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Group harmony in the workplace: Conception, measurement, and validation

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Abstract

Based on a literature review of Chinese traditional philosophies and social science research on social harmony we formulated the group harmony construct, developed a scale, and tested its validity in two studies on 167 top management groups from China. Study 1 demonstrated convergent and discriminant validity of group harmony and evaluated its predictive validity against well-established constructs of relationship conflict, task conflict, group cohesiveness, psychological safety, and conflict avoidance. Study 2 further examined the construct and nomological validity of group harmony and tested the effects of group harmony and found that, as hypothesized, group harmony enhanced group innovative performance through increasing knowledge sharing among group members. However, instead of motivating innovative performance through fostering moderate levels of task conflict, group harmony enhanced innovative performance through reducing task conflict on the one hand and neutralizing the negative effect of task conflict on the other. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

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Notes

  1. Simsek et al. (2005) expanded on Hambrick’s (1994) concept of behavior integration and claimed that their behavioral integration concept is an all-encompassing meta-construct. However, the authors as well as Hambrick (1994) differentiate behavior integration from social integration in that the former is about social relationships whereas the latter is about task related collaboration and coordination.

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Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the APJM Senior Editor Peter Li and the reviewers for their invaluable suggestions for revising the manuscript. We also appreciate Professor Stan Gully for his advice on data analysis.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Management and Global Business, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick, NJ, USA

    Chao C. Chen

  2. Nanjing University Business School, Nanjing University, Nanjing, China

    Chao C. Chen

  3. Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences, Uludağ University, Bursa, Turkey

    Ali F. Ünal

  4. Department of Management, Chinese University of Hong Kong, No.12, Chak Cheung Street, Shatin, N.T., Hong Kong

    Kwok Leung

  5. China Europe International Business School (CEIBS), 699 Hongfeng Road, Pudong, Shanghai, 201206, China

    Katherine R. Xin

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  1. Chao C. Chen
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Chen, C.C., Ünal, A.F., Leung, K. et al. Group harmony in the workplace: Conception, measurement, and validation. Asia Pac J Manag 33, 903–934 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10490-016-9457-0

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