Affectual readiness: A process model of how everyday conversation influences affective conflict in teams

This study surfaces novel mechanisms through which everyday conversation influences conflict processes in new venture teams, challenging the assumption that affective conflict ultimately leads to detrimental outcomes. The findings are based on rich data, encompassing interviews, videotaped observations, and online chat conversations from three new venture teams over six months. Observations reveal how negative affect elicited by conflict can be tolerated—or even productive—insofar as it is balanced out by positivity in everyday conversation. I reframe the role of negative affect in conflict: from a matter of intensity and valance to a matter of temporality. I show how everyday conversation generate affectual readiness: an expectation among team members that they are able to experience intense negative affect without being overwhelmed by it, and how teams that have affectual readiness can productively enact and settle affective conflict, instead of avoiding or suppressing it. Together, these insights infuse team conflict research with a novel emphasis on everyday social interaction, and contribute to a deeper understanding of how new venture teams work together, beyond their compositional characteristics or the quality of their interpersonal relationships.