How to Foster Team Intrapreneurship – Conflicts as Barriers and Chances

Abstract

Team intrapreneurship can be defined as the team's capability to fully exploit the resources available within in the team. For this exploitation, fostering the processes of knowledge generation and knowledge integration is fundamental. Conflicts can both enhance or hinder these processes. In this paper, we will demonstrate that task conflicts offer positive potentials for knowledge generation but negative potentials for knowledge integration, whereas relationship conflicts show primarily negative overall effects. A core problem is that task conflicts are systematically linked with relationship conflicts. In order to defuse this dilemma we ask, firstly, which measures are appropriate to separate task conflicts from relationship conflicts - thereby keeping levels of relationship conflicts low. However, task conflicts will not automatically foster, but may rather impede the exploitation of team resources. Moreover, even given intensive measures to separate task conflicts from relationship conflicts, relationship conflicts are still likely to occur, albeit less frequently. Thus, we secondly ask for additional measures to assure the desired effects of task conflicts while reducing their undesired effects and discuss how to reduce especially the negative effects of relationships conflicts. Our approach integrates research on intragroup conflicts on the one hand and creative problem solving in groups on the other hand and formulates practical implications.