Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gxg78 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T14:29:23.376Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

LET'S TAKE THIS OFFLINE: A THEMATIC ANALYSIS OF VIRTUAL CONFLICT IN HYBRID COLLABORATIVE DESIGN TEAMS

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 June 2023

Meagan Flus ,
Sharon Ferguson  and
Alison Olechowski
Meagan Flus*
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
Sharon Ferguson
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
Alison Olechowski
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
*
Flus, Meagan, University of Toronto, Canada, [email protected]

Abstract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

Conflict can be both a productive and detrimental reality of design collaboration. While most studies on conflict characterize findings by type (conflict about the task, process, or interpersonal relationships), we extend this typology to understand the causes, topics, and outcomes of conflict. To do so, we analyze communications in a virtual chat platform, collected in a hybrid work environment. A thematic analysis on over 6000 messages between student design teams on the enterprise communication platform Slack revealed three emergent conflict themes: Engineering Design, Project Management, and Communication. A mapping of the themes to a widely-cited typology of conflict found an over- representation of task (productive) and process (detrimental) conflict in the Engineering Design and Project Management themes, respectively. The distribution of types of conflict in the Communication theme is representative of the entire dataset, suggesting that communication can be a cause and outcome in all types of conflict. Overall, our classification of conflict is the first step towards describing triads of the causes, topics, and outcomes of conflict, a contribution which will drive the development of interventions for design team conflict.

Keywords

TeamworkCommunicationCollaborative designConflictHybrid Collaboration
Type
Article
Information
Proceedings of the Design Society , Volume 3: ICED23 , July 2023 , pp. 2435 - 2444
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press

References

Badke-Schaub, P., Goldschmidt, G. and Meijer, M. (2007), “Cognitive conflict in design teams: Competing or collaborating?”, Proceedings of the Design Soc.: Int. Conf on Engineering Design.Google Scholar
Bharati, P., Du, K., Chaudhury, A. and Agrawal, N.M. (2021), “Idea co-creation on social media platforms: towards a theory of social ideation”, ACM SIGMIS Database: the DATABASE for Advances in Information Systems, Vol. 52 No. 3, pp. 9–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Braun, V. and Clarke, V. (2006), “Using thematic analysis in psychology”, Qualitative Research in Psychology, Vol. 3 No. 2, pp. 77–101, http://doi.org/10.1191/1478088706qp063oa.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brisco, R., Whitfield, R. and Grierson, H. (2020), “A novel systematic method to evaluate computersupported collaborative design technologies”, Research in Engineering Design, Vol. 31, pp. 53–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ferguson, S.A., Cheng, K., Adolphe, L., Van de Zande, G., Wallace, D. and Olechowski, A. (2022), “Communication patterns in engineering enterprise social networks: an exploratory analysis using short text topic modelling”, Design Science, Vol. 8, p. e18, http://doi.org/10.1017/dsj.2022.12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ge, X., Leifer, L. and Shui, L. (2021), “Situated emotion and its constructive role in collaborative design: A mixed-method study of experienced designers”, Design Studies, Vol. 75, p. 101020.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goldschmidt, G. (2014), Linkography: Unfolding the Design Process, MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gopsill, J., McAlpine, H. and Hicks, B. (2013), “A social media framework to support engineering design communication”, Advanced Engineering Informatics, Vol. 27 No. 4, pp. 580–597.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jehn, Karen A., and Neale, G.B.N., M.A. (1999), “Why differences make a difference: A field study of diversity, conflict and performance in workgroups”, Administrative Science Quarterly, Vol. 44 No. 4, pp. 741–763, http://doi.org/10.2307/2667054.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jehn, K.A. (1997), “A qualitative analysis of conflict types and dimensions in organizational groups”, Administrative Science Quarterly, Vol. 42 No. 3, pp. 530–557.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Krishnan, A.V., Ulrich, K.T. and Ulrich, V.K.K.T. (2001), “Product Development Decisions : A Review of the Literature Linked references are available on JSTOR for this article : Product Development Decisions : A Review of the Literature”, Management Science, Vol. 47 No. 1, pp. 1–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McHugh, M.L. (2012), “Interrater reliability: the kappa statistic”, Biochemia Medica, Vol. 22 No. 3, pp. 276–282, http://doi.org/10.11613/BM.2012.031.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
National Research Council (2015), Enhancing the effectiveness of team science, National Academies Press.Google Scholar
van Onselen, L., De Lille, C. and Snelders, D. (2019), “Design requirements to educate and facilitate junior design professionals to reflect more effectively on critical situations and conflicts at work”, Proceedings of the Design Society: International Conference on Engineering Design, Vol. 1.Google Scholar
Paletz, S.B., Chan, J. and Schunn, C.D. (2017), “The dynamics of micro-conflicts and uncertainty in successful and unsuccessful design teams”, Design Studies, Vol. 50, pp. 39–69, http://doi.org/10.1016Zj.destud.2017.02.002. Publisher: Elsevier Ltd.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sibai, O., De Valck, K., Herbert, A. and Zhang, D. (2017), “Detecting conflict on social media: An extended abstract”, in: Stieler, M. (Editor), Creating Marketing Magic and Innovative Future Marketing Trends, Developments in Marketing Science: Proceedings of the Academy of Marketing Science, Springer International Publishing, pp. 53–57, http://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-45596-912.Google Scholar
Sitarama, S. and Agogino, A.M. (2022), “Computational patterns of team interactions and associations with con¬flict within new product development teams”, in: International Design Engineering Technical Conferences and Computers and Information in Engineering Conference, Vol. 86267, American Society of Mechanical Engineers.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Snider, C., Skec, S., Gopsill, J. and Hicks, B. (2017), “The characterisation of engineering activity through email communication and content dynamics, for support of engineering project management”, Design Science, Vol. 3.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thamhain, H.J. and Wilemon, D.L. (1975), “Conflict management in project life cycles”, Vol. 16 No. 3.Google Scholar
Thomas, K.W. and Schmidt, W.H. (1976), “A survey of managerial interests with respect to conflict”, Academy of Management journal, Vol. 19 No. 2, pp. 315–318.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wasiak, J., Hicks, B., Dong, A. and Newnes, L. (2009), “Engineering work and email: An analysis of the information content of email in a major systems engineering project”, Proceedings of the ASME Design Engineering Technical Conference, Vol. 8, pp. 915–925, http://doi.org/10.1115/DETC2009-86832.Google Scholar