A study into the occurrence of interpersonal conflict and its types in service sector in Kerala with special reference to financial, tourism, it and health industries

Interpersonal conflict in organisations is a natural phenomenon when people interact with each other. Conflict free organisations have never existed and never going to exist. Literature in the field of interpersonal conflict identified three types of interpersonal conflict viz: Task conflict, process conflict and relationship conflict. In this study apart from the above mentioned types of interpersonal conflict, non task organisational conflict is also included. The data was collected from four industries in service sector to know the occurrence of interpersonal conflict in organisation. The data was collected using interpersonal conflict in organisation scale (ICOS). The survey questionnaire consists of 63 items. Basic demographic information like gender, designation etc was collected to know whether there exist any difference on the basis of such factors. ANOVA was conducted to know whether there exists any difference among groups in the occurrence of interpersonal conflict. The statistical analysis showed a moderate level of interpersonal conflict exist in all the studied four industries and the health sector and tourism sector showed higher mean score than other two. There is no significant difference being observed among different groups. The study revealed that interpersonal conflict is a reality in IT, Health, Banking and tourism industries.