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The purpose of this paper is to examine which communication contexts – virtual or traditional interactions – is more disruptive or beneficial to the effects of intragroup conflicts on team performance.

A laboratory experiment was conducted comparing 22 face‐to‐face (FTF) teams, 22 videoconference (VC) teams and 22 computer‐mediated communication (CMC) teams over a month.

Results showed that VC teams are the highest performing teams and CMC teams the lowest. However, when task conflict increases VC team performance diminishes at the first stage of the teamwork. FTF team performance is also improved by task conflict, but also by process conflict. After a period where team members develop teamwork experience, relationship conflict and process conflict damage more seriously team performance in CMC teams than in FTF teams. In conclusion, traditional teams and virtual teams behave in different ways, but also there are differences between VC and CMC teams.

This study concludes with a discussion of the obtained results in terms of their implications for traditional and virtual team managers, taking into account the limitations provided by the student sample used.

The paper sheds light on the beneficial impact of task conflict and process conflict on team performance in traditional contexts in several stages of teamwork, and it provides new evidence for hopeful expectations for virtual teams.

Although the importance of teamwork competencies and effective conflict management in entrepreneurship education is recognised, we have limited knowledge of how these factors interact to influence performance in entrepreneurial teams. This research explores teamwork competencies as a predictor of entrepreneurial team performance and the moderating effect of emerging cognitive and interpersonal team conflict as levers in entrepreneurship learning.

A time-lagged survey method was used to collect data from 49 teams (156 individuals) of undergraduate students in an experiential new venture creation course. A predictive model of entrepreneurial team performance through hierarchical regression analyses and moderated-moderation analyses was tested.

Results reveal that teamwork competencies have a significant and direct influence on entrepreneurial team performance and that intragroup conflict strengthens that relationship when high levels of cognitive conflict and low levels of interpersonal conflict emerge.

The findings have implications for the design of entrepreneurial training programs, which will benefit from interventions aimed at teamwork competency development that incorporate strategies promoting constructive cognitive conflict while preventing the emergence of interpersonal conflict.

This study is a step forward in entrepreneurship education research from the perspective of social and interpersonal processes by identifying the patterns of intra-team conflict that lead to more effective entrepreneurial teams and more productive use of teamwork competencies in a learning-by-doing entrepreneurial context.