Process conflict and affect states of the individual: Role of perceived process conflict importance

Interpersonal conflict in organisation is a ever occurring phenomenon. Conflict free organisations have never existed and not going to exist also. Various studies in the conflict literature have addressed the impact of different conflict types on groups and organisations. However, studies addressing the impact of conflict types on various individual level outcomes are scarce. Also such studies either used a general measure of conflict or included only task conflict and relationship conflict and failed to address the impact of process conflict. Conflict and conflict related processes were considered as a rational process and studies in the conflict literature failed to include affect related variables in studies. hence this study investigated the impact of process conflict on affect states of the individual i.e. positive affect and negative affect. Also the role of perceived process conflict importance. The study used a cross sectional survey method among IT engineers. I43 IT engineers were administered survey questionnaire. Simple linear regression and moderation regression analysis were used to test the hypothesis. The study found out that process conflict is significantly positively related to negative affect an no significant relationship is established with positive affect. Perception of process conflict as important and unimportant plays a moderation role in the relationship between process conflict and negative affect. The study provides more insight to the negative consequences of conflict as negative affect influences the cognition, behaviour and health of the individuals.