Industrial and Organizational Psychology Commons^™

What Impact Can Conflict Resolution Skills Have On Conflict Experienced Within Culturally Heterogenous Virtual Teams?, Kellen Dohrman

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Even though there has been an increase in the use of virtual teams in organizations, there have been mixed findings on how effective they are in achieving organizational and personal success. In this study I sought to examine if conflict resolution skills could decrease the amount of conflict that culturally heterogenous virtual teams face. Specifically, this study examined the moderating role of conflict resolution skills on task and relational conflict within virtual teams. A total of 137 participants completed an electronic survey with items on task conflict, relational conflict, conflict resolution skills, cultural heterogeneity, interdependence, and team effectiveness.

It was …

Work–Family Conflict In Low-Income Households, Maritza G. Hiciano Ramos

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The United States is the only country not offering paid parental leave. Paid leave is left at the discretion of employers and only a few states offer Paid Family Leave benefits. The FMLA was established to protect workers from losing their jobs in case they needed to care for an elderly person or for their children. However, since value is not placed in family structures there has not been much development in that area. The FMLA fails to account for the grand majority of people in the U.S., especially those of lower socioeconomic status. Moreover, the vast inequalities that exists …

An Affective Events Theory Analysis Of Conflict Perception Emergence, Michael J. Covell

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Popular conceptualizations of conflict conflate conflict perception with other discrete constructs such as disagreement and emotions. This makes research using those conceptualizations difficult to interpret. I invoke affective events theory to describe how constructs conflated with conflict perception, as well as negative prescriptive expectancy violations (EVs), may collectively serve as antecedents to conflict perception. By reconceptualizing conflict perception as an evaluative judgment and distinguishing between episodic (short-term) and global (long-term) conflict perceptions, my model describes how episodic conflict perceptions cumulatively influence global conflict perceptions over time. Two types of events (disagreements and negative prescriptive EVs) were proposed to predict episodic …

Perceptions Of Leadership And Climate In The Stressor-Strain Process: Influences On Employee Appraisals And Reactions, José F. Rodríguez

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This paper attempts to place the role of transformational leadership within the stressor-strain process by investigating the potential indirect effects of the perceptions of transformational leadership on counterproductive work behaviors (CWBs) through its influence on perceptions of the communication climate and trust. Leaders perceived as being transformational will offer an ameliorating effect on employee appraisals of stressors (i.e., conflict). Non-task organizational conflict is a stressor that captures employees’ perceptions of conflict with co-workers attributable to organizational factors (e.g., unclear or contradictory policies). Previous studies have found this type of stressor to be associated with negative health and workplace outcomes. Counterproductive …

Power Or Concerns: Contrasting Perspectives On Missionary Conflict, David R. Dunaetz, Ant Greenham

CGU Faculty Publications and Research

Among the consequences of conflicts between missionaries are a reduction in ministry effectiveness and an increase in the likelihood of missionary attrition. In contrast to perspectives of conflict management in Christian contexts which tend to focus on power (condemning the other party as sinful, enforcing submission to the hierarchical superior, or separation of the conflicting parties), the dual concern model of conflict management views conflict as an opportunity to understand each party’s concerns so that the two parties may cooperate and find solutions that correspond to the interests of both parties (Phil. 2:4). The dual concern model also predicts conflict …

Incivility And Dysfunction In The Library Workplace: Perceptions And Feedback From The Field, Richard J. Moniz Jr.

Library Staff Publications

Issues associated with lack of civility, less than ideal functionality and employees that may not self-reflect as much they should are all challenges in the modern workplace and libraries are no exception. The purpose of this study was to determine which issues associated with a lack of civility such as mobbing, bullying, workplace dysfunction, and lack of abilities regarding self-reflection were found in the library workplace and to what extent. The data represents the feedback of 4,168 library employees through a self-reporting survey instrument designed by the authors with the help of the American Library Association. Data is both quantitative …

Proactive Workplace Bullying In Teams: Test Of A Rational And Moral Model Of Aggression, Anthony S. Colaneri

College of Science and Health Theses and Dissertations

This study tested part of a recently developed theoretical model of proactive workplace aggression put forth by Dixon, Chang, and Johnson (2015). The model postulates distinct motives underlying why perpetrators will morally justify their aggressive behavior, dependent upon the relative in/out-group status and relative hierarchical status of the target. Participants from Amazon’s MTurk community were shown one of four vignettes that described a team workplace scenario where the participant was presented with the choice to act aggressively toward a coworker in order to help facilitate the team’s goal. All four of the model’s dyadic perpetrator-target relationships were represented, but the …

The Perception Of Power, Samuel B. Bacharach, Edward J. Lawler

Edward J Lawler

This study examines the impact of some basic exchange-theory variables, the value and scarcity of outcomes, on perceptions of Self and Other power in a conflict setting. Each respondent took the role of an employee in conflict with an employer, and assessed the magnitude of Self and Other (employer) power. Four variables are manipulated: Self’s outcome scarcity, the value of the outcome to Self, Other’s outcome scarcity, and the value of the outcome to Other. The results are consistent with predictions drawn from the Blau, and Emerson (a, b) treatments of dependence relations. The results suggest that the stakes contending …

Perceptions Of Power In Conflict Situations, Samuel B. Bacharach, H. Andrew Michener, Edward J. Lawler

Edward J Lawler

Subjects rendered judgments regarding the power of the participants in a series of conflictual circumstances where an adversary threatened a target. These situations manipulated four independent variables: (a) the adversary's capacity to damage the target's interests, (b) the adversary's probability of actually attacking, (c) the target's ability to block the impending attack, and (d) the target's capacity to retaliate. Results showed that all of the independent variables affected the subjects' judgments of the adversary's power, while three of them (damage, blockage, and retaliation) affected judgments of the target's power. Differences in the predictive equations for judgments of adversary power and …

Comparison Of Dependence And Punitive Forms Of Power, Edward J. Lawler, Samuel B. Bacharach

Edward J Lawler

This paper deals with the impact of power on tactical action in conflict. The theory and research is organized around two conceptual distinctions: one between power based on dependence versus punitive capability, and the other between relative power (i.e., power difference) and "total power" in a relationship (i.e., across actors). The paper will argue that these distinctions are important on both theoretical and empirical grounds. Theoretically, they are important to explicate the connection between conceptions of power that stress the coercive foundation of power (Bierstedt 1950; Tedeschi, Schlenker & Bonoma 1973) and those that treat power as dependence (Bacharach & …

Thinking About You: Perspective Taking, Perceived Restraint, And Performance, Michele Williams

Michele Williams

Conflict often arises when incompatible ideas, values or interests lead to actions that harm others. Increasing people’s willingness to refrain from harming others can play a critical role in preventing conflict and fostering performance. We examine perspective taking as a relational micro-process related to such restraint. We argue that attending to how others appraise events supports restraint in two ways. It motivates people to act with concern and enables them to understand what others view as harmful versus beneficial. Using a matched sample of 147 knowledge workers and 147 of their leaders, we evaluate the impact of appraisal-related perspective taking …

Managing Work And Life: The Impact Of Framing, Hilary G. Roche

Industrial-Organizational Psychology Dissertations

The frame of mind with which one approaches work-life challenges can impact the decisions made, the roles a person invests in, and satisfaction with one’s decisions. The purpose of this study was threefold: 1) to review and compare the three traditional work-life frames of conflict, enrichment, and balance; 2) to introduce a new frame for work-life management, proactive reflection or “proflection,” and; 3) to test whether approaching work-life management with a particular frame differentially affects an individual’s work-life satisfaction when presented with a scenario with multiple role demands. It was hypothesized that enrichment, balance, and proflection frames will lead to …

A Study Of Exercise: Intentions And Behavior, Michael Raymond Hoepf

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

Health concerns associated with obesity are becoming an increasingly large societal problem. Engaging in physical exercise is one effective way to combat obesity, but most people do not exercise enough to derive significant health benefits. In order to increase participation in exercise activities, it is first necessary to have a good understanding of why people are not exercising. The current research builds on prior research by investigating the proposition that conflict from work, family, and school roles can reduce time spent exercising. To accomplish this goal, I created exercise conflict scales by taking existing items from the work-family conflict literature …

Conflict In Virtually Distributed Teams, Budd Darling

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this paper was two-fold. The first was to investigate the impact of conflict as a mediator in the relationship between distribution and team performance. The second was to examine how that relationship was affected by virtuality. Four-member teams of different distributions (partially distributed, fully distributed, and fully collocated) and different virtuality conditions (videoconferencing, teleconferencing, and chat) played a team-oriented game. Significant results were found only in the videoconferencing condition, in which both distribution and task conflict had a negative impact on team performance, but task conflict did not mediate the relationship between distribution and team performance. Further …

Unintentionally Unethical: How Uncivil Leaders Violate Norms And Hurt Group Performance, Christopher Coultas

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Incivility is a common form of low-grade aggression that lacks a clear intent to harm, that violates community norms and values for interpersonal conduct, and is often chronic in nature (Andersson & Pearson, 1999; Cortina, Magley, Williams, & Langhout, 2001). Because of its subtleties, it is difficult at times to detect and even more difficult to prevent. However, it is an essential phenomenon to research, due to its ubiquity and negative impact on worker outcomes such as job satisfaction and psychological health (Cortina et al., 2001). Incivility instigated by those in authority may be an even bigger problem, due to …

Natural Born Peacemakers? Gender And The Resolution Of Conflict, Mara Olekalns

Mara Olekalns

Two males sit apart, staring at each other from the corners of their eyes. A female approaches one and takes him by the arm, pulls him towards the other male. She alternates between the two and eventually brokers peace. In a different scenario, two males are again in conflict. A third male inserts himself between them, screaming at them or physically separating them to prevent the conflict from escalating. He keeps them separate and harangues them into submission (De Waal, 2009). Female as peacemaker, male as peacekeeper. These examples fit with our intuitions about how gender might shape the way …

Team Conflict And Effectiveness In Competitive Environments, Julie A. Steinke

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

Substantial time and money are spent assessing workplace teams to delineate what makes a team effective. Historically, as teams developed into vital components of organizations, they also became the target of empirical research (see Kozlowski and Bell, 2003, for a review). However, questions remain concerning how individuals function within teams. My study was restricted to influences on individual functions within teams, and I offer a conceptual model of the effects of both individual and team factors on individual level outcomes (e.g., conflict and team effectiveness). Specifically, I examined these effects for a relatively unexamined population, i.e., college athletic coaching staffs. …