CONFLICT MANAGEMENT The Psychology of conflict and conflict ...

202 JEHN, BEZRUKOVA, AND THATCHER
workgroups by contrasting group composition theories of dispersion and
alignment. We proposed that a particular alignment across group members
and the resulting demographically motivated subgroups are what
make a difference in predicting the various types of conflict, more so than
the dispersion, or heterogeneity, of demographic characteristics. This
alignment may not necessarily cause dysfunctional processes, as has been
suggested (e.g., Lau & Murnighan, 1998; Thatcher, et al., 2003), but rather
it may promote effective decision-making processes via the various types
of conflict. Consequently, we theorized about the nature of alignment,
and specifically about the type of diversity responsible for the alignment
(social category vs. information based), which determines to what degree
members of a group will experience task, relationship, or process conflict
(or a combination of the three). The delineation of the processes behind
social category and information-based splits as related to conflict should
help managers to handle effectively the dynamics of diverse groups and
researchers to further the specification of the complex processes resulting
from various profiles of group composition.
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