Работа профессора Аманды Фергюсон признана самым влиятельным исследованием по управлению конфликтами за 2018–2021 годы

Conflict may be inevitable, but making waves in the field of conflict management is anything but. In July, Management Professor Amanda Ferguson did just that, proving that sometimes the best way to make an impact is to study what happens when people don’t see eye to eye. This summer, at the annual meeting of the Academy of Management in Philadelphia, Professor   Amanda Ferguson’s   paper titled “Things Are Not Always What They Seem: The Origins and Evolution of Intragroup Conflict” was honored as the most influential conflict management paper published between 2018 and 2021. The paper was published in one of the most elite outlets in the field, Administrative Science Quarterly, and has fundamentally changed how we understand conflict in groups. “It’s an incredible honor,” Ferguson said. “There are many worthy papers published in that time, and the award committee painstakingly reviews every possible candidate. I’m elated that our paper was chosen and recognized at the annual Academy of Management conference.” Ferguson’s research is important because it helps people who study team conflict look at it in an entirely different way. Instead of team conflict as a whole-team-shared phenomenon, this research shows us that team conflict is often dyadic, meaning it often involves two people or two parties in a relationship, interaction or exchange. Rarely is everyone in the team involved, even if it affects everyone. That has huge implications for how scholars study team conflict, and how practitioners should manage it. “I hope that providing this new lens helps people appreciate the complexities of team conflict, but also how to pinpoint it in order to intervene effectively,” Ferguson said, adding that her students inspired her to work on this research. “From time to time, I would observe some conflicts in student groups that did not fit existing research on how to manage conflict, and that puzzled me. So doing this research was in large part for them — to better understand what team conflict looks like, and then to make more informed recommendations for what to do to handle it,” she said. In fact, Ferguson’s research has completely changed the way she teaches students how to recognize conflict and how to effectively manage it. It has been rewarding to give them tools that can truly help them be effective collaborators. In her teaching, Ferguson provides personalized learning experiences for students, helping them to facilitate discovery, and encourages the co-creation of the learning process. “It’s important to me that I make a personal connection with each student in my classes,” she said. “I also work hard at creating classroom experiences in which students can wrestle with a phenomenon to reflect on ‘what just happened’ and why.” Her students also help create the learning process by contributing their ideas, their experiences and their dreams to produce amazing “a-ha!” moments. And if she is inspired by her students, her work is bolstered by the support of her university. “I really appreciate how research diversity is valued at NIU. Colleagues are respected for their unique research topics, methods and publication outlets, which encourages creativity and belonging,” she said. “The management department is particularly special because it is filled with research all-stars publishing high-quality research with big impact in the fields of organizational behavior, entrepreneurship, human resources and strategy.” For more information about the college’s Department of Management, visit go.niu.edu/mgmt.