Project Management Journal

Organizational culture diversity indicates that cross-functional project teams are composed of team members from various organization functional units, and team members have different organizational culture backgrounds. Organizational culture diversity describes distinct beliefs, values, and norms that are deeply embedded in the minds of team members and demonstrated in their behaviors ( Trompenaars & Hampden-Turner, 2004; Tsai & Chi, 2009). Ren and Gray (2009) argued that different cultural backgrounds were reflected in regulations or codes, display rules, and facework rules. Different regulations or codes (Mahalingam & Levitt, 2007) are the various means of work that often cause extra duplicating effort and communication (Gladden, 2009). The more dissimilar the regulation, the greater the likelihood that a communication barrier may result in further relationship conflict among team members. Display rules are behavior standards that regulate emotional expression (Ekman, 1973; Ren & Gray, 2009). The negative emotion of one member is associated with the negative emotion of another member and may instigate a cycle of negativity and dissatisfaction during the interaction (Ben-Naim, Hirschberger, Ein-Dor, & Mikulincer, 2013). Facework rules reflect the manner of conduct of team members, which represents either a positive or negative interpersonal relationship. A positive relationship conflict in teams will facilitate information transfer and trust building as well as promote cooperation among conflicting parties ( Chiocchio, Forgues, Paradis, & Iordanova, 2011). Misunderstanding, inappropriate displays, or a frustrated manner will form the root of tension, hostility, and antagonism among team members. Therefore, the following hypothesis is proposed:

Hypothesis 3. Organizational culture diversity is associated positively and significantly with relationship conflict.

Inappropriate behavior reflects
unsuitable methods of communication
and interaction among team members.
Communication has an important role
in facilitating trust and promoting col-
laboration (Anthony et al., 2014; Chen,
2007; Dawes & Massey, 2005; Sarker,
Ahuja, Sarker, & Kirkeby, 2011; Yiu &
Cheung, 2007). Conflict is rarely in the
success of project teams. (Bishop, 1999;
Cheung & Chuah, 1999; Fang & Neufeld,
2009; Joshi, Sarker, & Sarker, 2007)
Cross-functional project team members
have competing social identities. Team
members are directed toward complet-
ing the project objective, while shared
resource pools and independent roles
strongly encourage them to develop
their own goals (Ghobadi & D’Ambra,
2013; Gladden, 2009; Pee, Kankanhalli,
& Hee-Woong, 2010). Team members
may engage in poor attitude and ill-
mannered behavior, such as rebuff,
criticism (Young, Struthers, Khoury,
Muscat, Phills, & Mongrain, 2013; Zhang
& Lin, 2009), and abusive supervision
(Harris, Harvey, & Kacmar, 2011; Tepper
et al., 2011), to protect their own inter-
ests (Runde, 2014; Witteman, 1992). The
cross-functional project team is a tem-
porary task team whose members know
that they can go their separate ways after
completing the project. Therefore, these
members believe that building positive
relationships within the team is unnec-
essary, which prompts them to be rela-
tively less inhibited in expressing their
grievances and/or frustration to their
fellow members (de Wit, 2015). In the
long term, the collaborative atmosphere
and trust within the team are broken.
Subsequently, cumulative annoyance
(Tsui, Egan, & O’Reilly, 1992) forms
among the team members, which then
triggers relationship conflict. The fol-
lowing hypothesis is proposed:
Hypothesis 4. The inappropriate
behavior of team members is associated
positively and significantly with rela-
tionship conflict.
The conceptual model is built from
the hypotheses and presented in Figure 2.

Methodology

The primary antecedents of the relationship conflict framework (Table 1) are summarized through a literature review. To ensure that the research endeavors could meet our cross-functional context need, a pilot questionnaire was employed and an advisory group discussion (based on the primary antecedents of relationship conflict) was conducted to modify the primary antecedents of