Conflict behavior and its influence on engineering design teams

Our work is investigating the nature and perceptions of team conflict from the student as well as the faculty perspective through the use of team observations, student and faculty surveys, as well as faculty interviews. In particular, we are interested in determining the most common types of conflicts among students as well as the conflict-management strategies they utilize. Questions asked in the surveys and interviews ranged from general evaluation of teamwork to student and faculty perceptions of productive conflict. The main conflicts that were reported in our study included conflicts of commitment, different ideas about the project direction as well as different working styles. Results from this research will enable us to rethink common models of team conflict and develop direct and indirect intervention strategies that can help students to better integrate emotion and intellect in engineering design and innovation.