Conflict and Creativity in Groups

Consultants and researchers have long recognized the debilitating effects that conflict between group members can have on both group and individual outcomes . Yet less attention has been paid to the important role that conflict may play in helping generate innovative solutions to ill‐structured problems . Furthermore , conflict (properly managed) is critical to the avoidance of groupthink (i . e ., the tendency to sacrifice quality decision making and problem solving for the sake of consensus and conflict avoidance) . What strategies can group members use to incorporate conflict , or more specifically , dissent in group problem solving? We argue that the delivery of dissenting opinions (negative evaluations) affects the extent to which dissent fosters creativity . We report the results of an experiment in which the target of negative evaluations was varied (e . g ., source of an idea vs . idea itself ) and compared to a condition in which no negative evaluations were incorporated . The results show that (1) creativity is higher in the conditions involving idea‐targeted negative evaluations than source‐targeted or no negative evaluations; (2) negative evaluations from others increase in conditions in which there are source‐targeted negative evaluations and idea‐targeted negative evaluations , compared to no negative evaluations; and (3) group members report higher levels of satisfaction when working under conditions involving idea‐targeted negative evaluations , compared to source‐targeted or no negative evaluations . We discuss the implications of this research for organizational settings , with particular attention to how they might inform the design of group decision support systems .