Safety in the Storm: Interactive Effects of Conflict Types on Psychological Safety

Task conflict should, theoretically, benefit team outcomes, yet prior research has yielded inconsistent results. We propose this inconsistency reflects configurations of conflict types (task, relationship, process) within teams. Though these types have been examined in isolation or pairwise, their three-way interaction remains unexplored. Using multilevel modeling on 34,668 individuals (7,891 teams), we tested conflict types’ three-way interaction on psychological safety. Results revealed task conflict was positively related to psychological safety when relationship and process conflict were low, but negatively related when relationship conflict was high, regardless of process conflict. Findings underscore conflict configurations’ role in conflict theory and practice.