How does cognitive conflict in design teams support the development of creative ideas?

How Does Cognitive Conflict inDesign Teams Support theDevelopment of Creative Ideas?caim_553 119..133

Petra Badke-Schaub, Gabriela Goldschmidt andMartijn Meijer

Is cognitive conflict detrimental to the development of innovative ideas in design teams, or isit a precondition for innovative performance? Assuming that there is a relationship betweencognitive conflict and innovation, what kind of strategies do teams use in situations of cogni-tive conflict and what are the consequences for creativity? This paper reports on a studyanalysing how design teams cope with cognitive conflict during idea generation in an experi-ment. The design process was captured in protocols that were generated from video record-ings. We report the results of the analysis of verbal protocols according to the five styles of(cognitive) conflict behaviour: competing, collaborating, compromising, avoiding and accom-modating. Out of six teams, the results of the two highest and two lowest scoring teams arecompared as regards innovation and functionality, which we see as the two components ofcreative outcomes. We show that design teams, even in a laboratory environment, encounter aconsiderable amount of cognitive conflict. A statistical comparison between the groups withthe highest and the lowest innovative/functional design concept scores reveals significantdifferences in their conflict behaviour styles. The high innovation and high functionalitygroups used a more competing and a more compromising style, whereas groups rated low onthe same parameters used a more collaborating style. The high rating groups on both creativitycomponents used a more associating and rejecting behaviour style; the high innovation groupsalso generated more new ideas than the low innovation groups. The low rating groups on bothinnovation and functionality tended to repeat ideas more frequently. The main finding is that,in contrast with reports in previous research, the groups with higher innovation and function-ality scores collaborated less than their peers in the low rating groups on these parameters. Weinterpret these results as signifying that creative performance in teams is not achieved mainlyby agreement but needs cognitive confrontation.

Introduction

Design is a complex activity involvingpeople with different backgrounds and

experience, who pursue different aims,possess different skills and capabilities anduse different working styles. According to thecommon definition of conflict as a conse-quence of perceived incompatibilities amongindividuals (Boulding, 1962; Deutsch, 1973,1990; De Dreu, Harinck & Van Vianen, 1999),each design process in a team is likely to beprone to innumerable conflicts.

Multidisciplinary teams are diverse by defi-nition, as different disciplines develop theirown culture, a domain-specific language anddiscipline-related procedures. Thus, members

of multidisciplinary teams often experience aclash of views, interests, goals and values.Facing the increasing need to put togethermultidisciplinary project teams in practice, thequestion arises whether conflicts necessarilylead to poor performance and, if so, whichmeasures need to be taken to successfully copewith these situations.

However, it is also known that cognitivediversity among team members in terms ofknowledge and skills leads to a broader accessto information and knowledge, creating moreand different insights into the current problemfield (Jehn, 1997; Jehn, Nortcraft & Neale,1999). This assumption is supported byresearch revealing that teams succeed inmaking better decisions when they are able to

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© 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

use cognitive conflicts as a stimulating experi-ence and as long as they avoid affective con-flicts (Mooney, Holahan & Amason, 2007). Thisconceptualization indicates that conflicts arenot all of a kind, and do not necessarily havenegative effects only; in fact cognitive conflictsrelated to task-oriented issues have beenshown to enhance task performance.

Assuming that cognitive conflicts in diversegroups are unavoidable, it is still unclear howteams, and more specifically design teams,cope with these conflicts and how their con-flict behaviour style influences their designoutcomes.

The objective of the current study is toanalyse what kind of conflict behaviour style inresponse to cognitive conflicts influences cre-ativity during solution generation in designteams. We therefore constructed a quasi-experimental setting where we exposeddesigners to a design situation which waslikely to produce cognitive conflicts. Designstudents had to work in a diverse team anddevelop a common solution for a design taskwith a relatively high degree of uncertaintyand time pressure. From that we assessed theconflict behaviour styles deployed during thedesign process and the outcome in terms oftwo components of creativity: functionalityand innovation.

Theoretical Background

Types of Conflict

Following the common notion that the occur-rence of conflicts in groups is destructive interms of group climate and performance,ideally conflicts should be avoided orreduced to a minimum. However, there arealso suggestions that conflicts may be usedin a productive and contributory way, evenas an asset (Tjosvold, 1991; Stempfle &Badke-Schaub, 2002; Meijer, 2006). This line of

argumentation is based on a distinctionbetween different types of conflict: cognitive,affective (socio-emotional), and process con-flicts (Jehn, 1995). Cognitive conflicts can bedefined as differences concerning task-relatedissues, which in the team context areexpressed as disagreements. Affective conflictsrelate to differences regarding personalissues, negative emotions and unsatisfactoryrelationships among team members. Processconflicts are conflicts that, similar to cognitiveconflicts, are linked to the task but involveissues related to the mode of accomplishingthe task (Jehn, Nortcraft & Neale, 1999), e.g.,disagreements about timing, planning andscheduling of tasks and related activities. Theinfluence of different conflict types on eachother, especially the interrelation betweentask and affective conflict (e.g., Behfar et al.,2008) has been at the focus of scientific inves-tigation, whereas process conflict has elicitedless interest (Greer, Jehn & Mannix, 2008).Research suggests that affective conflictsusually have a negative impact on team per-formance in terms of reduced motivation,openness and communication (Amason &Sapienza, 1997). Process conflicts were alsofound to be responsible for decreased pro-ductivity and low task content quality (Jehn& Mannix, 2001). In a study focusing on thelongitudinal nature of conflicts, Greer, Jehnand Mannix (2008) found that only processconflicts – not task or relationship conflicts –in the early interaction among teammembers, have a negative impact and lead toa higher amount of task and relationship con-flicts. Table 1 summarizes the main conse-quences of the three types of conflictsreferred to in the literature.

As the present study focuses on the interre-lation between cognitive conflict, which is theleast studied but potentially the most ‘posi-tive’ conflict, and team performance – in par-ticular creativity – a closer look at the conceptof cognitive conflict is necessary.

Table 1. Consequences of Different Types of Conflict

Affective conflicts Process conflicts Cognitive conflicts

Negative – reduced motivation– reduced openness and

communication

– decreased productivity– low content quality

– multiple points of view– turns into affective conflicts

Positive – more diversity– more innovative ideas and

solutions?

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Cognitive Conflict

The assumption of a negative influence of cog-nitive conflict on team performance is sup-ported by a meta-analysis which reveals anegative correlation between task conflict andoverall team effectiveness (De Dreu & Wein-gart, 2003). What might be underlying reasonsfor that result?

Defining conflicts as damaging the func-tioning of the team (Pondy, 1967) can beexplained by the similarity–attraction para-digm (Byrne, 1971), saying that differences inattitudes and interests are correlated withpersonal dislike and avoidance. Similarity inattitudes, however, is linked with social attrac-tion, which means that people are attracted tothose they perceive to be similar to them(Singh & Ho, 2000). The basic explanation forpreference for similarity can be related to theconcept of ‘cognitive dissonance’ (Festinger,1957). Cognitive dissonance is the activatedstate of a person who experiences different orcontradicting cognitions, beliefs, attitudes andbehaviours. As cognitive dissonance causesdiscomfort, people strive to eliminate orreduce the dissonance, for example bydecreasing the importance of the dissonantbeliefs, or by changing the dissonant intoconsistent beliefs. Choosing similar teammembers to work with seems almost a guar-antee to avoid exposure to extremely differentbeliefs and attitudes. Correspondingly, basedon empirical investigations of project teams,there is the explicit recommendation thatgroups should establish a positive groupclimate to ensure information exchangeamong its members, which enhances creativeinsights. The same research points to the con-sequences of conversion from cognitive intoaffective conflicts. Thus, cognitive conflicts inworking teams should be avoided (Badke-Schaub & Buerschaper, 2001).

Cognitive conflicts, on the other hand, mayalso have a contributory potential (Tjosvold,1991). Managed adequately, they allow for alarger number of ideas and perspectives to bebrought to discussion, which is especiallyimportant for developing new and innovativesolutions. It was even shown that the mereanticipation of some conflict with other indi-viduals leads to more flexible thinking andmore creative problem solutions (Carnevale &Probst, 1998). The theoretical concept whichforms the basis for the positive correlationbetween cognitive conflict and performance isdiversity. However, although many studiesinvestigated the interplay between diversityand team performance, there is no clearanswer how diversity in teams affects perfor-mance. We posit that positive or negative con-

sequences of cognitive conflicts are closelyrelated to the mode in which they are managedby the team, i.e. the team’s conflict behaviourstyle.

This view of cognitive conflict is particularlyrelevant to design, which can be described as acreative problem-solving process (Roozenburg& Eekels, 1995; Goldschmidt, 1999; Badke-Schaub & Buerschaper, 2001). Through the cre-ation of knowledge based on diverse skills,experience and information exchange, thequality of design processes and the creativeperformance of design teams improve. In thisview creativity is closely related to the strategyused in the process, whereas the innovative-ness of the product is the result of a creativeprocess (Amabile et al., 1996). West and Farr(1990) define innovation as ‘the intentionalintroduction and application within a role,group or organization of ideas, processes,products or procedures, new to the relevantunit of adoption, designed to significantlybenefit the individual, the group, the organiza-tion or wider society’ (p. 9).

We define cognitive conflict as the task-related divergence resulting from a compari-son between one’s current own mental modeland perceived information, usually providedby another source such as a team member.Such a comparison may be carried out onvarious levels of abstraction. The presentedstudy chose a very detailed level of analysis ofcognitive conflicts.

Although there are several studies illustrat-ing the different effects of conflict on teamoutput, it is still unclear in which way cogni-tive conflict influences the behaviour of teams,and how this affects the output. In this studywe focus on cognitive conflicts, because we areinterested in the manner in which groups usecognitive conflicts to achieve a successfuldesign result in terms of creativity and particu-larly innovation (we use the terms ‘innovation’and ‘innovativeness’ interchangeably), but alsoin terms of functionality. The emphasis lies onthe question: which behaviour leads to a moreinnovative outcome in design teams in situa-tions of cognitive conflicts?

Creative Design Outcomes

Our approach to the measurement of creativ-ity, and in particular the creative product, isbased on the view that innovation and func-tionality are necessary and sufficient dimen-sions which, combined, can be used to assesscreativity. Finke (1990) ran studies in whichcreativity was measured by adding innovationand functionality scores to achieve a final cre-ativity score. In our case we do not combine



scores but, rather, we look at factors thatimpact each of these dimensions relative tocognitive conflicts.

Conflict Behaviour Styles

People (and teams) respond differently to con-flict situations. It is widely assumed that eachperson has a preferred way of dealing withconflicts, a so-called conflict style (Friedmanet al., 2000). Researchers such as Putnam(1988), Rahim (1983), Rahim and Magner(1995) and Thomas and Kilmann (1974) devel-oped a typology of five conflict behaviourstyles based on the two dimensions ‘assertive-ness’ and ‘co-operativeness’ (see Figure 1).Assertiveness is the extent to which a personattempts to satisfy his or her own concern;co-operativeness is the extent to which she orhe aims to satisfy another’s concerns.

A person’s (and a team’s) conflict behaviourstyle incorporates both assertiveness andco-operativeness in varying degrees. The fivestyles are described as follows:

• Competing (1) is assertive and non-co-operative, a more power-oriented style.One’s own concerns are set above theconcerns of other parties in order to attain(and keep) a higher position. This style isregarded as less effective as it provokes awin-lose situation.

• Collaborating (2) is assertive andco-operative. When collaborating, a persontries to work together with other people tofind a solution that satisfies the needs ofeveryone concerned. This style is associatedwith problem-solving situations (such asdesign) and is effective in exploring andfinding different (design) solutions.

• Compromising (3) is located between asser-tiveness and co-operativeness. The objec-tive of this conflict style is to find a suitable,mutually acceptable solution that partiallysatisfies all parties. This style seems to beappropriate in situations where different

goals are equally important to all concernedparties, but a solution still needs to bereached.

• Avoiding (4) is non-assertive and non-co-operative, with low concern for self and lowconcern for other parties, thus not address-ing the conflict. This style is effective in con-flict situations where issues other than thebest solution are more urgent, or when con-fronting the conflict is more damaging thannon-action.

• Accommodating (5) is non-assertive andco-operative, with low concern for self andhigh concern for other parties. This conflictstyle supports a positive climate and isuseful when keeping harmony is a highpriority.

Research indicates that using the collaborativeconflict behaviour style is the most successfulstrategy to arrive at a positive outcome. Forexample, Weingart and Jehn (2000) state thatthe use of the collaborative style is the key toteam-effectiveness; open-minded debates aspart of the collaborative conflict behaviourstyle are particularly useful in situationsaiming at creative solutions. There are alsostudies that show that teams using a collabo-rative style did not suffer from a negativeeffect of cognitive conflict on team perfor-mance, which was found in teams that dis-played other conflict behaviour styles (DeDreu & West, 2001; Lovelace, Shapiro & Wein-gart, 2001).

Research Questions

Each design process can be described as asequence of decisions which require differentcognitive processes during the developmentof the design solution. In design, the solutionspace is usually quite large; there is rarely onesingle solution – in fact, solutions are beinggenerated and then being analysed anddecided upon in an iterative process. Thus,both processes are important; widening the

Figure 1. The Five Conflict Styles on Two Dimensions (after Thomas & Kilmann, 1974)



problem space requires divergent thinking,and narrowing the problem space requiresconvergence; they occur in different phases ofthe design process.

There is some evidence (Badke-Schaub &Frankenberger, 2004) that in different phasescognitive conflicts should be treated differ-ently to gain the best output in terms of per-formance. Thus, we assume that a ‘pure’collaborative style throughout the wholedesign process is not necessarily fruitful, espe-cially when it comes to generating new ideasand developing innovative solutions. Follow-ing this assumption we presuppose that inphases of solution search divergence can bemaintained or elicited by assertive non-co-operative behaviour as the most promisingway to deal with cognitive conflicts. Then ateam needs to establish a competitive style,which provokes more and deeper discussionswhich may lead to more innovative solutions.Once ideas have been selected, the workingout of functionality is a predominantly col-laborative task in its nature and competitionseems less likely to surface. Therefore weassume that a collaborative style will increasethe functionality of the product but not neces-sarily its innovativeness. The reason behindthis assumption is that it seems difficult toarrive at common decisions related to theimplementation of new ideas when there isjust non-co-operative behaviour.

In keeping with the study’s objective asstated at the end of the introduction, which is‘to analyse what kind of conflict behaviourstyle in response to cognitive conflicts influ-ences creativity during solution generation indesign’, we try to answer the followingquestions:

1. What conflict behaviour style in a group isbest suited to enhance design innovation?

2. How are design ideas generated in highand low innovation design groups?

3. What conflict behaviour style in a group isbest suited to enhance design functionality?

4. How are design ideas generated in highand low functionality design groups?

Research Approach: Empirical Study

Set-up of the Experiment

Six groups of three design students each,acting as teams, were asked to design aconcept proposal for a new tent for Nomad’s‘Global Family Gear’.1 The participants wereadvanced Industrial Design Engineering stu-dents who had either just started a six monthsdesign project, or were working on theirgraduation projects, or had recently graduated.Nine participants were female, nine weremale; most participants were Dutch, threewere of different nationalities. In five out of thesix groups at least two participants knew eachother. Only five participants had no previouspersonal experience with the subject matter,i.e. tents. According to these variables thedesign groups were composed as diversely aspossible (male and female designers, of differ-ent nationalities with a different amount ofexpertise).

The assignment was to design a flexible-sizetent for hiking that could be used by a singleadult, a couple, or a couple with two smallchildren. The main requirements were that thetent was to be:

• lightweight and compact enough for hikingand climbing,

• usable by a variable number of users: one totwo adults plus one to two children up tothe age of five,

• practical and easy to put up, pack andtransport,

• extremely durable.

The experiment was conducted with eachgroup separately. It was divided into threemain phases, following an introduction: anindividual phase, a group phase and a debrief-ing phase, including a questionnaire (seeTable 2). By way of introduction, the partici-pants were first informed about the procedureand the design task. Then the three partici-pants worked in separate rooms to individu-ally generate design ideas that were to be usedlater as input in the group session. In the indi-

Table 2. Phases of the Experiment

Phase Time (min) Phase description

0 0:00–0:05 Introduction: assignment and procedure1 0:05–0:30 Individual phase: individual design ideas for tent2 0:30–1:20 Group phase: group design of a tent (conceptual level)3 1:20–1:35 Debriefing: questionnaire and individual debriefing



vidual phase the participants were asked tothink aloud. The purpose of asking people tothink aloud while solving a problem is to gaininformation on cognitive processes such asreasoning processes (Nisbett & Wilson, 1979;Ericsson & Simon, 1993). This method iswidely used in psychological research onknowledge elicitation, knowledge acquisitionand problem-solving processes.

After 25 minutes of individual designing,the group was reconvened for a session inwhich a final concept of a tent was to be com-pleted. After 40–50 minutes, at the end of thegroup phase, the participants answered aquestionnaire (10–15 minutes). During thistime one of the participants was interviewedseparately (debriefing) for about 5–10 minutes(recorded on audiotape); interviews with theother two participants followed afterwards.The individual sessions were audiotaped, thegroup session videotaped. Later, all finaldesigns were rated by independent judges (seesub-section ‘Ratings of the Final GroupDesigns’, below).

Four types of data were collected:

• documentation of the complete designprocess on audio and videotapes

• drawings made in the individual sessionsand group sessions (not included here)

• questionnaires and debriefings (not in-cluded here)

• ratings of the final designs (conceptuallevel) by independent judges.

The following analysis of conflict behaviourstyles and idea generation in the teams is basedon the videotapes of the design processes.

Analysis of Behavioural Data: Conflict Typeand Conflict Behaviour Style

The videotapes of the group sessions were firsttranscribed and segmented into units, eachbeing one utterance by a participant. Then eachutterance was evaluated in order to establishwhether it expressed a difference in perspec-tive or judgment compared to the previousutterance. If the answer was ‘yes’, this utter-ance was treated as a conflict statement whichhad to be categorized according to the conflicttype: cognitive, affective or process conflict. Incases where the unit was categorized as cogni-tive conflict, the conflict behaviour style wasalso determined.

For coding, the software program MangoldInterAct (version 7.0, www.mangold.de) wasused. The program is able to code many typesof behavioural data per time unit and thecoded data can be easily transferred into statis-tical programs.

Conflict Type

In accordance with empirical studies, threeconflict types have been distinguished: cogni-tive, affective and process conflicts (seeFigure 2). The detection of ‘conflict’ is based onverbal interaction, that is all verbal exchangesamong team members; non-verbal elements(such as body language) were not taken intoaccount.

As explained earlier, cognitive conflict wasdefined as difference in perspective or judge-ment related to the task at hand; it pertains topredominantly different views or opinionsduring solution discussions. This is the conflicttype we focused on in further analyses.Affective conflict was chosen as the appropri-ate category when utterances referred to inter-personal differences or to negative emotionssuch as frustration or personal dislikes.Process conflict was chosen as the appropriatecategory when utterances referred to differentopinions on how to accomplish the task, forexample planning issues regarding who doeswhat and when.

What conflict behaviour style in a group isbest suited to enhance design innovation?

Conflict Behaviour Style

The actual cognitive conflict behaviour wasgathered from the observational data of thegroup sessions. The subcategories were devel-oped according to Thomas and Kilmann’s con-flict behaviour styles model (1974) (see sub-section ‘Conflict Behaviour Styles’, above).However, it is necessary to mention that thiscategorization is related only to cognitive ele-ments of behaviour. As in the case of conflicttype, conflict behaviour style is also related toverbal utterances only.

Idea Generation and Idea Contribution

According to our hypotheses we assume thatthe conflict behaviour style influences innova-

CONFLICT

affective cognitive process

competing

collaborating

compromising

avoiding

accomodating

CO

NFLIC

T B

EH

AVIO

UR

STYLE

CONFLICT

affective cognitive process

competing

collaborating

compromising

avoiding

accomodating

CO

NFLIC

T B

EH

AVIO

UR

STYLE

Figure 2. Categorization of Types of Conflict andConflict Behaviour Styles



tiveness in the group and thus the creativity ofthe outcome. We therefore categorized howideas were generated and handled during thedesign process, to help shed light on strategiesthat support innovativeness (see Figure 3).

Idea Generation. This categorization scheme(see Figure 3) pertains to the way the groupsgenerated, and reacted to, solution ideas. Ideasmay be repeated, associated (an idea is gen-erated based on another idea), a completelynew idea may be generated, or there is no ideageneration, which means that participants donot generate or react to an idea. Ideas may alsobe rejected (discarded).

Idea Contribution. It is of major interest toestablish the extent to which the generation ofsolutions is predominantly done by singlegroup members or by the group together.Thus, we categorized whether the solutionidea was a contribution of an individual or a

team solution. In addition, each individual orteam solution was categorized related to thelevel of resolution of the idea, i.e., overall solu-tion ideas and sub-solutions (as part of theoverall idea). Although Figure 3 only illus-trates the branch of solution contribution ofthe category ‘new ideas’, the categories of ‘ideacontribution’ were applied to all four kinds ofsolution ideas: new ideas, associating, repeat-ing and rejecting.

Table 3 shows an example of three linesfrom a protocol coded for cognitive conflictsin a group consisting of three team membersA, B and C. On average, a group session’sprotocol in this experiment holds 680 lines. Itshould be noted that the coding in this studypertains to very brief segments of verbaliza-tion, usually one sentence. The table showsseven columns where the first two (start time– end time) map the beginning of the utter-ance and the end; in this case the utterance(column 4) by team member A (column 3)took less than a minute. Following the state-

solution idea

newidea

associating repeating rejecting

individualsolution

teamsolution

overall solution

sub-solution

overall solution

sub-solution

solution idea

newidea

associating repeating rejecting

individualsolution

teamsolution

overall solution

sub-solution

overall solution

sub-solution

Figure 3. Categorization of Idea Generation and Idea Contribution

Table 3. Example of Three Protocol Lines Coded for Conflict Behavioural Data and Idea Generation

Starttime

Endtime

Teammember

Transcript Ideacontribution

Ideageneration

Conflictbehaviour

style

07:47 07:47 A I think we can agree that itshould be separate parts.

GroupSub-solution

Associate Collaborate

07:50 07:52 B I also think that all three ofus have thought ofapproximately the sameconcept, they are verysimilar.

Group Repeat Collaborate

07:52 07:53 C Just a little different Group Repeat Compromise



ment of the previous speaker (not shownhere) the conflict behaviour style is catego-rized as collaborative (column 7), the idea isassociated (column 6) to the previous ideaand it is a sub-solution of a group idea(column 5).

Ratings of the Final Group Designs

In order to evaluate the groups’ performancein terms of innovation and functionality, thefinal conceptual designs were rated by threejudges. The judges were design instructors inthe Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering atthe Delft University of Technology and hadexperience in assessing designs. They were allblind to the purpose of the study.

The final designs were rated for innovationand functionality on a scale of 0 (lowest) to 7(highest) (Besemer & O’Quinn, 1986). Therating criteria were set beforehand and dis-cussed by the judges before the rating of thegroup designs. This procedure was followed inorder to reduce differences among the judgesin the interpretation of the criteria.

Results

In this section the results of the study are pre-sented. In the first part the results of all sixgroups are presented together, so as to answerour first research question: How do designteams deal with cognitive conflict? In thesecond part the two groups with the mostinnovative outcomes are compared with thetwo groups with the least innovative out-comes. In the third part the two groups withthe highest functionality rankings are com-pared with the two groups rated lowest onfunctionality. This analysis helps answer theremaining two research questions: What kindof conflict behaviour in a group is best suitedto enhance innovativeness, and what kind ofconflict behaviour is best matched to enhancefunctionality.

Results of All Groups (n = 6)

Types of Conflict

The results indicate that process and affectiveconflicts occurred in all six groups veryseldom (3.3 per cent and 0.8 per cent of allutterances, respectively) whereas the numberof cognitive conflicts varied across the sixgroups: in five of the six groups, between 43.2per cent and 53.7 per cent of all utterances bearevidence of cognitive conflict, and only onegroup showed a very low amount of cognitiveconflicts with 16.4 per cent of all utterances.

This team agreed right from the beginning ofthe group session to adopt the idea of one of itsmembers and therefore there was hardly anyneed to engage in cognitive conflicts furtheron, as no other ideas were considered. Therewas also a large number of verbalizations, inall groups, in which no conflict of any type wasevident.

The following analysis takes into accountonly the situations of cognitive conflict; situa-tions categorized as demonstrating affective,process, or no conflict are not part of the dataanalysed below.


An overview of the assessment of the observedconflict behaviour styles of all six groups (seeFigure 4) reveals that in situations of cognitiveconflict the design teams used mainly a col-laborative style (59 per cent). Competing (12per cent), compromising (12 per cent) andaccommodating (9 per cent) occurred signifi-cantly less often; each of these styles accountedfor around 10 per cent. The avoiding style washardly observed (1 per cent), which might bean effect of the experiment in which groupswere given only 45 minutes to come up with acommon design concept.

Idea Generation

According to Figure 4, collaboration appears tobe a fruitful behavioural strategy. Collaborationcomprises behaviour that makes use of othercontributions by building on each other’s ideasand input. Thus, various aspects of the designproblem can be explored and discussed in theteam but also solution ideas can be augmentedand adapted. According to Table 4, most solu-tion ideas by far were generated by the groupsrather than by the individual designers, andthey pertain mostly to sub-solutions. Further-more, most often ideas were generated by asso-ciation to already produced ideas. This is a verycommon way to enlarge the number of alterna-tives which are very closely related to eachother. However, repetition of ideas was alsoobserved rather often.

Thus, idea generation in most of the groupsmay be described as a process of developingsub-solutions building on the ideas of others.The individual ideas were brought from theindividual sessions into the group session,where these solution ideas were enriched byassociations and repetitions.

Based on the data of the six groups we canstate that on average the design teams wereinvolved in cognitive conflicts in nearly 50 percent of their activities during the designprocess. They predominantly used collabora-



tive strategies in these situations, with amainly group-oriented idea generationprocedure and a low share of new ideas. Thesolution search process oscillated betweenassociating ideas to previous ideas and repeat-ing ideas.

What Conflict Behaviour Style in a Group isBest Suited to Enhance Design Innovation?

Table 5 presents the innovation and function-ality ratings assigned by the judges to the final

group designs. Groups 2 and 4 scored higheston both innovation and functionality, whereasgroups 1 and 5 scored lowest on innovation,and groups 3 and 5 scored lowest on function-ality. In two design teams (groups 2 and 4)high innovation goes along with high func-tionality, and in one design team (group 5) lowinnovation matches low functionality. Onegroup ranks moderately in functionality andlow on innovation (group 1) and two groupsrank moderately high on innovation but lowon functionality (groups 6 and 3).

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70

none

competing

collaborating

compromising

avoiding

accommodating

con

flic

t b

ehav

iou

r

percent

Figure 4. Average Percentage of Observed Conflict Behaviour (n = 6 groups)

Table 4. Idea Types and Idea Generation

Idea type Frequency % Idea generation Frequency %

None* 123 6.9 New Idea 51 2.8Individual 73 4.1 Associated 568 31.7Group 194 10.8 Repeat 327 28.5Individual sub 153 8.5 Reject 327 18.3Group sub 1247 69.7 None 334 18.7

* ‘None’ means that the utterances do not relate to idea generation but to other aspects of the design process.

Table 5. Ratings of the Final Designs

Group 1 Group 2 Group 3 Group 4 Group 5 Group 6

Innovation average 3.0 6.0 4.5 6.5 2.0 5.0Functionality

average4.5 5.0 3.5 4.8 2.2 3.5



As each of the groups shows a different con-flict pattern relative to the rated outcomes, weundertook a comparison between the extremegroups: The two groups with the highestratings for innovative design concepts (groups2 and 4) were compared with the two groupswith the lowest ratings for innovative designconcepts (groups 5 and 1).

Starting with the ratings by the judges wenow need to analyse the conflict behaviourstyle in the high and low innovation groups inorder to answer the first research question.


Table 6 presents the differences between thehigh and low innovation groups related totheir conflict behaviour styles. The low innova-tion groups were much more collaborativewhereas the high innovation groups used thecompeting and compromising styles signifi-cantly more often, although they also madeextensive use of the collaborating style. Thisresult, wherein collaboration was mostly thehallmark of the low innovation groups,appears to contradict findings in other studies(e.g., Weingart & Jehn, 2000) and requires anexplanation, which we offer in the discussionand conclusions at the end of this paper.

Taking into account that a competing stylehelps surface different viewpoints before asolution is decided on, it is not surprising thatthe high innovation groups also showed amore compromising style than the low inno-vation groups, as the teams had to agree onone design concept within a short time. Thereis no significant difference between bothgroups in relation to the avoiding or accommo-dating styles.

How are Design Ideas Generated in Highand Low Innovation Design Groups?

As it was shown that some teams achievedbetter results in terms of innovation, we would

assume that there are also differences in thedesign process, especially related to the gen-eration of ideas.

According to Table 6 collaboration is a lessuseful behaviour on the road to an innovativeoutcome; conversely, the combination of a com-peting and a compromising style proves to besuccessful. How does this mixed pattern ofcompeting and compromising behaviour relateto idea generation? Whereas the groups ratedlow on innovation showed more repeating ofideas, the groups rated high on innovativenessproduced more new ideas, associated more,and also rejected more ideas (see Table 7).

What Conflict Behaviour Style in a Groupis Best Suited to Enhance DesignFunctionality?

As stated above, we define creativity of anoutcome by two dimensions, innovation andfunctionality which, combined, can be usedto assess creativity. Thus, similar to the com-parison between the high and low innovationgroups, we chose the two groups with thehighest functionality ratings and comparedtheir conflict behaviour styles and idea gen-eration patterns with the two groups with thelowest functionality ratings. Interestingly,the two groups which scored high on innova-tion were the same groups scoring high onfunctionality.


We expected a more collaborative and a lesscompeting style of the high functionalitygroups compared to the low functionalitygroups. One reason for this assumption wasthat the functionality of a concept is seen ashigh if it is worked out in greater detail,whereas it is difficult to get a clear idea aboutfunctionality when there is only a roughand vague sketch (see, e.g., the differences

Table 6. Conflict Behaviour Styles in High and Low Innovation Groups

Innovation (%) Chi2

significance

Low High

Competing 8.1 11.1 0.05Collaborating 74.8 65.0 0.000Compromising 6.3 13.4 0.000Avoiding 0 1.2 n.s.Accommodating 10.8 9.2 n.s.



between the designs of a high functionalitygroup and a low functionality group inFigure 5).

As Table 8 shows, contrary to our expecta-tions groups rating high on functionality useda more competing and compromising and lesscollaborating conflict behaviour style than thegroups rated low on functionality. Given thatthe two groups that scored high on innovation

were the same groups scoring high on func-tionality, this result, which resembles theresults we obtained for innovation, is not sur-prising (compare Tables 5 and 7). The lowerrating for collaboration in high functionalitygroups may result from the fact that eventhe more detailed solutions could not bethoroughly worked out in depth, given theshort time available.

Table 7. Idea Generation in High and Low Innovation Groups

Innovation (%) Chi2

significance

Low High

New ideas 2.7 4.8 0.042Associating 33.8 43.3 0.001Repeating 47.8 31.7 0.000Rejecting 15.8 20.2 0.032

Table 8. Conflict Behaviour Styles in High and Low Functionality Groups

Functionality (%) Chi2

significance

Low High

Competing 6.5 11.1 0.009Collaborating 75.7 65.0 0.000Compromising 8.3 13.5 0.006Avoiding 0 1.0 n.s.Accommodating 9.5 9.2 n.s.

Figure 5. A More Detailed Final Design Concept (left) and Less Detailed Final Design Concept (right)



How are Design Ideas Generated in Highand Low Functionally Design Groups?

In the same way we did for innovation, wecompared groups rated high on functionalityto groups rated low on functionality. AsTable 9 indicates, the idea generation ingroups rated high on functionality was moreassociating and rejecting and less repeating.The larger proportion of associating utter-ances shows that building on each other’sideas plays an important role in achievinghigh functionality. At the same time, rejectingideas, i.e. abandoning ideas that turn out tobe unfruitful, is also crucial for the transfor-mation of innovative ideas into a functionalsolution.

Discussion and Conclusions

This study provides insights into ways inwhich design teams deal with cognitive con-flicts while performing a design task.

We have shown that design teams, even in alaboratory environment, encounter a consider-able amount of cognitive conflict. As expected,the style of conflict behaviour most frequentlyused by the six groups we analysed is by farthe collaborating style. However, when we gobeyond a general average and take the processand the outcome apart, we discover interestingdifferences. There is considerable differenceamong the highest and the lowest innovationand functionality groups’ ratings for their finaldesign concepts. A statistical comparisonbetween the extreme groups, those with themost innovative design concepts comparedwith those with the least innovative designconcepts, revealed significant differences per-taining to conflict behaviour styles. High inno-vation groups used a more competing andmore compromising style, whereas low ratinginnovation groups used a more collaboratingstyle. This result was supported by the analysis

of the generation of ideas in the same groups:groups with low innovative design conceptswere inclined to repeat already existing ideaswhile the high rating groups produced morenew ideas, associated more but also rejectedmore ideas. Teams with low innovative out-comes used a mainly collaborative style andspent too much time on discussing andworking out the same ideas.

When analysing the characteristics of highand low rating groups for the functionality oftheir designs, we get almost the same pattern(the only exception is that the increase in theproduction of new ideas by the high-ratinggroups has not reached significance). Theseresults do not reveal whether teams were toohomogeneous or whether they suppresseddivergent thoughts because they were focusedmainly on team consensus. This behaviourresembles aspects of ‘groupthink’ (Janis, 1972,1982) which encompass a set of behaviours inteams which are concerned mainly with main-taining a good group climate, thereby prevent-ing critical feedback in the team.

In conclusion, we can state that importantcomponents of creativity, seen as a combina-tion of innovation and functionality, arediverse views, linked to each other, which arediscussed openly; while less promising ideasare consciously allowed to drop out along theway – i.e., be rejected. Obviously, the mixedpattern of all three conflict behaviour styles –competing, collaborating and compromising,is important for arrival at the production ofan innovative and functional design. Thisresult is in contradiction with the explana-tions of De Dreu (2006) who sees collabora-tion as the most important and contributorygroup behaviour towards arrival at an inno-vative result in situations of cognitive taskconflict.

To account for the difference between ourresults and prior research regarding collabora-tive behaviour, we must point out some quali-fications that pertain to our study:

Table 9. Idea Generation in High and Low Functionality Groups

Functionality (%) Chi2

significance

Low High

New ideas 3.1 4.8 n.s.Associating 32.8 43.3 0.003Repeating 50.5 31.7 0.006Rejecting 16.4 20.2 0.053



• Time: The groups worked together for only50 minutes to come up with a final concep-tual design proposal. Therefore lengthydiscussions, when they took place, left theteam with little or no time to work outvaluable solution ideas. On the other hand,too little discussion resulted in a lossof the opportunity to gather, integrateand assess information from differentperspectives.

• Task: The type of task also plays a role in theextent to which cognitive conflict leads toan innovative result (Chen, 2006). Taskswith a high degree of uncertainty are likelyto create a high amount of cognitive con-flict; studies revealed that cognitive conflictcould easily end up in an affective conflictdepending on determinants such as openmindedness and trust (Jehn, 1997; Mooney,Holahan & Amason, 2007). The task is alsorelated to the level of conflict and there issome evidence for a curvilinear relationshipbetween cognitive conflict and innovation,meaning that both high and low levels ofcognitive conflict lead to less innovation (DeDreu, 2006).

• Design phase: The design task imposes dif-ferent requirements during its variousphases, and the impact of cognitive conflictvaries among these phases. In this study weobserved only the early phases of task clari-fication and conceptual solution generation(and not detailed design or evaluation), inwhich the generation of new and fruitfulideas is more likely to benefit from diversityof knowledge, abilities and experience,which are potentially also the source of cog-nitive conflict in a group.

• Team: Teams working together go throughseveral stages of development (see, e.g., thegroup development model by Tuckman,1965). According to Tuckman’s model,group dynamics provoke more conflict inearlier than in later stages. As our labora-tory experiment was too short to trigger agroup-building process, the group develop-ment aspect and the differences in conflictbehaviour over time could not be observed.Furthermore, unlike teams in typicalorganizational settings, our groups weread hoc teams with no differentiation inbackground, goal and responsibility ofmembers. This may affect various behav-ioural characteristics of the team that mayhave impacted the results we obtained.

• Context: The experiment took place in alaboratory context under time and resourceconstraints. The team members had identi-cal roles. In an organizational context, withdifferent roles and responsibilities, andwith different constraints over a longer

period of time, the same behaviour couldlead to different results.

It seems to us that these qualifications may bea possible explanation for why collaborationwas not what distinguished those designgroups which, in our experiment, achievedhigh ratings for their designs in terms of bothinnovation and functionality. The task calledfor conceptual design and the starting pointwas ideas previously generated individuallyby the team members. It is not easier tochoose one idea than to integrate all ideasinto one common concept. Therefore compe-tition over pre-generated ideas (in the indi-vidual sessions) makes a lot of sense duringthis phase. This is also why the proportion ofnew ideas in group sessions was low despitethe fact that the groups developed far moresolutions and mainly sub-solutions, using forthe most part the association and repeatingconcept behaviour. Collaboration is requiredmostly later, at the phase of development andfine-tuning of the concept. This phase hasbarely taken place in this experiment and wespeculate that most of the collaborationoccurred when (limited) development wasundertaken. Since the exercise was veryrestricted in time, we did not comparebetween different stages of the ‘group phase’(50 minutes in all; see Table 1). Low ratinggroups, in which more collaboration wasobserved, may have tried to combine indi-vidual ideas into one concept rather thanchose one leading idea. In a consciousattempt to reach rapid agreement theyrepeated and reconfirmed ideas much moreoften and this may explain their higher rateof collaboration and lower scores on innova-tion as well as on functionality.

We can conclude that, although the labora-tory setting might cause limitations, it also hasa major advantage in that a large variety ofdifferent processes and phenomena can bestudied in a relatively short period of time.Furthermore, all kind of disturbances whichoccur in the field can be controlled in thelaboratory.

Finally, what we also learn from thisstudy is that design processes, and by exten-sion other complex team activities, shouldnot be studied as homogeneous units. Phasesin the process, differences in outcomes andthe handling of ideas raised, tell us muchmore about the intricacies of team processesthan when we treat the process as uniform.The potential benefits and limitations of cog-nitive conflicts during the design processshould, no doubt, be further explored in moredetailed experiments over a longer period oftime.



Acknowledgements

A first version of this paper was presented atICED07, Paris, 28–31 August 2007, and pub-lished in its proceedings as paper 388, underthe title ‘Cognitive Conflict in Design Teams:Competing or Collaborating?’ (CD, n.p.). Thesecond author wishes to acknowledge a grantfrom the fund for the promotion of research atthe Technion, which partially supported thewriting of this paper.

Note

1. Initially seven groups (21 participants) wereinvited to participate in the experiment, and all ofthem undertook the task and reached a solution.Due to a technical problem with sound record-ing, we have no documentation of the verbaliza-tions in one of the groups (group 0). Thereforethe analysis pertains to only six groups (18participants).

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Professor Dr Petra Badke-Schaub([email protected]) holds thechair of Design Theory and Methodology atDelft University of Technology, The Neth-erlands. She has a background in cognitiveand social psychology and did her PhD on‘Groups and complex problem solving’ atthe University of Bamberg, Germany. Herresearch interests and publications covertopics such as research methods, definingand analysing critical situations, problemsolving and decision making of individualsand teams in complex environments, thedevelopment of team mental models,experience and creativity in design.Her research encompasses long-term inter-disciplinary projects with focus on theanalysis of teamwork and leadership pro-cesses in design as well as laboratorystudies on thinking in design.

Professor Gabriela Goldschmidt holdsthe Mary Hill Swope Chair in Architecture& Town Planning at the Technion – IsraelInstitute of Technology, Faculty of Architec-ture and Town Planning. A graduate of theSchool of Architecture at Yale University,she had practised architecture until shebecame a full-fledged academic in the late1980s. Based at the Technion, she has alsoheld visiting appointments at MIT, TUDelft, University of Montreal and StanfordUniversity. Her research interests includedesign cognition, design reasoning, designrepresentation, visual thinking and designeducation. The research reported in thispaper was carried out while she was avisiting professor in the Department ofProduct Innovation Management, Facultyof Industrial Design, TU Delft, TheNetherlands.

Martijn Meijer was a Masters of Indus-trial Design Engineering student at TUDelft at the time the experiment was carriedout and collected the data for this study.



How does cognitive conflict in design teams support the development of creative ideas?

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