Beyond the surface: unraveling the relationships between conflict, psychological safety, team learning, and performance in student teams
研究了学生团队中贡献冲突（一种过程冲突）如何通过心理安全感和探索不同视角（团队学习行为）影响团队绩效，发现心理安全感起关键中介作用，但探索不同视角并未显著提升绩效。
In contemporary higher education settings, fostering collaboration among students is paramount. However, integrating teamwork into learning processes can pose challenges, such as the ‘free-rider syndrome’, in the development of student team projects. Additionally, divergent opinions on task goals and methods, escalating interpersonal tensions, and power struggles can hinder effective teamwork. Unlike much of the existing conflict research that predominantly focuses on conflict resolution, this study underscores the necessity of comprehending conflict's impact and mechanisms, premised on its inherent inevitability. Specifically, our aim is to investigate the relationships between contribution conflict (a process conflict type) and team performance with psychological safety and exploring different perspectives (a team learning behavior) as explanatory mechanisms. A time-lagged design was employed, collecting data from a sample of 1002 Romanian students, organized into 199 teams. Results reveal a significant and negative indirect effect of the contribution conflict on team performance. Psychological safety significantly mediates the effects of contribution conflict on team performance, facilitating the engagement in exploring different perspectives. Interestingly, the exploration of diverse perspectives did not significantly enhance team performance, underscoring the complexity of the link between team learning behaviors and performance outcomes. This research offers empirical evidence supporting theories that posit a secure and respectful team environment is crucial for cultivating productive team interactions and outcomes, even in the face of inevitable conflict. Recognizing the importance of constructively approaching differences is essential in fostering positive team dynamics among students.