H2 concerned the mediating effects of conflict management on the relationships
between goal commitment and perceived performance. H3 tested the mediating effect
of conflict management on the relationship between goal commitment and satisfaction.
Table V shows the results of the mediation effect on the two outcome variables. The
mediation analysis was based on 5,000 bootstrap samples. The bias corrected and
accelerated 95 percent confidence intervals were then examined. If the confidence
intervals do not contain zero, the point estimate is significant at the level indicated.
Bias-corrected 95 percent confidence intervals corresponding to the mediating effect of
conflict management on performance is significant since the interval shown in Table V
does not include zero. On the other hand, the mediating effect of conflict management
on team satisfaction is not significant, since the corresponding interval on Table V
does include zero.
The analysis suggests that goal commitment is a significant predictor of team
performance and satisfaction in a virtual team setting. The results also show that
conflict management mediates the relationship between goal commitment and
performance. That is, the impact of goal commitment on team performance is partially
explained by the teams approach to conflict management. Interestingly, conflict
management did not mediate the relationship with attitudinal outcomes measured in
terms of satisfaction. These results will be further discussed in the following section
(see Table VI).