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

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.