By Molly Clark Knowledge sharing among employees is understood to be increasingly key to organizational success in today’s competitive marketplace. The amount of knowledge sharing that employees engage in is impacted by workplace conflict. However, different types of conflict that occur in the workplace have very different implications for knowledge sharing as well as the workplace atmosphere. The key distinction is whether organizational conflict is task or relationship oriented. Task conflicts are related to achieving work assignment goals, while relationship conflicts pertain to differences in personal issues such as interpersonal style, beliefs, or political views. Chen, Zhang & Vogel (2011) investigated how individuals’ conflict experience impacted their work-engagement and therefore knowledge sharing. Defining work engagement as dedication and absorption in work, researchers measured the psychological precursors to engagement: 1) contributing meaningful work; 2) feeling safe to express dissent or admit mistakes without negative consequences; and 3) believing one has the resources to finish assigned work.
When the conflicts people experienced at work were task oriented, they resulted in positive effects on work engagement as employees had opportunities to express their opinions and make decisions during the resolution process. This supported employees’ perceptions of safety and resource availability. Work engagement, in turn, increased employees’ knowledge sharing behavior.
Conversely, relationship conflict was shown to have deleterious effects on employees’ work engagement. Relationship conflict degraded employees’ sense of belonging and meaningful work, increased their sense of threat, and distracted them from work leaving them feeling less capable of performing well. This resulted in less engaged employees with significantly reduced motivation to share knowledge with coworkers.
This study reveals that the type of work conflict makes all the difference for work engagement and knowledge sharing. Work engagement and thus knowledge sharing can be improved if we create workplaces that support meaningful work, psychological safety, and the availability of resources for employees, in which task conflict leads to constructive solutions. Likewise, preempting relationship conflict by taking steps to improve interpersonal trust among employees will encourage an atmosphere of engagement and knowledge sharing. References: Chen, Z.J., Zhang, X. & Vogel, D. (2011). Exploring the underlying processes between conflict and knowledge sharing: a work–engagement perspective. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 41, pp. 1005–1033, doi: 10.1111/j.1559-1816.2011.00745.x
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