ABSTRACT
The impact of interpersonal conflict in the workplace is not limited to outcomes of organizational relevance, such as performance; it also has serious detrimental effects on the health and well-being of employees. In fact, conflict has been shown to be associated with employee depression, negative emotional states, psychosomatic complaints, life dissatisfaction, burnout, and psychiatric morbidity (e.g., Dormann & Zapf, 1999; Spector, Dwyer, & Jex, 1988). A diary study by Bolger, DeLongis, Kessler, and Schilling (1989) showed that interpersonal conflicts were considered the most upsetting stressor by a sample of married couples who were asked to report work and nonwork sources of stress. C. S. Smith and Sulsky (1995) reported that 25% of a large sample of employees from a wide range of occupations listed interpersonal issues as the most vexing stressors at work. In addition, negative social interactions with others at work accounted for three fourths of all work situations that employees described as detrimental (Schwartz & Stone, 1993). It is not surprising then that interpersonal conflict in the workplace is consistently cited as a leading source of stress for employees across cultures, age groups, and occupations. Consequently, occupational stress research has experienced a recent shift in focus from commonly studied role and workload variables to stress resulting from the social work environment, namely interpersonal conflict.
