The effects of top management team size and interaction norms on cognitive and affective conflict

Measured the openness and mutuality of 48 top management teams and then measured the cognitive and affective conflict those teams experienced during the consideration of a single strategic decision. It was hypothesized that because cognitive conflict has been shown to improve decision quality, and affective conflict has been shown to undermine team harmony, effective top management teams would engage in processes that maximized the former and limited the latter. Results show that as predicted team size and openness were positively related to cognitive conflict. While team size was also associated with greater affective conflict, when teams had high levels of mutuality, greater openness led to less affective conflict. Results suggest that mutuality may be the key to effective conflict management.