Task conflict and extra-role performance: A cross-national perspective between East and West

Abstract

Research on workplace conflict has given relatively little attention to the impact of national context on the perception toward task conflict by employees. By drawing on the conservation of resources theory, we investigate the mediating role of employee engagement between task conflict and extra-role performance in two nations: the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the Netherlands. Results from 137 Chinese and 95 Dutch employees indicate a positive association between task conflict and extra-role performance in the PRC but a negative association in the Netherlands. Results also show that employee engagement mediates the association between task conflict and extra-role performance in both countries. We also find that relationship intensity moderates the association between task conflict and extra-role performance, through employee engagement, in both the PRC and the Netherlands. We discuss implications for theory and practice as well as offer future research directions.

Taking the Pandemic by Its Horns: Using Work-Related Task Conflict to Transform Perceived Pandemic Threats Into Creativity

“…Extant research normally focuses on the harmful effects of life-threatening events (Kastenmüller et al, 2014;Raja et al, 2020;Toker et al, 2015). But as we show, employee concerns about how their organization is being harmed also can stimulate them to address the problem, such that they willingly enter into constructive idea clashes with their organizational peers (Jehn & Mannix, 2001;Jungst & Janssens, 2020). Employees' concern that their organization might suffer significant damage due to external events, such as a global virus, stimulates them to take the pandemic by the horns and devote significant energy to share their views.…”

“…To answer these real-world challenges, this study investigates a specific behavioral response to perceived pandemic threats—defined as the extent to which employees ruminate on the negative organizational impact of the coronavirus—namely, engaging in productive idea clashes with organizational colleagues ( Hoever et al, 2012 ; Jungst & Janssens, 2020 ). Work-related hardships due to the pandemic are deeply upsetting, so employees might try to take the proverbial bull by the horns and seek out ways to deal with it, such as by reaching out to colleagues and collectively engaging in work-related task conflict ( Chen & Chang, 2005 ).…”

Effect of conflict‐outcomes: moderating role of psychosocial mentoring and emotional intelligence

“…The first view is that task conflict positively contributes to better performance (Janssen et al. 1999) and extra‐role performance (Jungst and Janssens, 2020). This is because task conflict inspires employees to promote different thinking and open‐minded discussion, which adjusts the work plan according to the expected situations (Farh et al.…”

The lacuna model: A new approach to cross-cultural management research

“…Current research applying this theory is broad, and still occupies a significant place in human resource management (s. recent examples in Afshari, 2020; Arseneault, 2020; Jungst and Janssens, 2020; Karjalainen, 2020), but also encompasses almost all of the disciplines related to management, such as business ethics (MacNab et al, 2007), organizational studies (Luthar and Luthar, 2008), global branding (de Mooij and Hofstede, 2010), entrepreneurship (Alon et al, 2016), leadership (Lofquist and Matthiesen, 2018) and beyond (Beugelsdijk and Welzel, 2018; Chapman, 1997; Kirkman et al, 2006), including, for example, higher education (cf. Dennehy, 2015) or corruption (DiRienzo, 2019).…”