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This paper aims to explore the effects of interpersonal conflicts in the social workplace on various rationalized, knowledge-hiding behaviors in service organizations. This research also examines employee well-being as a mediator to explain the effects of interpersonal conflicts at work on knowledge-hiding behaviors.

First, relevant literature provided the theoretical basis for the conceptual model that links the core constructs of this research. A quantitative study collected data from 395 employees of a global consulting firm with a branch located in a developing country. Finally, an analysis of the structural equation modeling with MPlus 7 software tested the measurement and the structural model.

The results of this study suggest that interpersonal conflict at work influences knowledge-hiding and that employee’s well-being mediates this relationship. In other words, employees strategically choose what knowledge-hiding behaviors to use – such as evasion or “playing dumb” – to cope with the lack of well-being caused by high interpersonal conflicts in the workplace.

Although contextual and individual factors may trigger knowledge-hiding behavior at work, the current literature has overlooked the combined effects of such factors, especially in service settings. Knowledge hiding in service organizations is a weakness that can lead to significant economic losses, especially in firms that are intensively knowledge-based. Thus, it is necessary to identify the antecedents of knowledge-hiding behavior to deter low performance in these organizations.

In the present paper direct as well as indirect relationships between organizational changes and exposure to bullying at work are investigated. Interpersonal conflicts are hypothesized to mediate changes on bullying. Data from a sample of 2408 Norwegian employees confirmed that different organizational changes were moderately associated with task-related bullying at work, and that exposure to more changes increased the likelihood of being bullied. Structural equation modelling supported the assumption that changes were directly related to bullying. However, the hypothesis that changes were mediated on bullying through interpersonal conflicts was not supported. Results indicate that organizational changes and interpersonal conflicts are separate, and mainly independent, precursors of bullying at work.

This cross-sectional study had several objectives. This paper aims to study the direct effect of teleworking on interpersonal conflict, the mediating role that interpersonal conflict can play between teleworking and psychological well-being, the moderating role emotional intelligence (EI) can play between teleworking and interpersonal conflict and whether this moderation effect can, in turn, be associated with psychological well-being (moderated mediation effect).

Path analyses using Mplus software were performed on a sample of 264 employees from 19 small- and medium-sized organizations.

While teleworking was associated with lower interpersonal conflict, it was not associated with enhanced psychological well-being. Interestingly, workload seemed to be associated with higher interpersonal conflict, while decision authority and support garnered from one’s supervisor seemed to be associated with lower interpersonal conflict. Teleworking was indirectly associated with higher psychological well-being via interpersonal conflict. Finally, EI played a moderating role between teleworking and lower interpersonal conflict. This was, in turn, associated with higher psychological well-being.

EI is an essential skill to develop in the workplace.

A deepened understanding of the role played by EI at work could help organizations to provide positive work environments, both in person and online. This is especially relevant today, with the continued increase in teleworking practices and the resulting rapidly changing interpersonal relationships.

Drawing on the social exchange theory, this study aims to examine the association between interpersonal conflict and task performance as well as the mediating and moderating roles of workplace deviance and emotional intelligence, respectively, in this association.

Two studies were designed to test the authors’ hypotheses using multiwave and multisource data collected from 173 (187) subordinates and their immediate supervisors from Pakistan.

An important reason that interpersonal conflict diminishes employees’ task performance is that employees are engaged in workplace deviance. This indirect effect is less salient when employees are more emotionally intelligent.

One way to improve employees’ task performance could be to reduce and manage interpersonal conflicts, especially through interventions aimed at increasing employees’ emotional intelligence levels.

This research contributes to the literature by demonstrating that employees’ emotional intelligence is a boundary condition that alters the association between interpersonal conflict and employee task performance directly and indirectly via workplace deviance.

This paper aims to examine how interpersonal conflict at work might enhance employees’ propensity to engage in counterproductive work behavior (CWB), as well as how this relationship might be attenuated by emotional intelligence. It also considers how the attenuating role of emotional intelligence might depend on employees’ gender.

Survey data were collected from 193 employees working in different organizations in Pakistan.

Interpersonal conflict relates positively to CWB, but this relationship is weaker at higher levels of emotional intelligence. The negative buffering role of emotional intelligence is particularly strong among women as compared to men.

Given that individuals high in emotional intelligence are better at regulating their negative emotions, emotional intelligence training may be a powerful tool for reducing the hostility elicited among organizational members in response to interpersonal conflict and, consequently, their engagement in CWB.

This study uncovered the emotional mechanism that underlies the interpersonal conflict–CWB relationship by gender and makes suggestions to managers on minimizing the harmful effects of interpersonal conflict.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the interactive effect of interpersonal conflict at work and adopting an integrating/compromising conflict style on workers' psychosocial wellbeing.

A total of 311 employed young adults completed an online questionnaire.

Moderated hierarchical multiple regression analyses support the hypothesis that integrating/compromising interacts with interpersonal conflict at work to predict psychosocial strain. Specifically, it was found that integrating/compromising is related to psychosocial strain in a U‐shaped fashion when work conflict is high. Although a moderate degree of integrating/compromising is psychosocially beneficial for workers and can buffer the negative impact of work conflict, beyond a certain point, integrating/compromising is associated with an increase in psychosocial strain when work conflict is high.

The results of the study suggest that investigations of conflict styles should focus not only on managing the occurrence of conflict – or resolving it when it does occur – but also on the psychosocial costs of adopting particular conflict styles. The data are cross‐sectional; therefore, inferences about causality are limited.

The study is one of the few to empirically test the psychosocial costs of adopting particular conflict styles. In addition, compared with similar studies, more complex relationships (i.e. nonlinear) between the variables are assessed.

The purpose of this study is to draw from conservation of resources theory to examine how employees’ experience of resource-draining interpersonal conflict might diminish the likelihood that they engage in championing behaviour. Its specific focus is on the mediating effect of their motivation to leave the organization and the moderating effect of their peer-oriented social interaction in this connection.

The research hypotheses are empirically assessed with quantitative survey data gathered from 632 employees who work in a large Mexican-based pharmacy chain. The statistical analyses involved an application of the Process macro, which enabled concurrent estimations of the direct, mediating and moderating effects predicted by the proposed conceptual framework.

Emotion-based tensions in co-worker relationships decrease employees’ propensity to mobilize support for innovative ideas, because employees make plans to abandon their jobs. This mediating role of turnover intentions is mitigated when employees maintain close social relationships with their co-workers.

For organizational practitioners, this study identifies a core explanation (i.e. employees want to quit the company) for why frustrations with emotion-based quarrels can lead to a reluctance to promote novel ideas – ideas that otherwise could add to organizational effectiveness. It also highlights how this harmful process can be avoided if employees maintain good, informal relationships with their colleagues.

For organizational scholars, this study explicates why and when employees’ experience of interpersonal conflict translates into complacent work behaviours, in the form of tarnished idea championing. It also identifies informal peer relationships as critical contingency factors that disrupt this negative dynamic.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the moderating effects of social competencies, specifically, political skill, self‐monitoring and emotional intelligence, on the workplace conflict‐abusive behavior relationship.

The study utilized data collected from graduate and undergraduate students majoring in psychology, management, human relations and social work who were recruited from two mid‐sized mid‐western universities. Hierarchical multiple regression analysis was used to test the study hypotheses.

Results indicated that interpersonal conflict in the workplace is associated with employee engagement in counterproductive work behaviors. Results also suggested that social competencies interacted with interpersonal conflict to predict the likelihood of abusing others at work. Politically skilled workers and high self‐monitors were more likely to engage in abusive behaviors when experiencing high levels of interpersonal workplace conflict.

The study is the first to show that certain social competencies may actually have negative ramifications in the workplace. Specifically, individuals who are politically skilled and/or high self‐monitors are more likely to abuse others when they themselves experience interpersonal conflict.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between employees’ experience of interpersonal conflict and their engagement in knowledge hiding, according to a mediating effect of their relatedness need frustration and a moderating effect of their narcissistic rivalry.

The tests of the hypotheses rely on three-wave, time-lagged data collected among employees in Pakistan.

A critical reason that emotion-based fights stimulate people to conceal valuable knowledge from their coworkers is that these employees believe their needs for belongingness or relatedness are not being met. This mediating role of relatedness need frustration is particularly salient among employees who are self-centered and see others as rivals, with no right to fight with or give them a hard time.

The findings indicate how organizations might mitigate the risk that negative relationship dynamics among their employees escalate into dysfunctional knowledge hiding behavior. They should work to hire and retain employees who are benevolent and encourage them to see colleagues as allies instead of rivals.

This research unpacks the link between interpersonal conflict and knowledge hiding by explicating the unexplored roles of two critical factors (relatedness need frustration and narcissistic rivalry) in this relationship.

Extant research on workplace ostracism has investigated a victimization perspective to understand ostracism at the cost of examining the perpetrator-centric view of ostracism. This study aims to draw on the self-categorization theory and the social exchange theory to investigate the harmful effects of workplace romance in cultivating workplace ostracism from the perspective of perpetrator to combat concerns for victim blaming. This study further proposes that workplace ostracism triggered by workplace romance provokes interpersonal conflict. Besides, this study investigates the moderating role of prosocial behavior in the underlying linkages.

This study uses a multisource, time-lagged research design to collect data from employees working in the service sector organizations in Pakistan. This study analyzes 367 responses using SmartPLS (v 4.0).

The findings of this study reveal that workplace romance elicits workplace ostracism, which, in turn, fosters interpersonal conflict among coworkers. In addition, this study finds that ingroup prosocial behavior strengthens the associations between workplace romance and workplace ostracism, and workplace romance and interpersonal conflict, mediated by workplace ostracism such that the associations are more potent at higher levels of ingroup prosocial behavior and vice versa.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that examines workplace romance as the perpetrator-centric antecedent of workplace ostracism, and ingroup prosocial behavior in exaggerating the outgroup ostracism and interpersonal conflict.