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Introduction
During decision-making, functionally diverse teams are required to surface and share knowledge, identify commonalities and differences in views, consolidate all perspectives, and come to solutions that reflect the positions of the team as a whole (Eden and Ackermann, 2010; Cheung et al., 2016). During interactions consensus on the understanding of the contribution of others and on the position to take on these contributions is required (Kirschner et al., 2008). Consensus is on-going to resolve inconsistencies and conflicts that may occur (Chiravuri et al., 2011).
Functionally diverse teams do not always engage effectively in information sharing activities and disagreements may arise due to differences in mental models (Cheung et al., 2016; van Ginkel and van Knippenberg, 2008; Paletz et al., 2017) thus delaying consensus. Alternatively groups may fail to elaborate on information and reach an early consensus due to groupthink, where individuals agree with decisions in the interest of keeping team cohesion (Janis, 1982).
Studies have shown that team performance and decision-making can benefit from task conflict (de Wit et al., 2012; Bradley et al., 2015). Task conflict is considered to increase knowledge exchange and integration, resolve uncertainty resulting in additional ideas and judgments relating to goals, decisions and solutions to then generate consensus (Paletz et al., 2017; Wu et al., 2017). When team members oppose the beliefs, attitudes and ideas of others task conflict, increases divergent thinking and reducing premature consensus (De Dreu and West, 2001).
Task conflict and team performance are considered to be positively related when tasks are sufficiently complex such as in design or innovation tasks (De Dreu, 2006; Song et al., 2006; Badke Schaub et al., 2010). These tasks are complex and involve vaguely defined or conflicting goals, multiple solution paths and emergent constraints (Wiltschnig et al., 2013). They involve uncertainty (Paletz et al., 2017), there is no optimal design solution and design teams must create multiple alternative solutions that allow subjective factors to determine the outcome (Lawson and Dorst, 2013). Design teams are required to alternate between divergent and convergent thinking to first explore options and suspend early decisions on solutions and second to analyse solutions (Dym et al., 2006). The process is highly iterative...