Team Performance, Collaboration and Conflict

Introduction

Organisations increasingly depend on teams whose members are distributed across locations, professions, cultures and time zones. A product launch may involve engineers, marketers, legal specialists and customer-service staff; a hospital improvement team may combine clinicians, administrators, data analysts and patients; a public-sector programme may require cooperation among agencies with different mandates. In such settings, individual expertise is necessary but insufficient. Performance depends on how effectively people coordinate, exchange knowledge, make decisions, handle disagreement and maintain commitment to shared outcomes.

Team leadership is therefore more than assigning tasks. It involves designing conditions in which interdependent people can perform. These conditions include a meaningful purpose, appropriate roles, reliable communication, trust, psychological safety, sound decision processes and constructive conflict management. The challenge is particularly acute in hybrid and multicultural teams, where differences in location, technology, language, status and social norms can create misunderstanding or unequal participation.

This chapter presents practical and analytical frameworks for leading such teams. It treats conflict neither as an automatic failure nor as something to be eliminated. Properly managed task and process disagreement can improve decisions, whereas unmanaged relationship conflict usually damages coordination and well-being.

Learning Objectives

By the end of this chapter, learners should be able to:

1. Explain the characteristics of effective teams and distinguish teams from groups.
2. Apply team-development, role, trust and psychological-safety frameworks.
3. Design collaboration practices for hybrid, cross-functional and multicultural teams.
4. Evaluate decision-making processes and reduce common team biases.
5. Diagnose types and sources of conflict and select appropriate interventions.
6. Use performance indicators to review team effectiveness without encouraging dysfunctional behaviour.
7. Critically assess the ethical and technological implications of contemporary team management.

1. Teams as Interdependent Performance Systems

A group is a collection of individuals who may interact, whereas a team is a group whose members have complementary capabilities, a common purpose and mutual accountability for outcomes. The distinction is important. A sales department may be a group of employees, but a cross-functional customer-retention team is a team when its members jointly own a measurable outcome and cannot achieve it independently.

Team performance can be understood as a system rather than as the simple sum of individual performance. Inputs such as expertise, resources, leadership and organisational conditions influence team processes. These processes include communication, coordination, conflict management, learning and decision-making. Outputs include task results, member satisfaction, capability development and the team’s capacity to work together in the future.

A useful conceptual representation is:

This is not a numerical equation but a conceptual model. Task achievement concerns quality, timeliness, cost and stakeholder value. Team viability concerns whether members remain willing and able to collaborate. Member development concerns learning, confidence and the acquisition of capabilities. A team that achieves a short-term target by exhausting staff, concealing risks or destroying trust is not sustainably effective.

Conditions of effective teams

Effective teams normally demonstrate the following characteristics:

• Compelling purpose: Members understand why the team exists and how success will be judged.
• Clear boundaries: It is evident who belongs to the team, who has authority and which stakeholders must be consulted.
• Interdependence: Members rely on one another rather than merely working in parallel.
• Complementary expertise: The team contains relevant technical, interpersonal and contextual knowledge.
• Explicit norms: Expectations about communication, meetings, responsiveness and disagreement are visible.
• Reliable coordination: Commitments, dependencies and hand-offs are actively managed.
• Learning orientation: The team reviews experience and adapts its practices.
• Psychological safety: Members can raise concerns, ask questions and admit mistakes without humiliation or retaliation.

These conditions are mutually reinforcing. A clear purpose supports coordination; psychological safety improves information sharing; effective decision processes strengthen trust; and trust makes it easier to address conflict early.

2. Team Development and Role Design

Team development over time

Teams do not become effective merely because they have been assembled. Tuckman’s widely used developmental model describes forming, storming, norming, performing and adjourning. During forming, members seek orientation and test expectations. During storming, disagreements about priorities, status, methods and authority become visible. Norming involves the development of shared expectations and relationships. Performing describes more mature collaboration in which energy is directed toward results. Adjourning occurs when a temporary team completes its work or changes membership.

The model is useful as a diagnostic framework, but it should not be treated as a rigid sequence. Teams may move backwards when a new member joins, the mandate changes or a crisis occurs. A hybrid team may also experience repeated forming whenever communication technology, reporting lines or membership changes.

Leaders can support development by matching interventions to team needs:

Roles and accountability

Role ambiguity creates duplicated effort, neglected tasks and interpersonal blame. Role design should distinguish at least four questions: Who performs the work? Who is accountable for the result? Who must be consulted? Who must be informed?

A RACI matrix is a practical tool. Responsible identifies the person or people doing the work; Accountable identifies the person ultimately answerable for the outcome; Consulted identifies those whose expertise is required; and Informed identifies those who need updates. Each major deliverable should normally have one clear accountable owner, although several people may be responsible for execution.

Role clarity must not become excessive bureaucracy. In rapidly changing work, teams also require flexible roles, peer support and the willingness to step beyond formal job descriptions. The leadership task is to combine clear accountability with adaptive contribution.

Belbin’s team-role perspective, although debated as a measurement system, offers a useful language for considering contributions such as coordinating, generating ideas, evaluating options, implementing decisions and maintaining relationships. The practical lesson is not that every individual has one fixed type, but that teams should examine whether important contributions are missing or overconcentrated.

3. Trust and Psychological Safety

Trust is the willingness to accept vulnerability based on positive expectations about another person’s intentions or behaviour. In teams, trust may be cognitive, based on perceived competence and reliability, or affective, based on care, concern and personal connection. Both matter. A colleague may be technically reliable but difficult to approach; another may be supportive but inconsistent. High-performing teams require both dependable execution and respectful relationships.

Trust develops through repeated signals:

• keeping commitments or renegotiating them early;
• communicating limitations honestly;
• sharing information rather than using it as personal power;
• giving credit accurately;
• treating confidential information responsibly;
• responding proportionately to mistakes; and
• applying standards consistently.

Psychological safety is related but distinct. It is a shared belief that the team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking. A psychologically safe team does not lack accountability or standards. Instead, members can challenge an assumption, report a near miss, ask for clarification or acknowledge uncertainty without fear of ridicule or punishment.

Leaders create psychological safety through observable behaviour. They can model fallibility, invite dissent, thank people for raising risks, ask questions before offering answers and distinguish learning-oriented mistakes from reckless violations. They must also act on concerns. Repeatedly inviting voice while ignoring it produces cynicism rather than safety.

A useful distinction is:

These conditions should be developed together. Psychological safety without accountability can become permissiveness; accountability without safety can become silence and defensive compliance.

4. Collaboration in Hybrid, Cross-Functional and Multicultural Teams

Hybrid collaboration

Hybrid work introduces “proximity bias”: people who share a physical office may receive more informal information, visibility and influence than remote colleagues. It also increases the risk of meeting inequality, in which remote participants struggle to hear, enter conversations or interpret non-verbal cues.

Effective hybrid teams establish a collaboration architecture rather than relying on goodwill. Important practices include:

1. Use a team charter. Define purpose, working hours, response expectations, meeting principles, documentation standards and escalation routes.
2. Make information findable. Record decisions, owners, deadlines and assumptions in a shared location.
3. Design for remote participation. When some members are remote, use one shared digital workspace, high-quality audio and explicit turn-taking. Avoid treating online participants as observers.
4. Separate synchronous and asynchronous work. Use meetings for ambiguity, judgment and relationship-building; use documents and collaboration platforms for information sharing and independent preparation.
5. Protect boundaries. Different time zones and caring responsibilities require realistic response norms rather than an assumption of permanent availability.
6. Review participation data qualitatively. Ask who speaks, who decides, whose work is visible and who receives informal access to leaders.

Technology supports collaboration but does not replace leadership. More messages can produce less clarity if decisions, priorities and ownership remain ambiguous.

Cross-functional collaboration

Functional specialists often use different languages, success measures and time horizons. Finance may emphasise risk and return, engineering reliability and feasibility, marketing customer value and speed, while operations prioritise stability and capacity. These differences are not necessarily conflict; they may represent legitimate perspectives on a shared system.

Leaders can create a common operating language by translating specialist concerns into shared outcomes. For example, a product team might evaluate a proposed feature through customer value, technical risk, regulatory exposure, cost and time to release. Decision criteria should be agreed before advocacy becomes entrenched.

Multicultural collaboration

Culture influences communication conventions, attitudes toward hierarchy, approaches to disagreement, perceptions of time and interpretations of silence. However, cultural frameworks must not be used to stereotype individuals. National culture is only one influence among profession, generation, personality, organisational culture, language proficiency and personal experience.

Inclusive leaders make implicit norms explicit. They clarify whether a meeting is for exploration or decision, whether disagreement should be voiced publicly or documented privately, and how decisions will be confirmed. They allow adequate processing time, avoid equating fluency with competence and check whether apparent agreement reflects genuine understanding. Rotating meeting times and recognising local holidays are practical signals of respect.

5. Team Decision-Making

Decision quality depends not only on the selected option but also on the process used to reach it. Teams commonly fail through groupthink, confirmation bias, authority bias, escalation of commitment and diffusion of responsibility.

A disciplined decision process includes:

1. Define the decision and distinguish it from implementation questions.
2. Identify who owns the decision and who must be consulted.
3. Establish evaluation criteria and constraints.
4. Gather relevant evidence, including disconfirming evidence.
5. Generate multiple options before selecting one.
6. Test assumptions and identify risks.
7. Decide, record the rationale and assign implementation ownership.
8. Set review points and specify what evidence would justify changing course.

Different decisions require different methods. A leader may decide alone when speed and expertise are critical, consult the team when information is distributed, use consensus when commitment and integration are essential, or delegate when capability is high and consequences are manageable. Consensus should not mean universal enthusiasm. It usually means that members understand the decision, believe their concerns were considered and will support implementation even if their preferred option was not selected.

Structured dissent

Teams can improve judgment by assigning a devil’s advocate, conducting a premortem or using independent written assessments before discussion. A premortem asks: “Assume this decision has failed one year from now. What caused the failure?” This technique reduces social pressure and encourages attention to weak signals.

Decision logs are valuable in complex work. They should record the decision, date, owner, alternatives considered, assumptions, evidence, risks and review date. The purpose is learning and accountability, not retrospective blame.

6. Conflict: Diagnosis and Management

Conflict is a perceived incompatibility of interests, goals, values or interpretations. It can concern the task itself, the process by which work is organised or the relationship between people.

The same disagreement can change category. A debate about workload allocation may begin as process conflict and become relationship conflict when one person is labelled lazy or selfish. Leaders should intervene early, before the issue becomes moralised and personal.

Sources of conflict

Common sources include scarce resources, incompatible incentives, role ambiguity, dependency failures, unequal workload, status differences, poor communication, cultural misunderstanding and genuine differences in values. Conflict may also be structural. If two departments are rewarded for opposing outcomes, asking them simply to “communicate better” will not solve the underlying problem.

A conflict-management sequence

A practical sequence is:

Diagnose. What happened? What are the interests, facts, assumptions and emotions? Who is affected?

Stabilise. If behaviour is threatening, discriminatory or abusive, protect people and apply relevant policy immediately. Do not treat serious misconduct as an ordinary difference of opinion.

Reframe. Replace accusations with a shared problem statement. “You never provide information” can become “The team receives the data after the decision deadline.”

Listen and test understanding. Each person should explain their perspective without interruption. The listener should summarise before responding.

Separate positions from interests. A position is what someone demands; an interest is why it matters. Two departments may demand control of a process because each is concerned about quality, workload or accountability.

Generate options. Search for solutions that address the important interests of both sides. Use objective criteria where possible.

Agree actions and follow-up. Specify who will do what, by when, and how the agreement will be reviewed.

Escalate appropriately. Mediation, human resources, formal investigation or senior governance may be necessary when direct resolution is unsafe or unsuccessful.

The Thomas–Kilmann framework describes competing, collaborating, compromising, avoiding and accommodating as broad conflict modes. No mode is universally best. Avoidance may be sensible for a trivial issue or when emotions require cooling; competing may be necessary to enforce a safety rule; accommodation may preserve a relationship when the issue matters more to the other party; collaboration is appropriate when both the relationship and substantive outcome matter. The danger is habitual use of one mode without diagnosing the situation.

Difficult conversations

A useful structure for a difficult conversation is observation, impact, inquiry and request. Describe observable behaviour rather than motive; explain its impact; ask for the other person’s perspective; and make a specific request. For example: “The last two status reports arrived after the agreed review time. This delayed the compliance check. What obstacles are affecting the schedule, and can we agree a revised hand-off by Wednesday?” This approach does not eliminate accountability; it makes accountability more actionable.

7. Measuring and Improving Team Performance

Performance measurement should connect team activity to meaningful outcomes. Useful measures may include quality, cycle time, reliability, customer value, safety, learning, inclusion and member well-being. A balanced dashboard prevents a narrow focus on speed or volume.

Measures should be interpreted carefully. For example, more reported errors may indicate poorer performance, but it may also indicate improved psychological safety and reporting. A reduced meeting count may reflect efficiency or may indicate that coordination has moved into invisible, fragmented channels.

Teams can use a review cycle:

• What outcome were we trying to achieve?
• What evidence shows progress or failure?
• Which assumptions proved inaccurate?
• Where did coordination break down?
• Whose voice or information was missing?
• What should we continue, stop or change?
• When will we check whether the adjustment worked?

After-action reviews are most useful when they examine systems and decisions rather than searching for a single person to blame. They should nevertheless identify individual accountability where commitments were knowingly neglected or standards violated.

8. Technology, AI and Governance

Digital platforms can improve visibility, document decisions and support asynchronous collaboration. AI tools may help summarise meetings, identify action items, translate text, analyse workflow patterns or provide alternative perspectives. Their use introduces governance questions.

Leaders should establish rules concerning confidentiality, data protection, intellectual property, accuracy, consent and human accountability. AI-generated summaries can omit dissent or misattribute statements, particularly across accents and languages. Automated productivity scores may reward visible activity rather than valuable work and can create surveillance pressures. Algorithmic systems may reproduce bias in workload allocation, performance assessment or promotion.

A responsible approach requires transparency about data collection, access controls, human review, an appeal process and periodic bias checks. AI should support judgment rather than replace responsibility for consequential employment decisions. Teams should also agree when information may be entered into external tools and how sensitive material will be protected.

Applied Case: The Atlas Service-Redesign Team

This is a fictional illustrative case.

Background

Atlas, a regional financial-services organisation, formed a nine-person team to redesign its small-business loan application process. The team included employees from digital engineering, branch operations, risk, legal, customer experience and data analytics. Four members worked mainly from the headquarters, three were remote in other cities and two worked across different time zones. The team had a twelve-week deadline.

Problem

After four weeks, progress had stalled. Engineering claimed that risk specialists changed requirements late. Risk claimed that engineers ignored regulatory concerns. Branch representatives rarely spoke in virtual meetings and later raised objections through private messages. Meetings were dominated by two senior specialists. A dashboard showed many tasks as “in progress,” but no one could identify the accountable owner for several deliverables. One remote member stopped attending optional design sessions because decisions appeared to have been made before the meetings.

Analysis

The team leader conducted confidential interviews and a process review. The main problems were not lack of technical ability but weak team design:

• The purpose was expressed as “build a faster process,” without a shared definition of acceptable risk or customer value.
• Decision rights were unclear; the team did not distinguish advice from approval.
• The hybrid format privileged headquarters members.
• Task and process conflict had become relationship conflict.
• Members feared that raising uncertainty would be interpreted as resistance.

Approach

The leader implemented five interventions. First, the team created a charter defining the outcome as a faster application process that met regulatory requirements and reduced avoidable customer effort. Second, it developed a RACI matrix and a decision log. Risk retained accountability for regulatory approval, while engineering owned technical design within agreed constraints.

Third, meetings were redesigned. Pre-reading was circulated 48 hours in advance; members submitted initial views in writing; all meetings used a shared digital board; and the facilitator invited contributions in rotating order before open discussion. Meetings were recorded only when appropriate, while decisions and actions were documented for everyone.

Fourth, the leader introduced a premortem: “Assume the redesigned process caused a regulatory breach and a customer complaint spike. What went wrong?” This exposed assumptions about data quality and exception handling. Finally, the leader held a facilitated conversation between engineering and risk. Each side described observable events, operational impact and underlying interests. They agreed on an early risk-review checkpoint rather than waiting until the end of design.

Outcome

By week eight, decision ownership was visible and unresolved issues were escalated earlier. Branch representatives contributed more frequently, partly because pre-reading reduced the pressure to formulate complex responses instantly in a second language. The team did not eliminate disagreement; instead, it moved disagreement earlier, where it was less costly. The final redesign met the deadline, passed regulatory review and reduced avoidable application rework in the initial pilot. The case does not prove that any single intervention caused the result, but it illustrates how purpose, role clarity, inclusive collaboration, psychological safety and structured conflict management can operate as a connected system.

Learning points

1. Apparent personality conflict may be produced by ambiguous roles and incompatible incentives.
2. Hybrid inclusion requires deliberate process design, not merely access to a video call.
3. Psychological safety is strengthened when leaders respond constructively to difficult information.
4. Conflict can improve outcomes when converted into explicit criteria, evidence and joint problem-solving.
5. Decision logs and review points create learning without requiring false certainty at the start.

Challenges and Limitations

Team frameworks simplify complex social systems. Developmental stages may not occur in a predictable order, and role models can become labels that restrict people. Psychological safety measures are often based on perceptions and may vary across hierarchy and culture. Conflict techniques can fail when power is highly unequal, when discrimination or harassment is present, or when organisational incentives reward competition.

Leaders should also avoid assuming that harmony indicates effectiveness. Silence may represent fear, exclusion or fatigue. Conversely, intense debate may be productive if participants remain respectful and evidence-oriented. The quality of a team must be judged through outcomes, process evidence and the experiences of those with less power, not through surface friendliness.

Ethically, leaders have a duty to prevent retaliation, discrimination and excessive workload. Confidentiality must be respected during conflict interventions, while serious risks may need to be reported through formal channels. Inclusion means more than inviting people into a team; it requires equitable access to influence, information and recognition.

Best-Practice Checklist

Before launching or renewing a team, leaders should ask:

• Is the purpose specific enough to guide trade-offs?
• Are decision rights and accountability clear?
• Do members possess the necessary expertise and authority?
• What norms govern meetings, response times and disagreement?
• How will remote, minority-language and lower-status members participate?
• What information must be documented, and where?
• How will the team detect relationship, process and task conflict?
• Which measures capture results, learning, inclusion and sustainability?
• What safeguards apply to employee data and AI-enabled tools?
• When will the team review its effectiveness and adapt its design?

Chapter Summary

Effective teams are interdependent performance systems whose success includes task achievement, team viability and member development. Leaders improve performance by establishing a compelling purpose, clear boundaries, complementary roles and explicit norms. Team development is dynamic, and teams may regress when membership, technology or objectives change.

Trust concerns confidence in others’ reliability and intentions, while psychological safety concerns the ability to take interpersonal risks. Both must be combined with accountability and inclusion. Hybrid, cross-functional and multicultural teams require deliberate collaboration architectures, shared language, equitable participation and explicit decision practices.

Sound team decisions define ownership, criteria, alternatives, evidence, risks and review points. Structured dissent helps counter groupthink and confirmation bias. Conflict should be diagnosed by type and source. Task disagreement can improve decisions, whereas unmanaged process and relationship conflict commonly damage performance. Leaders should reframe disputes around interests, use active listening, agree concrete actions and escalate serious or unsafe situations appropriately.

Finally, team measurement must balance outcomes with learning, inclusion, safety and sustainability. Digital and AI tools can support coordination, but they require transparency, privacy, human oversight and safeguards against bias and surveillance. The central leadership responsibility is to design conditions in which difference becomes useful, concerns become speakable and collective accountability becomes practical.

Key Terms

Team: An interdependent group with a shared purpose and mutual accountability.

Team effectiveness: The extent to which a team achieves outcomes, remains viable and develops its members.

Team charter: An explicit agreement about purpose, roles, norms, communication and decision-making.

Forming: The early developmental phase in which members seek orientation and clarify expectations.

Storming: A developmental phase in which differences over goals, roles, status or methods become visible.

Norming: The development of shared expectations and workable relationships.

Psychological safety: A shared belief that the team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking.

Trust: Willingness to accept vulnerability based on positive expectations about another party.

Role ambiguity: Uncertainty about responsibilities, authority or expected behaviour.

RACI matrix: A tool identifying who is Responsible, Accountable, Consulted and Informed.

Proximity bias: The tendency to favour people who are physically nearer or more visibly present.

Task conflict: Disagreement about the substance or content of work.

Process conflict: Disagreement about roles, methods, schedules or resource allocation.

Relationship conflict: Interpersonal tension involving distrust, hostility or perceived disrespect.

Groupthink: Pressure for agreement that suppresses critical evaluation of alternatives.

Premortem: A technique that imagines a future failure and works backward to identify its causes.

Consensus: A decision process in which members can support implementation after their concerns have been considered, even without unanimous preference.

After-action review: A structured examination of what happened, why it happened and what should change.

Review Questions

Short Answer Questions

1. How does a team differ from a group?
2. Distinguish trust from psychological safety.
3. What are the four roles represented in a RACI matrix?
4. Identify three common risks of hybrid collaboration.
5. What is the difference between task conflict and relationship conflict?

Long Answer Questions

1. Explain how team purpose, role clarity, psychological safety and accountability interact to influence performance.
2. Compare the usefulness and limitations of Tuckman’s team-development model for contemporary hybrid teams.
3. Discuss how a leader can design inclusive collaboration in a cross-functional and multicultural team.
4. Explain a structured decision-making process and show how it can reduce groupthink.
5. Evaluate the Thomas–Kilmann conflict modes and explain why no single mode is universally appropriate.

Analytical / Application Questions

1. A hybrid project team repeatedly misses hand-offs, while members blame one another for delays. Diagnose the likely team-system problems and propose a 30-day intervention plan.
2. During a meeting, junior members remain silent while senior specialists reach rapid agreement. Design a decision process that tests whether the agreement is sound and improves participation.
3. An organisation proposes using AI to score employee productivity from messages, meeting attendance and system activity. Assess the potential performance benefits, ethical risks and governance controls that should be required.

Multiple Choice Questions with Answers

Question 1

Which condition most directly distinguishes a team from a simple group?

A. Members work in the same physical location

B. Members have complementary expertise and mutual accountability for a shared outcome

C. Members have identical professional backgrounds

D. The team has a formal leader

Correct Answer: B. Members have complementary expertise and mutual accountability for a shared outcome

Question 2

Psychological safety is best defined as the belief that team members can

A. avoid accountability for missed targets

B. make all decisions without consultation

C. take interpersonal risks without fear of humiliation or retaliation

D. prevent all disagreement

Correct Answer: C. take interpersonal risks without fear of humiliation or retaliation

Question 3

In a RACI matrix, the person ultimately answerable for an outcome is

A. Responsible

B. Accountable

C. Consulted

D. Informed

Correct Answer: B. Accountable

Question 4

Which practice most directly reduces proximity bias in a hybrid team?

A. Allowing office-based members to make informal decisions

B. Using shared documentation and designing meetings for equal remote participation

C. Requiring remote members to attend every meeting

D. Reducing written communication

Correct Answer: B. Using shared documentation and designing meetings for equal remote participation

Question 5

A disagreement about who should approve a deliverable is primarily an example of

A. Task conflict

B. Process conflict

C. Relationship conflict

D. Avoidance conflict

Correct Answer: B. Process conflict

Question 6

What is the main purpose of a premortem?

A. To assign blame after a project fails

B. To imagine failure in advance and identify possible causes

C. To replace all quantitative analysis

D. To ensure unanimous agreement

Correct Answer: B. To imagine failure in advance and identify possible causes

Question 7

Which decision practice is most likely to counter groupthink?

A. Suppressing minority views to maintain speed

B. Allowing the most senior member to speak first

C. Using structured dissent and considering disconfirming evidence

D. Avoiding written records

Correct Answer: C. Using structured dissent and considering disconfirming evidence

Question 8

A leader responds to a reported near miss by thanking the employee, investigating the system and maintaining appropriate standards. This behaviour most strongly supports

A. Psychological safety with accountability

B. Role ambiguity

C. Proximity bias

D. Unmanaged relationship conflict

Correct Answer: A. Psychological safety with accountability

Question 9

Which conflict-management response is most appropriate when behaviour involves harassment or a credible threat?

A. Treat it as an ordinary difference of opinion

B. Ignore it until the next team review

C. Protect affected people and use appropriate formal procedures

D. Require immediate consensus between the parties

Correct Answer: C. Protect affected people and use appropriate formal procedures

Question 10

Which is an important governance control when AI tools are used to support team performance assessment?

A. Removing human review from consequential decisions

B. Keeping data collection and scoring methods secret

C. Providing transparency, access controls, human oversight and an appeal process

D. Measuring only message volume

Correct Answer: C. Providing transparency, access controls, human oversight and an appeal process