Effects of task oriented conflict of inter-subgroups on information exchange in group decision making

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of task oriented conflict of inter-sub-groups on pooling of unshared information and information exchange between members, on cognition of information, and on perception in group decision making. The subjects were 30 female nursing school students. They discussed the flictious selection of a sub-chiefnurse in a group consisting of five members. Information about fictitious candidates (candidate A and candidate B) was given to the group members before discussion and consisted of shared information and unshared information. Information were positive, negative and neutral as classfied by preliminary study. In advance one groups were considered of two followers who believed that candidate A was qualified, and the other two who believed that candidate B was qualified (henceforth task-oriented conflict condition) and the other were considered of all four followers who believed that candidate A was qualified. The results were as follows: (1) Unshared information was more conveyed and neutral information was less interpreted and conveyed in task-oriented conflict condition. (2) Followers had more negative evaluations of the leader, the followers, and the discussion in task oriented conflict condition. The results were discussed from the point of view of the nature of task oriented conflict, group goal, and quality of information exchange.