پدیدارشناسی تعارضات در کار تیمی مجازی: واکاوی تجارب زیسته دانشجویان کارشناسی

Objective: With the increasing and inevitable expansion of virtual education, which has gained unprecedented momentum especially after the COVID-19 pandemic, team activities in digital environments have become a special and valuable opportunity for collective learning, scholarly interaction, and the development of 21st century skills. However, these virtual environments, due to physical distance, lack of nonverbal communication, and dependence on technology, are a fertile ground for the emergence of complex conflicts between team members. If not managed, these conflicts can undermine effective collaboration, destroy group cohesion, and ultimately severely threaten educational achievements and the quality of teamwork output. Therefore, this research was conducted with the main aim of comprehensively identifying the types of these conflicts, rooting out the deep and fundamental causes of their formation, and ultimately, providing effective and practical management solutions to solve these challenges, exclusively from the perspective of students' lived and direct experiences.
Method: This research is considered an applied type, because its ultimate goal is not only to deeply understand and describe the phenomenon of conflict in virtual teams, but also to go beyond and move towards designing practical, applicable, and objective solutions to solve these problems in real educational environments. This study was conducted in the interpretive paradigm and with a qualitative approach, because it emphasizes understanding the subjective meaning, individual interpretation, and depth of participants' experiences of the phenomenon under study. In this regard, a phenomenological research strategy was used to explore and extract the essence and nature of students' lived experiences of encountering conflict in virtual teams. In order to collect rich and comprehensive qualitative data, semi-structured interviews were used, whose questions were carefully designed based on the 5W1H model framework (who, what, where, when, why, and how) and with respect to the concepts and literature available in the field of virtual team experiences to cover all aspects of the subject. The research participants, consisting of 13 undergraduate students in the field of education at Shahid Beheshti University, were selected using a purposive approach and criterion-based sampling method, with an emphasis on having at least one semester of practical and field experience working in virtual teams, as well as diversity in the year of entry (from 2018 to 2022) to ensure theoretical saturation of the data. The interviews were then carefully transcribed and analyzed using the Corbin and Strauss method in three stages of open, axial, and selective coding. To ensure the reliability and increase the internal validity of the data, the coding process was conducted and reviewed by three independent researchers to ensure convergence and agreement in identifying the main themes.
Discussion and Conclusion: In-depth analyses of qualitative data show that virtual team activities face five key and frequent conflicts: disagreements arising from differences in work styles and cognitive approaches, contradictions and dualities between individual and collective goals, the phenomenon of dominance and injustice in the distribution of tasks and power, unfair and subjective assessments of members' performance, and the lack of coordination and effective communication resulting from the inherent limitations of virtual space. The roots of these conflicts lie in deeper layers; factors such as an unhealthy and comparative competitive atmosphere, systematic underperformance of some members, widespread individual differences in personality, motivation, and digital literacy, structural weaknesses in teaching soft skills essential for virtual work (such as virtual communication, time management, and conflict), and abuse of power and position by group leaders or dominant members. To deal with these problems, six key and chain strategies have been identified. Strengthening mutual understanding and respect through regular virtual dialogue sessions and establishing clear, pre-agreed frameworks provides a fundamental foundation for conflict prevention and constructive collaboration. Managing conflicts in creative ways, such as using digital mediation techniques, role rotation, and dividing tasks based on capabilities and interests, not only reduces tensions, but also defines roles in a way that maintains group balance by preserving members’ autonomy and strengthening a sense of individual and collective responsibility. The vicious cycle of conflicts is broken by purposeful selection of team members with an emphasis on coordinating individual and collective goals from the beginning, periodic and planned changes in team composition to prevent monopolization of power and create new dynamics, and systematic rooting out of problems through continuous and anonymous feedback mechanisms. Ultimately, the successful implementation of these solutions requires the determination and tripartite cooperation of professors (as facilitators), students (as key players), and educational institutions (as supporters and policymakers) so that, through this conscious management, conflicts can be transformed from a destructive threat into a constructive opportunity for personal growth, deeper learning, and improving the overall quality of virtual education.