How boards manage the tension between cognitive conflict and cohesiveness: Illuminating the four board conflict climates

Research Question/Issue

Although both cognitive conflict and cohesiveness are quintessential for a supervisory board to fulfill its monitoring and advisory role, cognitive conflict may equally create tension that negatively affects board cohesiveness and performance. How boards manage this tension between conflict and cohesiveness is the key concern of this paper.

Research Findings/Insights

Analysis of the multicase data from 17 Dutch two-tier supervisory boards reveals that how boards manage the tension between conflict and cohesiveness depends on three attributes: (a) board cohesiveness, (b) the board's conflict norms formation and (c) the board's dominant conflict management style. These attributes shape volatile board conflict climates. Four conflict climates are identified: (a) compliance climate, (b) pseudocohesive climate, (c) conflict climate, and (d) agree-to-disagree climate.

Theoretical/Academic Implications

Our study makes three contributions. First, it suggests that boards avoid conflict but are nonetheless often not cohesive. Second, it reveals that boards have conflict management styles that include action patterns distinct from those reported in the extant literature since these patterns emerged from exploring what board members think and feel but do not openly say. Third, we develop new insights into how boards implicitly and continuously form conflict norms and propose that boards require explicit, conscious, and shared conflict norms to enact productive conflict management action patterns.

Practitioner/Policy Implications

A conceptual model is proposed that facilitates reflection of board decision-making and effectiveness and that maps out actions the boards can take to address the tension between cognitive conflict and cohesiveness.