TEAM EFFECTIVENESS AND AFFECTIVE CONFLICT

Affective Conflict: disagreements over personalized, individually oriented matters are largely detrimental to team performance	Whereas cognitive conflict may be seen as useful, some conflict can also be harmful. Conflict can provoke so much animosity among a team' s members that decision quality actually declines along with the commitment and understanding necessary to get the decision successfully implemented. Such conflict may be called affective conflict. Affective conflict lowers team effectiveness by provoking hostility, distrust, cynicism, and apathy among team members. Most affective conflict is focused on personalized anger or resentment, usually directed at specific individuals rather than specific ideas. Affective conflict undermines team effectiveness by preventing teams from engaging in the kinds of activities that are critical to team effectiveness.
In situations of affective conflict, commitment to the team itself erodes because team members no longer associate themselves with the team's actions.	Affective conflict fosters cynicism, distrust, and avoidance, thereby obstructing open communication and integration. Naturally, team members who are distrustful of or apathetic toward one another are not willing to engage in the types of discussions necessary to synthesize their different perspectives. Team members who are hostile or cynical are not likely to understand, much less commit to, decisions that were made largely without their participation.
Affective conflict undermines a team's ability to function effectively in the future. Team members who have been burned by affective conflict in the past are less likely to participate fully in future meetings.	As teams experience affective conflict, they become less effective. Members become less committed to seeing the decisions implemented, and they become less accepting of the team and its goals.