On the relationship between intragroup conflict and social capital in teams: A longitudinal investigation in Taiwan

In response to the prevalent deployment of teams in organizations, there is a need to jointly consider conflict and social capital within the teams to offer novel ways to understand group process. This study proposes that the association between intragroup conflict and group social capital may be dynamic and reciprocal. Specifically, this study investigates longitudinally how intragroup conflict influences group social capital within cross‐functional teams and recognizes whether the teams with high group social capital can further produce intragroup conflict. The two‐year longitudinal study sampled 527 individuals in 90 teams across two time periods. This study finds that when teams are formed (Time 1), task conflict relates positively to structural social capital, and relationship conflict relates negatively to cognitive social capital. There is an inverted U‐type relationship between task conflict at Time 1 and social capital at Time 2. Established teams (Time 2) with higher levels of social capital experience higher levels of task conflict and lower levels of relationship conflict than teams with lower levels of social capital. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.