Search results

The purpose of this paper is to examine the moderating effect of discretion and social capital on the relationship between individual perceptions of team conflict and employee-level outcomes. The authors propose that both employee discretion and unit-level social capital influence the negative effects of perceived conflict on employee stress and turnover intentions. They argue that an individual’s perceptions of these central organizational characteristics are likely to alter the consequences associated with conflict and the manner in which individuals respond to it.

This study empirically tests the moderating effects of discretion and unit-level social capital on the relationship between individual’s perception of team conflict and employee-level outcomes. Analysis was conducted with survey data from a sample of health care care providers in 90 units across 20 nursing home organizations. We applied hierarchical linear modeling analyses to test our hypotheses.

Results demonstrate that employee discretion moderates the relationship between perceived task conflict and job stress. Unit-level social capital was shown to moderate the relationship between perceived relationship conflict and employee turnover intentions. Our findings also document a varied moderation effect at low to moderate levels of conflict versus high levels of conflict. This finding suggests that the moderating role of contextual variables is more nuanced and complex than the existing conceptual frameworks acknowledge.

This study contributes to the research on conflict and conflict management by extending a multilevel approach to the effect of conflict and by providing new insights regarding the contextual manner in which conflict affects workplace outcomes.

The effects of discretion and unit-level social capital on how conflict is metabolized by organizations and their members varied. Contextual factors matter differently for different individual level outcomes. In attempting to manage the consequences associated with workplace conflict, organizations and their managers must consider different contextual factors.

This study contributes to the research on conflict and its management in organization by providing new insights regarding the contextual manner in which conflict affects organizational and individual outcomes. This study provides support for the claim that the relational and task-related context under which employees experience conflict affects employee stress levels and the extent to which they report their intentions to leave the organization.

This paper considers the progress that has been made during the past sixty years or so in the social psychological study of conflict. It begins with a brief description of the influence of the writings of Darwin, Marx, and Freud, of game theory, and of studies of cooperation and competition as they affected the study of conflict. The main body of the paper summarizes the research bearing upon five major questions that have been the major foci of inquiry in this area during the past twenty‐five years: (1) What conditions give rise to a constructive or destructive process of conflict resolution? (2) What circumstances, strategies, and tactics lead one party to do better than another in a conflict situation? (3) What determines the nature of the agreement between conflicting parties, if they are able to reach agreement? (4) How can third parties be used to prevent conflicts from becoming destructive? (5) How can people be educated to manage their conflicts more constructively?

Guided by social resource theory, this study aims to examine the influence of conflict (i.e. task and relationship) on performance. The authors investigated whether job engagement mediates this relationship and whether social network quality moderates the relationship between conflict, job engagement and performance.

The authors built and tested a moderated mediation model, using data from 217 graduate students.

Results showed that job engagement operates as a mediating mechanism between task conflict and performance. The authors also found that the indirect effect of job engagement depended upon the quality of the social networks. When the quality of the social network was high, both the task and relationship conflict did not negatively influence the association between job engagement and performance.

These findings provide new insights into how social embeddedness in the form of social network quality can create a social context in which conflict works out less detrimental.

Given that employees are interdependent and coworkers are likely to differ in their personal values and opinions, the authors conclude that managers should facilitate the development of meaningful relationships at work.

Whereas prior research has found conflict (i.e. task and relationship) to negatively associate with performance, the authors show that social networks do affect the strength of the relationship between conflict (i.e. task and relationship) and performance.

This paper aims to study the use of photos in corporate sustainability reports (CSRs) as a means to gain legitimacy concerning Colombian post-conflict representations.

From a critical perspective based on legitimacy theory and political economy theory, and using visual semiotics and critical discourse analysis, this paper examines the use of photographs in sustainability reports as a mechanism to account for corporate actions regarding peace in Colombia. This paper relies on 121 pictures from 30 CSRs.

The analysis shows that companies are gaining legitimacy by referring to post-conflict through visual forms. Nonetheless, the structural conditions that caused the Colombian conflict are still present. Sustainability reporting that includes peace action representations becomes a control and subordination mechanism to reproduce existing power relations in the Colombian social order. Indeed, the generation of opportunities for civilians and ex-combatants, victims reparation, security and reconciliation remains unresolved structural issues. Hence, the use of corporate economic resources and their strategic visual representation in reports is just one business way of representing firms as aligned with government initiatives to obtain tax incentives.

This study is centered on Colombian CSRs for the period 2016-2017; however, 2017 reports by some companies have not yet been published. This study also explored the messages contained in the images that include people. Images that do not depict persons were not examined.

This study provides evidence on visual representations of corporate peace actions aimed at gaining corporate legitimacy. Furthermore, this research examines a unique scenario that promoted more significant corporate social participation, following the signing of the peace agreements between the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia, Ejército del Pueblo).

In spite of unprecedented levels of social, economic and political development, Chinese politics is characterized by increasingly salient social contradictions, conflicts and even protests. As for the various measures taken by all levels of governments to maintain social stability in changing times, the effect is not obvious, and all kinds of social conflicts are still on the rise. The purpose of this paper is to find out the relationship between political elites and social conflicts and give advice on the adjustment of the governance mode of social conflicts in current China.

This paper attempts to conduct a detailed analysis of the case of Tang Hui re-education through labour to explore how social conflicts arise, upgrade and dissolve within the intention of political elites to maintain social stability in current China.

Political elites who are subject to the pressure of maintaining social stability cannot rely on public interests and civil rights as the full justification for their actions. Above all, they must place social stability first. In this sense, political elites are constructing the network of maintaining social stability and shaping social protests. Social elites use the media or the internet platform to exert public opinion influence and try to push social protests to final solutions. In this way, social elites deconstruct political elites’ network of maintaining social stability. However, the forces that enable social conflicts and protests to be resolved remain to be the network of maintaining social stability itself.

The case of Tang Hui re-education through labour is believed to have hastened the abolition of the system of re-education through labour. As it completely interprets the whole process of the generation, evolution and resolution of social conflicts in current China, this typical case can be considered as an ideal lens through which we can see the unique relationship between political elites and social conflicts, as well as the governance mode of social conflicts in current China.

The purpose of this study is to examine social conflicts with co-workers (SCCWs) as a predictor of job satisfaction with co-workers (JSCWs) on a daily basis. Moreover, dispositional emotion regulation (ER) was suggested to moderate the within-person relationship between daily conflicts at work and JSCWs.

Ninety-eight employees from German civil service agencies completed surveys across five consecutive work days. Dispositional variables and controls were assessed in a general survey which was completed before the start of the daily surveys.

Hierarchical linear modeling showed that SCCWs at noon were significantly related to employees’ JSCWs in the evening and that dispositional ER moderated this relationship, indicating that people with high abilities of ER reported higher levels of job satisfaction with their co-workers than people with low abilities of ER after experiencing SCCWs.

The present study links conflict research with organizational and personality research. The findings broaden the understanding of social conflicts in an organizational context and further highlight ER as an important factor which can buffer the negative effects of workplace conflicts.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of conflict and conflict resolution on employee perceptions of unit social capital. The paper aims to test the overarching proposition that social capital is affected by different types of conflict and by organizational methods used to manage them.

The paper's hypotheses were tested using survey data collected as part of a case study conducted in a large Ohio hospital that had adopted a conflict management system. Survey data from 791 hospital employees were used to test hypotheses regarding the relationship between conflict and its management and social capital.

Analysis of the data supports the paper's proposition that different forms of conflict affect perceptions of social capital differently. Relationship and task conflict were significantly and negatively related to employee perceptions of social capital. Conflict regarding patient care issues, on the other hand, was significantly and positively related to employee perceptions of social capital. Results support the hypothesized direct and indirect effects of conflict management on social capital. In addition to directly increasing perceptions of social capital, one of the conflict management options examined (supervisor‐assisted) moderated the relationship between relationship and task conflict and social capital.

The research implies that organizational conflict affects social capital. More importantly, different forms of conflict affect social capital in different ways. Furthermore, the findings imply that organizational management of conflict plays an important role in increasing perceptions of social capital. Shortcomings include the use of cross‐sectional data and the generalizability of findings from one hospital to other settings.

The findings suggest that an organization's approach to conflict and conflict management will affect perceived levels of social capital. In addition, organizations must be nuanced in the way they manage and resolve different types of conflict. Finally, findings suggest that supervisors play an important role in increasing unit social capital by assisting employees in resolving conflict.

The paper provides one of the first empirical examinations of the relationship between conflict, conflict resolution and social capital.

The purpose of this paper is to review the complexity of post‐Communist transition with regard to the processes of creating a legal and institutional environment, which will predispose social actors to cooperate to solve social problems and neutralize disparities. The paper also seeks to consider the shift from social destruction (everyone fighting with one an other) to social collaboration.

The focus of the paper is on the scope of the simultaneously functioning political, social and moral extremes. They are seen as the key attributes of chaotic social transition and as material for creating cooperative links.

Political and social transformation running simultaneously, and followed by legal and administrative modernization, provoked formerly unknown social conflicts in the transitional society. The case of Lithuania shows that the old methods for dealing with new conflicts were not suitable. Society became fragmented. Social costs of disintegration were high but not equal, when compared internationally. Interdependence between functionality, innovative and cultural potential of the state, and its capability to regulate conflicts and social controversies had been brought into political debates and public discussions after transition had been in progress for several years. This was a signal that political parties and the most influential social players became concerned about social outcomes of the reforms. Developing a new legal and institutional environment, empowering cooperation and conflict management in social interactions, is perceived as an indicator of the progress of the continuing transition.

Because of its nature and size, the research does not develop insights into the processes which were in some sense dependent on, and simultaneously became incentives for, the culture of cooperation in society; for example, dynamics of cooperation and competition among authorities and citizens, business and politics.

Though great interest is shown in transitional processes in social and humanitarian studies, the rise of conflicts in society as well as the limitations of constructive ways of dealing with such conflicts are not yet the focus of social investigation.

The purpose of this study is to examine the differential association of three different workplace conflicts on employee-related outcomes, such as loneliness and well-being. Further, the study pursues to explore the perceived social support at the workplace as a conditional factor in the relation between different conflict types and employee loneliness.

The data were collected using a self-administered survey from 554 IT employees. Structural equation modelling (SEM) was used to test the study postulations.

The findings indicated that all three types of conflicts differently associate on both loneliness and well-being. Besides, it found that loneliness works as a mediator between conflict types and employee well-being. Further, perceived social support at the workplace moderates the relationship between different types of conflict, such as relationship, process, task conflicts and employee loneliness at work.

The study provides helpful directions to HR managers by providing a clear empirical understanding of the types of conflicts and its association on employee-related outcomes. Further, the study highlights the need for developing social support in an organisation during conflict episodes, to manage the adverse association of these conflicts on employee well-being and to restore employee well-being.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, for the first time, a study has been conducted highlighting the differential association of workplace conflict and employee outcome and indicating its intervening mechanisms and conflict management conditions.

This study examines the relationship between gender and religious affiliation to the preferred conflicts styles of 384 student participants living in and attending university in South Africa, Israel, Bosnia‐Herzegovina and Northern Ireland. Participants report living in stressful social contexts that are often characterized by reports of terrorism perpetrated by paramilitaries, the state, violence that is brought on by long standing ethnic hatreds and years of division between major groups contending for control of political and social institutions, civilian uprisings, and in some cases low scale civil war. The results indicate that the independent variables—gender and religion—provide statistically significant observable differences in how people report they engage in conflict as seen in their choice of conflict styles. In particular, the findings on gender differences provide a surprising result that is partially attributed to the contextual factors of warfare and one's active participation in it. The results on religious affiliation provide a number of intriguing patterns among various religions including a desire to accommodate or collaborate with others and a strong dislike of avoidance. There are other more specific patterns that can be partially attributed to contextual factors as well. With so many contexts being present in the study a number of intriguing explanations and working hypotheses are brought forth to help explain why these patterns on gender and religious affiliation exist.