Conflict personalization at work

Abstract: People differ in how they experience interpersonal conflict, and some take conflict more personally than others irrespective of what the conflict is about. Nevertheless, workplace conflict research mainly focusses on conflict issue to understand the course and outcome of workplace conflicts. As we expect that conflict personalization decreases the likelihood that a workplace conflict has positive outcomes, we conducted a study amongst workers (N = 297) to explore conflict personalization at work. Our research question was: how does conflict personalization relate to 1) demographics and job characteristics, 2) frequency and type of conflict in the team, 3) individual response to conflict, 4) team characteristics, and 5) the organizational environment. Our findings were that amongst others, those who personalize conflict at work had a greater preference for using forcing and avoiding and refrained from problem solving. In addition, those who personalize conflict reported lower OBSE and thought about resigning more often.

Keywords: conflict personalization, workplace conflict, conflict management