Interpersonal conflicts at work as a predictor of self-reported health outcomes and occupational mobility

Abstract

The results of this study indicate a possible causal relationship between interpersonal conflicts at work and self-reported health and occupational mobility. Given the considerable impact of interpersonal conflicts at work on the individual worker and on the organisation, and the fact that interpersonal conflicts at work are highly prevalent, these findings underline the need for interventions aimed at preventing the occurrence of interpersonal conflicts at work, or at least reducing the harmful effects on both the employee and the organisation.

Individual and Organizational Well-being when Workplace Conflicts are on the Agenda: A Mixed-methods Study

“…A comparison with a sample survey of the general Norwegian working population shows that the proportion "often" involved in interpersonal conflicts with superiors or co-workers was 8.5% and 2.8%, respectively (https://www.ssb.no/statistikkbanken). Two European studies found that such conflicts occurred for 7-9% (Appelberg et al, 1991b;Raeve et al, 2009). This indicates that the proportion of workers directly involved in conflicts in our sample was up to three times more frequent than in these comparison groups (21% vs. 7%).…”

“…Some use a dichotomous variable, asking the respondents questions such as "have you had considerable difficulties with superiors/co-workers" (Appelberg et al, 1991b) or "do you have conflicts with your co-workers/daily supervisors" (Raeve et al, 2009), while others have asked workers "how often do you get into arguments with others at work/with your supervisor?" (Frone, 2000).…”

“…Along with prior studies, the sense of mastery answers was dichotomized to insufficient mastery (yes/often and yes/sometimes) and sufficient mastery (No, rare/ never). Prior literature has also used mastery as a confounding control variable in their analyses of conflict and health (e.g., Raeve et al, 2009), but one could argue that mastery should be treated as an outcome variable along with work ability and other self-reported health variables. In this paper, however, we will treat mastery as a potential mediating variable because those with a low sense of mastery have been shown in prior research to suffer from higher levels of depression and anxiety (e.g., Reneflot & Mamelund, 2012: see also Fig.…”

“…Direct involvement in interpersonal conflicts at work has been shown to be associated with individual mental health related outcomes such as insomnia (Sakurai et al, 2014), burnout (Fujiwara et al, 2003), depression (Inoue et al, 2010), psychiatric morbidity (Appelberg et al, 1991a;Romanov et al, 1996;Eriksen et al, 2006;Hyde & Weathington, 2006), and organizational well-being outcomes such as job satisfaction, organizational commitment and turnover intentions (Frone, 2000), internal and external job mobility (Raeve et al, 2009),work engagement (Tsuno et al, 2009), and work disability .…”

Conflicts at Work —The Relationship with Workplace Factors, Work Characteristics and Self-rated Health

“…The previous studies showed that a high degree of interpersonal conflict or workplace conflicts was associated with negative feelings, counter-productive manner, work incapacity among women, stress symptoms, increased risk for mental ill health and low self-reported health [14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22] .…”