The major purpose of this study is to explore influence of two types of workforce diversity (informational diversity and social category diversity) and team members’ trust (cognitive trust and affective trust) on team members’ conflict (cognitive conflict and affective conflict) and to analyze influence of on team members’ conflict (cognitive conflict and affective conflict) on team performance (team project record, perceived performance, and decision making quality) and team morale (team commitment and affective acceptance).
The data for this study were collected from questionnaire survey on 229 MBA students in 64 project teams.
The major findings of this study are as follows: First, cognitive trust decreased affective conflict. Second, affective trust positively influenced cognitive conflict. Third, affective conflict decreased perceived performance. Fourth, affective conflict has a negative effect on decision making quality. Fifth, affective conflict negatively influenced affective acceptance.
At the end of this study, the theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed.
