Purpose

Teams often cannot fulfill their managers’ expectations due to unfairness issues and dysfunctional conflicts with teammates. This paper aims to create a fair team environment, it is important to analyze the interrelationship between unfairness and conflict. However, only a few studies have done this and reported inconsistent results. Using negative reciprocity research as a theoretical foundation, this paper analyzes the interconnection between unfairness and conflict dimensions in the team context. This paper further integrates conflict management research to show employees and managers how to handle unfairness and conflict in teams.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors conducted a longitudinal survey study (three points in time) with 237 employees from different German organizations.

Findings

The results of cross-lagged structural equation modeling provide some evidence that interpersonal, procedural and informational unfairness predict relationship conflict and process conflict. Several of these effects become non-significant over time. Further, relationship and process conflict have several significant relationships with the unfairness dimensions, while task conflict did not have any significant relationship. The results also suggest that employees can break up the vicious cycle of unfairness and conflict by using a cooperative conflict management approach.

Research limitations/implications

This paper focuses on members of autonomous, interdependent and existing teams and the interpersonal relationship of a team member with her or his teammates. Future research could analyze leader-member relationships in different team types.

Practical implications

The application of cooperative conflict management enables employees to break up the vicious cycle of unfairness.

Originality/value

This paper clarifies the interrelationship between unfairness and conflict and shows that a team member can apply a cooperative conflict management style to handle effectively unfairness and conflict.

中文翻译：

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团队间不公平和冲突的恶性循环

目的

由于不公平问题和与队友之间的功能失调，团队通常无法达到经理的期望。本文旨在创建一个公平的团队环境，分析不公平与冲突之间的相互关系非常重要。但是，只有少数研究做到了这一点，并报告了不一致的结果。本文以消极互惠性研究为理论基础，分析了团队环境下不公平与冲突维度之间的相互联系。本文进一步整合了冲突管理研究，向员工和经理展示了如何处理团队中的不公平和冲突。

设计/方法/方法

作者对来自德国不同组织的237名员工进行了纵向调查研究（三个时间点）。

发现

交叉滞后结构方程建模的结果提供了一些证据，证明人际，程序和信息不公平预示了关系冲突和过程冲突。随着时间的流逝，其中一些影响变得不那么重要。此外，关系和过程冲突与不公平维度具有若干重要关系，而任务冲突则没有任何重要关系。结果还表明，员工可以使用合作冲突管理方法来打破不公平和冲突的恶性循环。

研究局限/意义

本文重点介绍自治团队，相互依赖的团队和现有团队的成员，以及团队成员与其团队成员之间的人际关系。未来的研究可以分析不同团队类型的领导者－成员关系。

实际影响

合作冲突管理的应用使员工能够打破不公平的恶性循环。

创意/价值

本文阐明了不公平与冲突之间的相互关系，并表明团队成员可以采用合作式冲突管理风格来有效地处理不公平与冲突。