Relationships between conflicts and employee perceived job performance

Abstract

Purpose Over 83.72 million Chinese firms employing more than 775 million employees. It is essential to explore employee relationships and conflict management practices in China. Although collectivism can influence employee cognition and emotions, the psychological mechanism that links collectivism and job satisfaction is still unclear. Researchers have found existing empirical findings on conflict–performance relationships to be mixed and inconsistent, and have identified the need to pinpoint the explanatory mechanisms and boundary conditions that underlie the effect of conflict on job performance. This study aims to provide some clarification to this important yet relatively unclear issue. Design/methodology/approach A questionnaire survey was conducted in China to collect data. The authors received completed questionnaires from 466 employees. Findings Analysis of questionnaire results reveals that job satisfaction mediates the relationships between conflicts and perceived job performance, and that collectivism moderates the relationships between conflicts and job satisfaction. Specifically, the positive relationship between task conflict and job satisfaction is amplified by high levels of horizontal collectivism (HC) and vertical collectivism (VC), while the negative relationship between relationship conflict and job satisfaction is strengthened by HC. Research limitations/implications The main limitation is that this study used a cross-sectional design, meaning that causality in relationships cannot be established from results. Despite this limitation, the present findings provide insights into conflict management, job satisfaction and culture value literature. Originality/value This paper examines the moderating role of employees’ collectivist orientation (not national culture) on the relationships between conflicts and employee job satisfaction at the individual level. It also explores HC and VC and identifies their differential effects on the relationships between conflicts and job satisfaction.

Interpersonal conflict and counterproductive work behavior: the moderating roles of emotional intelligence and gender

“…For example, Danielsson et al (2015) reported that among thousands of participants in their studies over the past two years, 84% had reported being in some type of conflict situation with their coworkers, and about 50% had experienced it on a weekly basis. In addition to its high prevalence, interpersonal conflict has been found to have detrimental effects on employee job attitudes, health and well‐being, nonwork life and performance (for reviews, see Bonaccio et al , 2019; Kuriakose et al , 2019; Notelaers et al , 2018; Ye et al , 2019). In addition to the negative effects of interpersonal conflict on individuals’ work and health‐related outcomes, Zhou et al (2019) suggest that effects of interpersonal conflict at work can spill over to employees’ negative work behaviors.…”

Investigating the mechanism linking task conflict with employees’ innovative work behavior

“…innovative work behavior). Third, scholars have focused on the underlying mechanisms (mediators and moderators) to understand the effect of task conflict on employee attitudes and behaviors (Posthuma et al , 2011; Sonnentag et al , 2013; Lee et al , 2019; Ye et al , 2019). These studies suggest that future researchers should look into developing comprehensive underlying mechanism that could explain the relationship between task conflict and employee positive behaviors.…”

A temporal study on subordinate’s response to destructive leadership: voice withdrawal as a conflict coping mechanism

“…As conflict is defined as "the process that begins when one party perceives that the other has negatively affected, or is about to negatively affect, something that he or she cares about" (Thomas, 1992, p. 653), we argue that destructive leader behaviour results in various forms of conflict between leader and subordinate, resulting in dissatisfaction with the leader. More specifically, it may lead to relationship conflict, which impacts the satisfaction levels of the subordinate (Ye et al, 2019). On this basis, we propose the first hypothesis: H1.…”

“…Destructive leader behaviour and subordinate dissatisfaction Leader behaviour has a huge influence on employee satisfaction (Ye et al, 2019). Schilling (2009) argued that destructive leaders do not facilitate working; rather, they make work more complex and demanding for their subordinates.…”