**1. Introduction**

Institutions and businesses are increasingly reliant on multidisciplinary teams to develop innovative solutions. Creative problem solving can occur in a variety of settings such as entrepreneurship, new venture research and development, and science [1, 2]. Many problems in organisations are complex and ill-defined and therefore orchestrate the need for the methods and processes of multidisciplinary teams which is now common place [3–5]. Team, creative problem solving is considered to be a key contributor to a company's competitiveness [6, 7]. Successful team cognition is when knowledge is distributed, shared and integrated within a team to make informed evaluations, judgements and decisions, during problem solving [8].

Alternative views and opinions when solving complex and ill-defined problems can result in the consideration of a wider array of perspectives and relevant information, which can ultimately result in more informed decision making [8–10]. The sharing and elaboration of diverse perspectives can steer group members to avoid early agreements and snap decisions by encouraging divergent thinking to explore alternative requirements and solutions [2, 11]. However the cognitive processes necessary for creative problem solving have had limited study, in the literature [12]. It has also been shown that the formation of functionally diverse teams does not automatically lead to knowledge sharing and subsequent creative problem solving and disciplinary differences may cause disagreements [13–15]. Alternatively teams may form an early consensus in the form of groupthink, where team members opt for team cohesion at the expense of the further examination of the problem elements [16]. Team creativity and performance has been shown to benefit from task conflict [17–19].

Task conflict is believed to support the exchange and integration of distributed information held by each team member, making for more informed judgements, decisions and solutions [14, 20]. The benefits of task conflict are associated with the constructive challenging of other's opinions and ideas; the encouragement of assertive, independent and unbiased thinking, to balance opposing arguments [21, 22]. These benefits are however subject to strong social, communication and collaboration skills [20, 23]. While conflict can be viewed as communication through dialogue, the components of communication that determine how conflict may support teams has not been significantly addressed [20, 24].

From the perspective of a discourse study around conflict, this study builds on the discussion that views conflicts as episodes of social interaction that are constructed between team members [24, 25]. Therefore, the objective of this study is to explore how through dialogue teams manage task conflict and the cognitive processes applied during creative problem solving.

#### **2. Team cognition in creative problem solving**

Previous research on creative problem solving has focused on individual, rather than on team cognition but there is now increased recognition of the importance of understanding team cognition [1]. Team creativity relates to the processes that integrate diverse views to create useful and novel solutions [26]. Studies have found task conflict to relate positively to creativity [27]. Task conflict is considered to promote divergent thinking to explore the problem area and broaden the scope of ideas [2]. The process of creative problem solving involves a number of steps. The first step is the identification of the problem scope and problem elements in order to provide some structure to the problem [28]. Ideation then occurs where one or more ideas are developed. The next step is concept development where selected ideas from the previous stage are further developed, critiqued and evaluated to identify difficulties with the solution. The final step is the refinement of solutions and their implementation [6]. Although numerous forms of team cognition may facilitate team creative problem solving, we focus on four forms of thinking that have a strong influence.

The following cognitive processes are instrumental to creative problem solving [29]. Firstly, as creative problem solving is focused on generating multiple solution options it has mainly been associated with creative thinking. Creative thinking is divergent with the purpose of creating a range of novel ideas [30–32]. It is linked to ideation and brainstorming [33, 34]. In many creative industries such as design and innovation, the solution space can be large in the iteration of multiple ideas which calls for creative thinking [35]. Design and Innovation studies have linked heightened levels of creative thinking to creative performance *How Task Conflict Can Support Creative Problem Solving in Teams by Stimulating Knowledge… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.96600*

[32, 36]. Individuals with advanced creative thinking skills, are deemed to have more originality, and novelty in their outcomes. Tests to determine levels of divergent and creative thinking measure fluency, flexibility and originality [37, 38]. Team creativity concerns the production of novel and useful ideas to produce products, processes and procedures by a team of people working together [39]. Team work is beneficial to creativity as groups are able to produce novel, creative outputs due to quality interactions and diverse cognitive inputs of the team members [40]. The working definition of creative thinking for this study is defined as:

*Divergent thinking to explore and generate alternative ideas and options [41]*.

Secondly, while creative thinking is intrinsic to creative problem solving it is not sufficient in addressing the scope of many complex problems. Creative problems, such as design and innovation problems are ill-defined [42] and un-structured [43]. These problems often have multiple ways to represent the problem, multiple solution paths, emergent sub problems, goals that conflict, requiring distributed knowledge to solve them [42, 43]. Therefore many work place problems require convergent as well as creative and divergent thinking [44], which has not been extensively studied [45]. In creative fields like design, concept generation involves alternating between convergent and divergent thinking [46]. This has been attributed to a co-evolution process where the solution and problem space are explored and constructed in parallel [47, 48]. This entails alternating between the creation of solutions and then the further structuring of the problem as solution generation surfaces a need for further information. Convergent thinking is deductive and logical, involving evaluation, judgement and analysis. Convergent thinking can support the creative process. As alternative options are created through divergent thinking, convergent thinking is applied in a sense making process in order to select the more viable solutions for further development where divergent thinking is applied once again [49, 50]. These alternating cycles are thought to be so frequent that cognitively they occur concurrently in the ideation process [45]. Critical thinking is associated with convergent thinking as it is deductive and logical and includes the skills of analysis, interpretation, inference and evaluation [51, 52]. It involves questioning the reliability of knowledge and sources, and converging on answers and decisions [52, 53]. It involves being able to provide rational arguments to defend a position taken [54, 55]. The working definition of critical thinking for this study is defined as:

#### *Convergent, logical and deductive thinking to interpret, analyse and judge information [41].*

Thirdly, Along with the application of critical and creative thinking, functioning communication is essential for teams to create and share information, make decisions and coordinate their efforts [56, 57]. Mol et al. [8] define team cognition as "an emergent state that refers to the manner in which knowledge is mentally organized, represented and distributed within the team" (p. 243). Teams do not always pool distributed knowledge successfully due to difficulties in understanding other team members, the task, and a tendency to agree rather than look for clarifications or elaborations [58]. Therefore, communication and knowledge processing are key aspects of the collaboration process [8, 56]. The presentation of information clearly during creative problem solving can improve creative outcomes [32]. Knowledge processing relates to the collaborative process of the co-construction of knowledge where team members interact with each other to build shared new knowledge [59, 60]. Activities include active discussions such as asking for feedback and clarifications [61]. The working definition of knowledge processing for this study is defined as:

*The process of elaborating, explaining, clarifying and exchanging information [41].*

Lastly, Reflective thinking or meta-cognition is identified as one of the essential creative problem solving skills to control and monitor the process [51]. The literature has shown that metacognitive skill is synonymous with creativity and open ended problem solving [62, 63]. The ability to switch between divergent and convergent thinking requires metacognitive knowledge about when, how, and why to alternate between these processes [64, 65] Meta-cognitive activities are around planning the management of the problem solving process, monitoring the progress and ability of the team, and evaluating the success of the methods used [62, 66, 67]. The main elements of meta-cognition are: planning, monitoring and evaluating one's problem solving strategies [62, 68, 69]. The working definition of metacognition for this study is defined as:

*Self-reflection through planning, monitoring and evaluating oneself or the team [41]*.

While these are the main cognitive processes involved in creative problem solving, multi-disciplinary teams can fail to collaborate and disagreements may occur due to differences in views and opinions [13, 14, 58].

### **3. Task conflict**

Teams engage in discussions and negotiations to integrate diverse perspectives and ideas and this can cause conflict [70, 71]. Task conflict relates to disagreements about the task, including differences in judgements, opinions and alterative directions [72, 73]. Four meta-analyses have been carried out to understand the effect of conflict on team performance, including [17, 70, 74, 75]. The findings from these studies is incomplete but some of the findings show that task conflict can improve creative problem solving when certain conditions prevail. While the findings unanimously found process and relationship conflict to negatively influence team interactions task conflict can enhance team interaction through debate to consider a greater amount of information, opinions and ideas to create an in-depth understanding of the task [19, 76].

Task conflict has been associated with enhanced creativity in inter-organisational teams [77, 78]. Task related disagreements among team members are a key driver for rich collective knowledge structures emerging from knowledge exchange, which has a positive influence on team creativity [40]. Task conflict is considered to aid creative problem solving and group decision making because it defers decision making and triggers critical thinking and constructive criticism to evaluate solutions [17, 79, 80]. During the negotiation of conflict several opinions can be shared and integrated to support solutions and decisions [9, 81] As groups participate in task conflict they acquire a deeper learning and more knowledge of the problem elements. As individuals are willing to hear other perspectives they can then examines their own position and adjust [73] to reach common ground [82]. Task conflict can provide the team with the opportunity for further thinking to broaden the problem and promote novel and creative problem-solving solutions [20]. Micro conflicts for teams solving complex unstructured and ill-defined problems can be beneficial by decreasing uncertainty [14]. The benefits of task conflict are not automatic, Teams must be willing to communication in order to mitigate against the potentially negative influence that task conflict can create [20, 72].

The discussions of the team members during episodes of conflict can determine if conflict has a positive influence on teams. Gheorghe et al. [40] argue that the ability of teams to process information rests on the cognitive processes and individual representations, as well as on the quality of interactions that take place among group members. It can take team members several turns of speech to negotiate and resolve task conflict [25]. Task conflict can instigate collaboration, and social skills are necessary for effective collaboration to resolve conflicts [23]. A collaborative

#### *How Task Conflict Can Support Creative Problem Solving in Teams by Stimulating Knowledge… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.96600*

approach with the application of social skills can reduce task conflict transforming to dysfunctional forms of conflict like relationship conflict. [23, 83]. There are two approaches to resolving conflict, either through degenerative and competitive dialogue or through generative and collaborative dialogue [24, 84]. In degenerative discussions, the focus is not on forming a shared understanding, and the competitive nature of this approach often ends in a win or lose outcome [84]. In a generative dialogue the conflict is used as a vehicle to promote discussion and debate with the ultimate aim of arriving at a shared understanding. Collaboration, means focusing on shared goals, accommodating and integrating the positions of others [24].

While a number of studies have addressed the social skills necessary for collaborative problem solving such as [23, 85] there have been limited studies that have explored the cognitive processes involved in managing task conflict during creative problem solving. Many studies on conflict involve retrospective studies e.g. [70] and researchers have proposed that studies on conflict processes, require observational studies to understand the micro conflicts in the course of discussions [14]. They argue that examining the social-cognitive processes during the back and forth exchanges during conflict in creative problem solving, can provide insights into why task conflict can benefit team performance.

We propose that limited levels of task conflict can have a beneficial impact on creative problem solving by stimulating certain cognitive processes to encourage information exchange and negotiation, to build constructed knowledge within the team. Producing a creative output involves finding connections among seemingly unrelated concepts, requiring a complex knowledge structure facilitating groups to shift between perspectives [40]. In turn this will stimulate iterative episodes of idea exploration and evaluation to arrive at considered solutions. The purpose of this study is to understand how task conflict can support creative problem solving in teams and the cognitive processes used in the process.

## **4. Method**

Case studies were used to investigate design teams working in context at the front end of innovation projects and explores the dialogue of the participants to understand their cognitive processing. The research methodology was chosen to understand the context dependent and complex interconnected processes of creative problem solving. An important part of team creative problem solving is verbal communication and conversation.

## **5. Data collection**

There were four cases in the study. Two of the cases involved two teams within each case, this is summarised in **Table 1**. A case was determined by the context and the project. Therefore, if two teams worked on the same project within the same environment this made up one case. The first case consisted of a bio-medical fellowship program (MedDev1), the second an undergraduate project (Students), the third a professional practice case (Consultants) and the fourth an additional bio-medical case (MedDev2). All data collected was from the front end of the design and innovation process.

Observations were carried out during meetings and work sessions. The raw data was audio recorded and transcribed. Field notes were taken during and shortly after observations episodes to correctly record the activity (Cohen et al. 2007). The research data analysed for each case is summarised in **Table 2**.


#### **Table 1.**

*Case study profile.*


#### **Table 2.**

*Details of data collection.*

#### **6. Data analysis**

The analysis followed protocol and conversation analysis studies in creative research [86, 87]. The turn taking during conversations was analysed during meetings, e.g. [87]. The team dialogue was audio recorded, transcribed and imported to NVIVO and organised per case study. Analysis was both manual, in reviewing the data and digital, in the use of NVivo to theme the codes. The data was first divided into manageable chunks of topic segments. Topic shifts or changes were considered to be a suitable means to define topic segments as, topic shifts and changes start and finish through cooperation and consensus [88]. How a topic shift, or change occurred was assessed to determine if the participants reached agreement or if they changed topic without agreement. Expressions of agreement came in the form of utterances such as: uh, yeah, yes, mm, and Ok (ibid). Content analysis was applied in the deductive analysis of text data from the team discussions, through a systematic classification process of coding and identifying themes or patterns [89]. The four cognitive processes selected from the literature (knowledge processing, critical thinking, creative thinking and meta-cognition) were allocated to the utterances of each participants. **Table 3** shows the cognitive processes explored and descriptors for each [41]. There was some overlap for example where an utterance could overlap two cognitive processes.

*How Task Conflict Can Support Creative Problem Solving in Teams by Stimulating Knowledge… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.96600*


**Table 3.**

*Descriptor of each cognitive process.*

Reliability is about the degree to which findings can be repeated in subsequent studies, even by other researchers. An inter-rater reliability study was performed with a second coder, to code a portion of the data according to the descriptions of the themes provided by the researcher. The results showed a Kappa coefficient of: 0.718.
