A Lexicon of Conflict under Concertive Control Conditions

Abstract

While much of the literature on teamworking has become focused on employer-driven design of work teams, this article casts a critical eye on employee-driven workgroups through the examination of a self-selected and autonomous employee group. The evidence from this case study suggests that groupworking can result in a quest for homogenization, and in strong informal controls on members' behaviours, where these controls operate through covert conflict expressions, mediated by the work environment. The evidence to emerge indicates that some of the suggested positive impacts on employees of groupworking may be simply surface constructs, while covert, suppressed conflicts persist. The unique contribution of this Study is the modelling of a lexicon of conflict under concertive control conditions and the integration of social identity theory into a groupwork framework.