflicts” were somehow mistaken with task conflicts and were not attaining sufficient attention from researchers. To explain what does “ process conflicts” mean with an example, assume that team members are emotionally capable of handling their disputes. They have also agreed on how to achieve the task and what are the steps towards the final goals. However, if the members don’t agree on who is responsible for each subtask, or who is going to delegate a certain assignment that is a “process conflict”. (Kuriakose et al., 2019) found that “Process conflict” occur between team members over logistical and delegation matters. He also claims that this type of conflicts is the most damaging form of conflicts compared to the other two. The reason behind that is, process conflict can create a damaging consequence on the long term, compared to relationship and task conflicts which their consequences is likely to be on the short term.
2.2 Characteristics of MVTs
Now being aware of the types of conflicts in the workplace based on the research, it is time to understand what challenges and barriers does the “Multinational Virtual Teams - MVT” have, and based on that, we can explore what are the most contributing aspects on conflict creation within the team. (Morrison-Smith et al., 2020), has defined MVTs as a group of people who are located at various locations globally and depend on technological means to communicate and cooperate to achieve a work-related objective. Cooperation in MVTs can be synchronous and asynchronous, similar to conventional work teams. The same work has also classified the challenges which faces MVTs into four main categories. “1. Distance Challenges” , which the research work has subcategorized into “ Time-distance ” such as difference time zones or delays due to employees work style. “Location-distance”, which refers to the different geographical locations the team members located at, and “ Psychological distance”, which refers to the presumptive distance that a team member may assume in his interaction towards another member based on his impression. The second challenge in MVTs is “2. Task Type” , which refers to how close should the team member be to achieve the task. A Task which requires “ close collaboration” is mainly a complicated task which needs a continuous communication and high trust level between the team members to achieve a high performance, which is the opposite to a task which requires “ low collaboration”. The third challenge in MVTS is “3. Leadership”, which is one of the toughest challenges which faces this type of teams. (Morrison-Smith et al., 2020), claims that it is extremely difficult to manage a geographically distributed team which can intersect with several time zones, to achieve a complex project. That is because, the challenges coupled with effectively managing high number of team members from difference cultures and regulating interdependencies, which needs a tremendous amount of coordination and leadership efforts. Finally, “4. Team diversity” is a deciding factor on how challenging is work in MVTs is. It is claimed that teams which have more in common, such as shared previous work experience , can get a long easier and have less conflicts in between as they are aware of each other’s work style, ethics and motivation, additionally, common social and cultural background can contribute to the stability of the team, as it is believed those who speak the same language or similar values. An example on that is the discrepancies between members who belong to collective cultures in contrast to individual cultures. The of self-efficacy that some culture members have, can increase the tendency of acceptance of remote work, which at the end can lead to unexpected conflicts due to the socio-cultural distance. Additionally, goals and motivations of individualists contradicts with those of collectivists, as the individualism places his needs, beliefs and goals of the team’s, in opposition to collectivism. Additionally, Work Culture can also have a word on conflict creation inside the team, as it is believed that two members who share the same work cultures due to i.e. working for long time at the same organization, may get along better than two members who come from the same region and speak the same language, but have inhomogeneous work culture.
2.3 Conflict Management
Being through the different conflict types and what can cause them, it is time to have a glance on how the research has handles conflict management topic. Conflict management was defined by (Thakore, 2013) that it is seeking to solve the conflict and stopping it from developing further.
(Paul et al., 2005) have researched the conflict management strategies in virtual teams and concluded two categorizations of conflict resolution from literature: an extended and a simplified categorization. The extended categorization includes 5 different styles of resolutions: “1. Withdrawal resolutions”, which refers to intentionally avoid the situation. “2. Adaptation resolutions”, which refers to focusing on the areas where it is agreed on and trying to waive the disagreements. “3. Competitive resolutions”, which refers to when one side of the conflict forces the other to acquiesce to his own views. “ 4. Collaborating resolutions”, which refers to the cooperation and the integration of the views of the sides of the conflict. And finally, “5. accommodation resolutions”, refers to working of the sides of the conflict on finding the common areas and agreeing on it . (Paul et al., 2005) have then introduced a summarized conflict management categorization of 3 styles: “1. Withdrawal/avoidance”, to intentionally avoid the situation, “2. Collaboration”, which is to find a solution to satisfies all sides of the conflict. And “3. Competitive” which means that one side of the conflict enforces his views over the rest of the members. (Glazer et al., 2012), has researched the circumstances and factors which accompanies and affect the process of conflict management . The work claims that some factors such as communication style, cultural differences and values can affect the efficiency of the conflict resolution. It also claims conflicts are being better solved rather with communication channels which grants better interaction to the participants i.e. video calls than those which provides less interaction i.e. texting. Direct and indirect approaches in solving conflict is closely coupled with the culture or the background, for example some cultures would prefer to be clear and straight forward and suggest resolutions which provides common benefits, while other cultures may care more about being diplomatic, avoid directness and humiliation. (Paul et al., 2005) and (Glazer et al., 2012) both agree that involving the team members within the process increases the satisfaction towards the decision made to resolve the conflict.
3 Hypothesis and Methodologies
The hypothesis of this research work are as follows:
H1: Engineering MVTs differ from the other teams in the organization regarding the causes of conflict.
The hypothesis assumes that engineering teams have some characteristics that distinguish them compared to other teams within the organization. It is claimed that engineering team members usually have some characteristics in common, such as: conceptual thinking, ability to work on relatively unorganized tasks, data collection and analysis and working in cross functional teams (Lee, 1986), problem solving skills and self-efficacy (Bond et al., 2015), good communication skills (Oladiran et al., 2011). Furthermore, the nature of the tasks in engineering teams differs from other teams in the organization. It is usually a complex task which involves multiple stakeholders with different functions, some of the stakeholders are distributed geographically. The nature of the tasks also requires a close collaboration and an extensive coordination by management staff. Additionally, the virtuality and multinational dimensions to the later described challenges, it can have a direct influence on the work environment in MVTs. Based on the previous analysis, the first assumption was raised. The conflicts within MVT may be affected negatively by factors such as distance, complexity, and diversity. Or it can be affected positively due to the personal and interpersonal skills, self-efficacy and other characteristics which usually engineers being chosen based on.
The methodology used to test this hypothesis will be based on empirical-quantitative research done by a Appendix I: Questionnaire. The questionnaire was designed to sort of the MVT members into groups based on age, gender, years of experience, years of international experience and prior intercultural training. According to (Desrayaud and Hurley, 2023) intercultural atmosphere can have positive and negative influence on conflict generation within the team, therefore intercultural trainings and support is a crucial factor to be measured and reflected on the conflict situation in the team. Similarly, number of years of international experience shall be also measured by the questionnaire, as it will indeed have an effect on the cross- cultural work capabilities of the team member. Factor such as age was also considered as there are a lot of studies which connects certain conflict aspects such as conflict avoidance, pursuing support online and conflict styles to a certain age group i.e. millennials (LeMay, 2022). In addition to the aforementioned criteria, direct questions to the development of different conflicts in the workplace shall be asked. It focused 10 mainly on task and relationship conflicts as the main 2 categories, and neglecting process conflict even though it was implemented in the questionnaire draft; the reason behind this neglection is the confusion between the respondents and mixing up between the different types of conflicts after the questionnaire’s first pretest. The questions regarding conflict development are mainly aiming to understand Respondents feeling about the number of conflicts from each type there in the team, comparison between conflict development in face-to-face vs. virtually and how challenging was it to solve the conflict compared to face-to-face mode. Eventually, questions about the group composition will be asked to investigate the different group characteristics such as team size, language used and number of nationalities inside the team.
H2: Mitigating and solving conflicts in engineering MVTs is possible by applying a set of measures.
Conflict in (virtual) workplace has been discussed in the literature and there are suggested efficient measures that can be adopted. Nevertheless, the relevancy of the suggested measures by the literature may (un)suit the conflicts nature in engineering MVTs. Developing cultural intelligence instinct (William et al., 2022), enhance team communication and improve relationships by adopting in-team building activities (Nurzynski, 2023), recognizing the impact of virtuality on team trust and relationship conflicts (Alves et al., 2023) are all possible measures to conflict mitigation. The question is how relevant these measures are to engineering MVTs. Thus, this hypothesis is established on adopting certain measures from the literature based on the survey results, which described already in H1, can contribute to an accurate framework to manage conflict in engineering MVTs.
4 Results and Findings
4.1 Research Findings
The questionnaire was posted online on LinkedIn.com to be answered and has gathered around 31 responses which 3 responses of them are considered invalid, as it answered questions 5: “Have you ever worked with other team members who are located somewhere else (virtual team)?” with: (b) No. Therefore, the valid answers of the questionnaire are only 28 answers. The biggest part of the respondents was “Males” with 87% while females were 13% of the responses, with no respondents from the other gender options. Therefore, the results are somehow unbalanced as it may only be representing the point of view of one gender exclusively. The majority of the results with 84% were made by the “millennials: 1980-1994”, while “generation X” and “generation Z” participants came after with 10% and 6% respectively. Therefore, the results are expected to dominantly represent the “Millennials”, which it is not clear if it differs from other generations’ behavior or not and may need to be researched in the future further. Regarding professional experience, more than half of the participants have experience which exceeds 10 years, while more than 30% have between 5-10 years of experience. Similarly, people with 5 to 10 years of international experience represent almost the half of the participants (52%), while the third (32%) have >10 years of international experience, and the rest is distributed almost equally on the other two categories (0-2 and 2-5 years) of international experience. This may be a good sign that most of the respondents have a considerate contact with an international work environment and adds credibility to the research results. Another factor which adds credibility to the research results is that all the participants have worked in face- to-face mode beside being involved in virtual teams, that confirms that all participants have experienced both of work modes and have a feeling on the differences between them.
Illustrations are not included in the reading sample
Figure 1: Distribution of Participants sorted by Category.
Analyzing the entire valid questionnaire responses (28 responses) regarding “Relationship conflicts - RC” , exactly half of respondents (14) say that they have LESS RC in the virtual team than in face-to-face mode. While around 20% say it is the same amount of RC in the virtual team as in face-to-face mode. As 11% not sure about the answer, only 18% have MORE RC in virtual mode than in face-to-face. More interestingly, only 1 person has said that she/he has MANY RC in virtual mode against more than 85% who think that they have some or none RC in their virtual team. This is indeed an interesting finding as it shows that engineering MVTs can actually improve the team performance, at least regarding the part connected to RC, by switching partially or completely to virtual mode. It has been found that between the group which had less or similar RC after during virtual mode has a good percentage of members who received intercultural training (65%), which means this can be the reason why the communication between the group is efficient and the possibility of an RC to occur is low. Regarding solving RC, and even though switching to virtual did not cause more RC than in face-to-face mode, 43% of the participant have expressed another interesting fact which is, whenever RC happen in the MVT, it is harder to solve the conflict virtually compared to face-to-face mode. And even though this group of respondents seem to be trained interculturally (75% of people who find it hard to solve RC virtually, have said they received intercultural training), the reason why they found hardship solving RC can be the usage of another language other than mother language, as 92% of them do not use their mother language within the team, which may lead to miscommunications and hardship solving the issue.
Analyzing the entire valid questionnaire responses (28 responses) regarding “Task Conflicts - TC”, we can clearly spot a noticeable difference compared to RC. As number of RC has significantly diminished in virtual mode, almost half or respondents (13) realized MORE TC when they work with their virtual team. Besides, another indication has ascended to blow the whistle on a critical issue in engineering MVT, that is a big majority of the engineers participated in the survey find it HARDER than face- to-face to solve their task conflicts virtually. This outcome can be considered somehow unexpected as the majority of the participants are well experienced technically in an international environment for at least 5 years, with two thirds of the participants received intercultural training. The only measured aspect that may justify this deterioration in task performance can be the usage of a foreign language, however, this is indeed neither the only nor the main reason, as it is assumed that the same members have used also a foreign language during their face-to-face contact and still had less TC than virtual mode. However, the usage of a foreign language on a nonrich communication media can be a logical cause of a weak team communication and thus a higher misunderstanding and more TC consequently.
Despite the judgment done on the TC results is assumed to be negative, it is however worth it to consider what (Lu et al., 2011) has mentioned that task conflict may also indicate a good team collaboration, creativity, and integration. Thus, it is not measured nor proven that all of the members who realized “More TC” have experienced it from a negative perspective. There is a possibility that some of those members have actually a better communication and more advanced tool on virtual mode that enabled them to provide constructive criticism which may have led to a rising number of TC in their teams. However, until the previous assumption is tested, it cannot be accepted.
Having looked on the entire group members, it is also a good idea to compare subgroups who have a certain feature in common. For example, if we compare members of the subgroup which used their mother language in communication with MVT (4), we can see their responses in regard to the number of conflicts developed in virtual mode. 25% of the people who spoke their native language in the MVT have realized more RC and 50% had more TC in MVT. These numbers are very close to the entire group numbers and can say that speaking a native or a second language may not be the factor which caused the deterioration in TC situation.
Focusing on Team Size, the survey concludes a certain team size which didn’t realize sever consequences when operated virtually. We can see that small groups (0 to 5 members) and big groups (>20 members) are those who suffered the most from ascending number of TC and RC in virtual mode. And as the RC number is very comparable, TC varies significantly. It can be explained that in small team and with a close collaboration it is possible that the TC in (0 to 5 member) teams is tending more to be with a positive nature, while in (>20 member) teams, a TC will likely with negative consequences due to the huge efforts needed to clarify the dispute and coordinate between members. On the other side, the (5 to 10 member) teams seem to be the best performing on both aspects (RC - TC), as 11% of their members realize More RC and 22% realize more TC when working in MVT. This team size seems to be the optimum size to work in MVT, and it is managing well the workload without overloading members (could be possibly the case in small teams), and also saves a lot of coordination efforts and overlapped work that must be achieved when working in big teams (>20 members).
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Figure 2 Percentage of members who(have more conflicts virtually than f-to-f) based on (Team Size)
Regarding Intercultural training, the results somehow shape a “dilemma”. As intercultural training is always considered a positive factor in establishing a productive and well-communicating MVT, the questionnaire results have somehow proved the opposite. The survey shows that subgroup of engineers who did receive intercultural training, have more TC and RC (21% and 63% of the members respectively), compared to the entire group ration or even the subgroup who did not receive any intercultural training (!).
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Figure 3: Percentage of members who (have more conflicts in virtual mode than f-2-f) based on (Intercultural Training)
Strangely enough, the same conclusion is proved by the number of members who find it harder solving conflicts in MVT than face-to-face mode. While the entire group had around 75% and 43% who find it harder to solve TC and RC respectively, the subgroup of engineers who received intercultural training have a 85% and 47% that suffer from the same hardship. Surprisingly, the subgroup which has not received any intercultural training, is capable of solving their TC and RC more smoothly (55% and 22% of them find it harder to solve TC and RC in MVT than in face-to-face mode). The previous unexpected response can be explained in more than a way. Firstly, this can have a direct connection to the size of the sample (number of respondents) so the data can form a misleading conclusion. Besides, the quality of the intercultural trainings recently conducted on a large-scale manner in thousands of companies worldwide are contrasted. As the quality of the intercultural training was surveyed, it is hard to conclude that all the respondents who said they are interculturally trained, are in fact capable of handling conflicts in MVT or not.
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Figure 4: percentage of members who (find it harder to solve conflicts in virtual mode than f-to-f) based on (Intercultural Training)
Having analyzed the questionnaire responses, enough output is available to test the hypothesis (H1). Based on the previous discussion, there are various factors that support the validity of the hypothesis (H1). Firstly, according to (Pfeifer et al., 2018), in any work team, the development of TC between team members contribute to further development of RC, in other words, RC directly and positively proportional to TC. However, between engineering MVT, it is clear that as the TC have critically developed in virtual mode, RC have also significantly decreased.
Illustrations are not included in the reading sample
Figure 5: members who have more/less conflict when working in MVT compared to-f-f based on each conflict type.
Besides, team size was believed to have very weak influence on the conflict development in MVT (Gheni et al., 2016), however, the results show that engineering MVT are sensitive to the number of team members and there is a certain team size that empirically shows positive results regarding conflict development, compared to other team sizes. Additionally, intercultural training seemed to have a reversed effect regarding the conflict development within the engineering MVT. However, this needs a better investigation regarding the quality of the intercultural training and how far does the team apply it in the daily business.
4.2 Implications for Management: Conflict Management in Engineering MVTs
After the detailed research conducted on conflicts in engineering MVTs and what are the possible characteristics that affect conflict development between team members, in this part of the research work, some measures will be suggested for conflict management inspired from both the research made and the existing literature on the topic. From the results concluded from chapter 4.1, it can be assumed that engineering MVTs have actually strongly benefited from being working virtually in the aspect of relationship conflict development. It has been noticed that number of relationship conflicts has significantly dropped and therefore in this part task conflicts will be the point of focus.
“Prevention is better than cure..”, as the famous quote claims, it may be beneficial to dedicate efforts to conflict prevention in the workplace, instead of focusing completely on solving conflicts that are expected to happen. Based on the results introduced in chapter 4.1, some conflict prevention measures can be suggested. Developing cultural intelligence instinct (William et al., 2022) and enhancing team communication and improve relationships by adopting in-team building activities (Nurzynski, 2023) are two important conflict prevention strategies. Thus, an intercultural training is always considered a positive factor in establishing a productive and well-communicating MVT. However, the research results discovered that training conducted was not efficient. It was either not conducted in a sufficient quality level or the engineering MVT cannot apply it in their daily business on a level that reduce the task conflicts. Nevertheless, it can be also caused by other factors which are not surveyed. As the main type of conflict existing in engineering MVT is task conflict, it is suggested to conduct a “ customization of intercultural training ” than suits the team composition and the nature of the tasks dealt with. According to (Bennet et al., 2000) customization of intercultural training is important factor to support multinational teams achieving their international tasks.
In addition to intercultural training factor, engineering tasks are often closely connected to “processes”, a high number of task conflicts in the team may mean that the processes within the team are not clear or they are not followed. Another suggestion that may contribute to conflict prevention is to set sort of a “ coach ” who is simply an especially trained team member and can intervene before the escalation of the conflict and suggest or call for following the correct process in order to reduce the conflict consequences, this type of coaches is suitable for flat hierarchy teams which doesn’t have a clear team “leader”.
Besides, emotional intelligence (EI) plays a crucial factor in both conflict prevention and management. As by recognizing, adapting and using emotions both one’s own and others can contribute controlling conflicts prior to escalation and help the team members improving work atmosphere and performance (Abas et al.,2010).
Conflict management, especially of task conflicts, must be done with caution as each conflict management strategy has its own consequences. A “competitive” or “enforcing” strategy is not suggested for task management (To, et al., 2021), especially 18 in an engineering MVT. While such a strategy may be acceptable in certain cultures, it is widely unaccepted in other cultures, therefore it will not fit in a multinational team. Besides, forcing one opinion or solution in the team without openly discussing other possibilities may eliminate creativity and crucially harm performance on the long term. A “ collaborative ” conflict management strategy is believed to be the only strategy which has a direct positive influence on task conflicts, and it has been found that team performance is being improved when preferring this strategy (Parry et al., 2008). In the same manner, (Bergiel et al., 2008) also suggests that involving the team members within the process of resolving the conflict increases the members’ satisfaction towards the decision made and thus improves the team performance. An “ avoidance ” strategy on the other side is strongly unrecommended as it has dangerous consequences on teams’ communication, collaboration and performance.
5 Conclusion
5.1 Takeaways
There is a plenty of companies that shift their work to virtual mode either partially or fully. Thus, there are nowadays more multinational virtual teams than ever. That required detailed research to understand the effect of working virtually in a global context specifically, on engineering teams. This research tried to understand which conflicts typically occur in engineering MVTs. The conducted questionnaire has proven that engineering teams differ from the other teams in the organization regarding the number and type of conflicts developed, the effect of intercultural training, and team size. It has been found that engineers who work in a multinational virtual team have significantly reduced relationship conflicts between them, however, they incur a lot more task conflicts than in face-to-face mode. Respondents have also found difficulty solving their conflicts virtually, either task or relationship conflicts. The research also raises a red flag related to intercultural training. While most of the respondents already received intercultural training, however, it seems it only played a major role in reducing relationship conflicts but seems to be inefficient in supporting engineers in handling their task conflicts. Additionally, the research suggests that a team with size between 5-10 members had a better situation regarding conflict creation. Regarding language, the research found that using a first language or foreign language in engineering MVT didn’t influence conflict creation.
Based on the previous outcomes, the research suggests some measures for conflict prevention and mitigation in engineering MVT, with a focus on task conflicts. Firstly, 19 conducting intercultural training is still a crucial key factor in enabling the team to mitigate conflicts, however, it must be tailored to fit into the team business and their group composition, as based on the backgrounds and cultures of the members, they may need more focus or support on a certain criterion. Besides, for teams that don’t have a clear team leader i.e. flat hierarchy, it can be beneficial to assign one specially trained member to act as a coach who can intervene to support the team and avoid conflict escalation.
Regarding conflict management strategies, the research suggests embracing a collaborative strategy as it has been found from the existing literature is the only strategy that has a direct positive influence on task conflicts and performance. A competitive or avoiding strategy may have negative consequences on engineering MVTs in the short and the long term.
5.2 Limitations
The results presented are limited by some factors. While the questionnaire was not directed to a specific type of respondents and was available online to any participant, the respondents happen to be undiversified, and their majority were males who are born 1980-1994 (millennials). Thus, it can reflect an incomplete image of conflict development in engineering MVT. Future research should take the previous aspect into consideration to generate realistic results. As next steps, task conflict has to be investigated to understand if it had a negative or positive nature, as it is not clear from the conducted research. In addition, intercultural training should be investigated deeply to understand its quality level. This can be done by surveying engineering MVT if it played a role in reducing conflicts or easing the process of solving conflicts in the team.
6 Appendix I: Questionnaire
Note: some research terms have been simplified within the questionnaire, so it is easier for unspecialized to interact with the questions.
Link to google forms: https://forms.gle/E99hYQSUsNco5UV49
General Questions
1. When were you born?
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Task Conflicts
Note: examples of Task conflicts
Disagreeing in the team on a technical concept of a project, having a different point of views on the steps to achieve the technical requirements, or when another colleague thinks the design made doesn’t fulfill the customer’s needs. Any disagreement in the team due to the task itself can be called “Task conflict”.
8. How many task conflicts are there in your virtual team?
(a) None (b) Some (c) Many (d) Not sure
9. Compared to face-to-face work, do you have often more task conflicts in your virtual team?
(a) More conflicts (b) Similar to (c) Less than (d) Not sure than face-to- face-to-face face-to-face.
face
10. Compared to face-to-face work, how easy to solve “task conflicts” virtually?
(a) Easier than (b) Similar to (c) Harder than (d) Not sure face-to-face face-to-face face-to-face
Relationship Conflicts
Note: examples of Relationship conflicts
A Relationship conflict in workplace means simply you don’t get along with your colleague, whether because of a trivial reason such as her political view or his attitude at work. It can also happen without a clear reason.
11. How many relationship conflicts are there in your virtual team?
(a) None (b) Some (c) Many (d) Not sure
12. Compared to face-to-face work, do you have often more relationship conflicts in your virtual team?
(a) More conflicts (b) Similar to (c) Less than (d) Not sure than face-to- face-to-face face-to-face.
face
13. Compared to face-to-face work, how easy to solve “Relationship conflicts” virtually?
(a) Easier than (b) Similar to (c) Harder than (d) Not sure face-to-face face-to-face face-to-face
Group Composition
14. How many members does the virtual team have (including you)?
(a) 0-5 (b) 5-10 (c) 10-20 (d) >20
15. how many nationalities are there in your virtual team?
(a) One (b) Two (c) More than (d) Not sure
two
16. Is communication between team member done in their mother language?
(a) Yes (b) No
7 Appendix II: Questionnaire Responses
Illustrations are not included in the reading sample
8 Literature
Illustrations are not included in the reading sample
[...]
Buy now
- Quote paper
- Ahmed Hamed (Author), 2024, Conflict Management in Multinational Virtual Teams, Munich, GRIN Verlag, https://www.grin.com/document/1630995
