Carrots or Sticks? Which HR Practices Can Reduce Conflicts in Asymmetrically Task Dependent Teams?

This study integrates recent advances in interdependence theory with the literatures on intra-team conflicts and motivation-enhancing HR practices. More specifically, we investigate if intrinsic and/or extrinsic motivation-enhancing HR practices are better suited to reduce conflicts in asymmetrically task dependent teams. We contribute to these literatures by exploring a key mechanism (i.e. intra-team conflicts) which prior studies assumed – but never tested – to underlie the relationship between asymmetries in task dependence and negative team outcomes. Such asymmetries occur when team members differ in their reliance on others for resources required to perform their tasks, something that occurs frequently in today’s complex business world. Second, we contribute by linking asymmetries in task dependence to the motivation-enhancing HR literature. We theorize that intrinsic and extrinsic HR-practices provide an important context in teams that shapes the associations between asymmetries and intra-team conflicts. Multi-level analyses of a dual-source dataset containing 146 employees and 44 team leaders showed a significant three-way interaction between asymmetric interdependence, extrinsic, and intrinsic HR in relation to intra-team conflicts. This revealed that conflicts in asymmetrically task dependent teams were only reduced when extrinsic HR practices were low and intrinsic HR practices were high. Practically our study contributes by showing that different forms of motivation-enhancing HR practices can have different effects in asymmetrically dependent teams and thus need to be selected with care by practitioners.