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A new study may pinpoint the biggest problem with Amazon's work culture
(Vancouver Film School/flickr)
High levels of interpersonal conflict can hurt a team's chances of success.
A few weeks ago, The New York Times published an in-depth look at some arguably brutal work practices at Amazon, including intense competition between coworkers.
For example, the "Anytime Feedback Tool" is an internal platform that allows workers to submit reviews of their colleagues' performance to their managers. Employees who spoke to The Times said the tool had been used to undermine coworkers.
The Association for Psychological Science recently drew a connection between a recent psychological study and the potentially problematic culture at Amazon.
According to the study, led by University of Calgary psychology researcher Thomas O'Neill, certain kinds of team conflict, like sharing different opinions, can be beneficial. But other types of conflict, like interpersonal discord, can be destructive.
In other words, APS suggests, businesses like Amazon may be hampering innovation and productivity by causing employees to fear each other. (The study itself doesn't specifically mention Amazon.)
In one of two experiments included in the study, researchers looked at 577 engineering students at a large Canadian university. The students were organized into 195 design teams consisting of three, four, or five members. Each team was tasked with constructing a sailboat, a race car, a biomimetic design, and a video game.
Two weeks before the last day of class, the researchers asked students to complete surveys that measured different types of conflict. Specifically, the researchers were interested in task conflict (differences in opinions and views about the task); relationship conflict (friction and personality clashes); and process conflict (disagreement about plans for execution).
Researchers also evaluated the quality of the students' design proposals and how confident the students felt in their team's ability to succeed.
Results showed that there were four distinct types of teams, on a scale from healthy debate to dysfunctional interpersonal discord. Teams with high levels of task conflict and low levels of relationship and process conflict were the most successful. The researchers call this type of team — in which team members get along personally but are nonetheless able to disagree — the "ideal."
On the other hand, teams that had higher levels of relationship and process conflict were less successful. Moreover, the researchers found that the more interpersonal drama and quibbling over execution occurred in a specific team, the less likely that team was to engage in constructive debate.
That's likely because members of these teams were afraid of starting an argument by expressing a different idea — even if sharing their distinct perspective could be helpful.
(Dotshock/Shuttershock)
Sharing different ideas and opinions is a beneficial form of conflict.
One major takeaway from this research is that conflict isn't inherently harmful to team dynamics. In fact, the ability to talk over different ideas is crucial to a team's success.
"The whole point of having a team is to share different points of view and debate different ideas," O'Neill told Business Insider.
But when that conflict turns personal, or when team members disagree over the best way to complete assignments, performance can take a turn for the worse. And if this kind of personal discord is common at Amazon — The Times article noted that colleague feedback "can be blunt to the point of painful" — it could be problematic for the retailer.
The study authors suggest that managers assess levels of different types of conflict within their teams and provide feedback accordingly. Bringing a team's attention to its conflict styles may be the first step to getting it back on track toward success.
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