Beyond the truce: how conflict affects teams' decisions whether to enact routines or creative projects

This study explores the causal relationship between conflict and actions taken by teams to accomplish their tasks. We differentiated between two forms of action trajectories, routines, and creative projects and used a laboratory experiment with a 2 (task conflict: yes vs. no) x 2 (interpersonal conflict: yes vs. no) factorial design to test how task and interpersonal conflicts affect teams' decisions to enact routines or less routine creative projects. Teams subjected to task, interpersonal, or a combination of task and interpersonal conflict solved recurring challenges in the computer game Minecraft. We find that both task and interpersonal conflict independently increase teams' tendency to pursue change by enacting creative projects. We conclude that task and interpersonal conflict lead teams to avoid developing routines and to attempt creative projects.