Workplace Conflicts Overview

Workplace Conflicts

• Conflicts can be categorized as task, relationship, process, or status conflicts.
• Task conflict arises from disagreements about work content (goals, direction).
• Relationship conflict stems from emotional incompatibility among team members.
• Process conflict involves disagreements on task completion methods (logistics, roles).
• Status conflict arises from disputes over team members' social hierarchy and power dynamics.

Antecedents of Conflict Types

• Task Conflict: Diverse teams with differing perspectives experience more task conflict.
• Relationship Conflict: Teams with high negative affectivity or low agreeableness have higher relationship conflict.
• Process Conflict: Teams with power imbalances or unclear roles experience increased process conflict.
• Status Conflict: Teams with numerous high-power individuals may experience increased status conflict due to competition for influence.

Conflict Benefits and Harm

• Task conflict can be beneficial when occurring in a supportive atmosphere, fostering diverse skill sets.
• Relationship conflict is detrimental, leading to poor emotional regulation and aggressive conflict.
• Process conflict is harmful and associated with ineffective communication and ambiguous decision making
• Status conflict is detrimental when causing excessive competition for leadership roles.

Workplace Mistreatment

• Incivility: Rude behaviours with ambiguous intent.
• Ostracism: Explicit exclusion.
• Abusive Supervision: Sustained aggressive behavior from a supervisor.
• Bullying: Repeated hostile acts.
• Physical Aggression: Aggressive physical acts.
• Harassment: Gender/racial/ethnic-specific mistreatment.

Mistreatment Factors

• Organizational: work environment stressors, power imbalances, and lack of resources.
• Individual: personality traits, experience, demographics.

Mistreatment Effects

• Attitudes: Reduced satisfaction, organizational commitment, increased turnover intentions.
• Job Behaviors & Performance: Decreased performance, increased deviant behavior.
• Health & Well-being: Increased negative affect, stress, PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder).

Workplace Bullying

• Repeated and systematic exposure to negative behaviors by colleagues.
• Distinguished from other mistreatment by its systematic nature, persistent power imbalance, and inability of victims to defend themselves.

Bullying Hypotheses

• Work Environment Hypothesis: Bullying arises from the work design and social environment (role conflict, workload, insecurity).
• Individual Dispositions Hypothesis: Certain personality traits increase the risk, or being a target (neuroticism, conscientiousness).

Bullying Moderators

• Antecedents-bullying (personality, climate, resilience).
• Bullying-outcomes (coping mechanisms, support, leadership).

Workplace Discrimination

• Formal discrimination: Tied to job decisions (hiring, promotion).
• Interpersonal discrimination: Occurs in everyday interactions (verbal/nonverbal).
• Mediating mechanisms: Job stress, justice perceptions.
• Discrimination types: Witnessed vs. Experienced, formal vs. interpersonal, workplace vs. non-work, equally detrimental depending on context.

Interventions (Bias Reduction)

• Disrupting stereotype processing (anonymizing data).
• Updating affective states (imagination, empathy).
• Inhibiting bias manifestation (accountability, norms).
• Educating about bias processes (diversity training).

Trust

• Key components of organizational trust: ability, benevolence, integrity.
• Empirical relationship between trust, trust propensity, risk-taking, and job performance.
• Team trust is vital for effectiveness in complex, interdependent tasks.
• Trust matters more in virtual teams due to reliance on communication and less face-to-face interaction.

Leader-Member Exchange (LMX)

• High-quality LMX: Strong trust, respect, open communication, support, higher satisfaction.
• Low-quality LMX: Limited interaction, lack of trust, lower satisfaction, high turnover.
• Stages of LMX: Strangers, Acquaintances, Mature relationships
• Members' personality variables influence LMX development.
• Leader behaviors (delegation, ethics) and member behaviors (competence) contribute to LMX.
• LMX quality strongly tied to job satisfaction, organizational commitment and well-being.

Negative Interactions with Supervisors (Abusive Supervision)

• Abusive supervision: Sustained hostile verbal/nonverbal behavior (excluding physical).
• Measurement challenges: subjectivity and bias.
• Consequences: Reduced morale, more CWB (Counterproductive Work Behaviors) and more likely to leave job.
• Antecedents: Social learning, identity threat, self-regulation impairment.
• Prevention strategies: improve communication, enhance emotional intelligence & ensure work-life balance for supervisors.

Employee-Customer Exchanges

• Negative treatment more likely in customer exchanges than internal ones due to autonomy, relationships, and power differentials.
• Negative exchange cycle: Customer dissatisfaction, followed by employee defensiveness leading to customer departure or further issues.
• Preventative measures: better training, improve organizational empathy, reducing power imbalances.
• Customer relations affect job satisfaction, stress, and employee well-being.