We investigated the relationship be

We investigated the relationship between task conflict and team performance, taking into
account the interaction effects of job demand. Participants were 5,579 employees in 153 teams
at a South Korean manufacturing company. We found a statistically significant curvilinear
relationship between task conflict and actual team performance; however, the relationship
between task conflict and perceived team performance was negative and linear. Through
response surface analysis, we also found that task conflict positively predicted actual team
performance when job demand was high, whereas it had a negative effect when job demand
was low. We performed response surface analysis of the results of polynomial regression,
because we had speculated that those relationships could be essentially curvilinear. However,
results showed no interaction effect of task conflict and job demand in predicting perceived
team performance. Thus, task conflict may function as a double-edged sword in terms of team
performance.
Keywords: job demand, task conflict, actual team performance, perceived team performance