Affective conflicts as determinants of supervisory boards effectiveness

Abstract

The introduction of the upper echelons theory by Hambrick and Mason in 1984 raised the interest in Top Management Teams (TMT) as key decision makers and in their impact on organizations’ performance. As initial search for the relation between TMT structure and company effectiveness did not bring conclusive results, recently the emphasis has been put on TMT functioning and group processes. Affective conflicts defined as a disagreement between team members caused by personal dislikes are one of them. The main objective of this article is to enrich theoretical considerations with the empirical identification of the relationship between affective conflicts in supervisory boards and their effectiveness. Moreover, various determinants of affective conflicts were examined. Apart from theoretical analysis of the problem, the value of this article is the presentation of the results of own empirical study conducted among members of supervisory boards representing 46 public companies operating in Poland. The results showed that affective conflicts decrease board performance, but the relation is not statistically significant. It was also observed that the strongest determinats of affective conflicts are work organization, education level of board memebers, and team cohesiveness. Conclusions are useful for the organization and moderation of board meetings and the selection of candidates.

Keywords

• tmt effectiveness
• affective conflict
• supervisory board
• top management team