the social stressors-counterproductive work behaviors link: are conflicts with supervisors and...

The Social Stressors–Counterproductive Work Behaviors Link: AreConflicts With Supervisors and Coworkers the Same?

Valentina Bruk-Lee and Paul E. SpectorUniversity of South Florida

The differential impact of conflict with supervisors and coworkers on the target of counterpro-ductive work behaviors (CWB) was investigated using multiple data sources. The mediating roleof negative emotions was also tested using an emotion-centered model of CWB. Data wereobtained from 133 dyads (incumbents plus a coworker) of full-time working participants repre-senting a variety of occupations at the University of South Florida. Participants in the incumbentrole were asked to complete a questionnaire measuring demographics, conflict, negative emo-tions, and CWB. The coworker was asked to respond to a shorter questionnaire measuring conflictand CWB regarding the incumbent’s job. Evidence for a differential relationship between conflictsources and the target of CWB was found. The emotion-centered model of voluntary workbehavior received partial support.

Keywords: social stressor, counterproductive behaviors, conflict, occupational stress

Research in occupational stress has burgeoned inrecent years because of a growing awareness of theneed to improve the quality of work life and wellbeing of employees. The most commonly studiedstressors have been workload and role stressors, suchas role conflict, role ambiguity, and role overload.However, researchers have begun to acknowledge theimportance of stressors resulting from the socialwork environment, namely interpersonal conflict(Keenan & Newton, 1985). Further, strains that havereceived considerable attention in occupational stressresearch include job dissatisfaction, anxiety/tension,and withdrawal. Yet, because of the need for a betterunderstanding of the stress and job performance re-lationship (Jex, 1998), behavioral strains that affectperformance have also received greater attention,such as counterproductive work behaviors (CWB).

The purpose of this research was to study therelationship between social stressors and counterpro-ductive work behaviors, which are behaviors aimedat hurting the organization or the individuals in it, ingreater detail. Specifically, the literature in this areahas not sufficiently addressed whether the source ofthe social stressor, assessed by a measure of interper-sonal conflict, has a differential impact on employ-ees’ behavioral responses. Further, although limited

support exists for an emotion-centered model whichmay guide us in understanding the conflict-CWBrelationship, more evidence is warranted.

Social Stressors: Interpersonal Conflictat Work

The social environment is a fundamental elementin the well being of employees. Keenan and Newton(1985) used the Stress Incident Report (SIR), anopen-ended method, to collect stressful incidents thatoccurred at work in the prior month with a sample ofyoung engineers. Seventy-four percent of the inci-dents reported were social in nature, such that theywere caused by social interactions with superiors,subordinates, or colleagues. Not surprisingly, one ofthe most cited sources of stress was interpersonalconflict at work. The SIR was also used in a study byNarayanan, Menon, and Spector (1999b). Interper-sonal conflict was the most reported source of stressfor both college professors and sales clerks. Univer-sity clerical support employees reported conflict to bethe 3rd major source of stress among a total of 9potential sources.

Bolger, DeLongis, Kessler, and Schilling (1989)presented further evidence of the importance of in-terpersonal relationships at work. The researchersfound that interpersonal conflicts were considered themost upsetting stressor by a sample of married cou-ples that were asked to report both work and nonworksources of stress. In addition, one fourth of respon-dents in a sample of employees from various occu-pations reported interpersonal issues were the most

Valentina Bruk-Lee, and Paul Spector, Department ofPsychology University of South Florida.

Correspondence concerning this article should be ad-dressed to Valentina Bruk-Lee, University of South Florida,Department of Psychology, PCD 4118 G, Tampa, FL33620. E-mail: [email protected]

Journal of Occupational Health Psychology2006, Vol. 11, No. 2, 145–156

Copyright 2006 by the American Psychological Association1076-8998/06/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/1076-8998.11.2.145

145

troublesome stressors at work (Smith & Sulsky,1995). A diary study by Hahn (2000) asked partici-pants, who were representative of a full-time workingsample in a wide range occupations, to record thenumber of conflicts at work and to describe theoccurrence. Content analysis of the data showed thatrespondents recorded interpersonal stressors on halfof their workdays.

There exists some cross-cultural evidence for theprevalence of interpersonal conflict at work as asource of significant stress. Narayanan, Menon, andSpector (1999a) reported that interpersonal conflictwas the 3rd most cited source of stress in a U.S.sample and the 4th most cited source of stress in anIndian sample. Respondents in both samples con-sisted of clerical workers and 11 possible stressorcategories were considered. In this study, role stres-sors traditionally studied in occupational stress werethe least reported sources of stress. Liu (2002) alsofound that Chinese and American faculty, as well asuniversity support staff, reported interpersonal con-flict to be a main source of stress.

Although conflict is clearly a leading stressor, oc-cupational stress researchers have often failed to dif-ferentiate between potential sources of conflict. Inother words, interpersonal conflict at work has beenlargely measured without distinguishing between su-pervisor and coworker conflict. Considering that su-pervisor support has been found to be a significantmoderator of the relationship between social stressorsand symptoms of depression (Dormann & Zapf,1999), it is expected that conflict with supervisorsmay result in different outcomes than when conflictinvolves coworkers. Frone (2000) is one of the fewresearchers to distinguish between sources of conflictin his study of young workers. He proposed that asupervisor represents an organization and, thus, feel-ings toward the organization are likely to be affectedwhen conflict involves a supervisor. Consequently,Frone (2000) hypothesized that conflict with cowork-ers would lead to personal outcomes, such as depres-sion and reduced self-esteem, while conflict withsupervisors would result in organizational outcomes,such as job dissatisfaction and turnover. The findingssupported the proposed model, thus, providing in-sight into the fundamental role that conflict sourceplays on employee behavior.

Stress researchers have found that conflict, as asocial stressor, is associated with behavioral strains.For example, Chen and Spector (1992) reported anumber of behavioral and intentional reactions tointerpersonal conflict at work. The findings showedthat conflict had a significant positive correlation

with sabotage, interpersonal aggression, hostility andcomplaints, and intention to quit. Furthermore, Fox,Spector and Miles (2001) used a behavioral checklistto assess CWB and their relationship with interper-sonal conflict. It was found that conflict was posi-tively and significantly related to both organizationaland interpersonal types of CWB. Spector, Fox, Goh,and Bruursema (2003) supported these findings usingincumbent and peer data.

Although a relationship between conflict and CWBhas been supported, researchers have not previouslyaddressed the differential impact conflict sourcesmay have in predicting organizational and interper-sonal CWB. Qualitative data from focus groups con-ducted with a working sample supported the notionthat employees fear the consequences of getting backat their supervisors when they are the source of theconflict. Participants attributed this to the power thata supervisor has over his or her employment. How-ever, conflict with coworkers was seen as less threat-ening because of the fact that coworkers have thesame organizational authority as they do (Bruk-Lee,2004). Hence, it is likely that negative behavioralreactions to conflict with supervisors be directed atthe organization. On the other hand, employees maybe less inhibited to react to conflict with coworkersby engaging in damaging behaviors toward them.Consistent with Frone’s (2000) findings, this wouldsuggest that conflict with supervisors affects out-comes of organizational relevance while conflict withcoworkers impact those of personal relevance. Re-search by Zellars, Tepper, and Duffy (2002) con-cluded that victims of abusive supervision restoretheir sense of control by withholding voluntary be-haviors that would otherwise benefit the organiza-tion, namely organizational citizenship behaviors.According to Tepper (2000), victims of abusive su-pervisors view the organization as partly to blame,which helps to explain why they would target theirbehaviors at the organization. The same reasoningmay apply to interpersonal conflict with supervisors.Additional research by Duffy, Ganster, and Pagon(2002) looked at the effects of social undermining bysupervisors and coworkers on counterproductive be-haviors. The researchers reported that social under-mining by supervisors, but not by coworkers, waspredictive of passive counterproductive behaviors. Intheir study, passive CWB included behaviors similarto those of organizational CWB such as taking longerbreaks and being lazy on the job (Duffy et al., 2002).The results lent further support to a differential effectof negative social relationships on work outcomes.However, it is important to note that both abusive

146 BRUK-LEE AND SPECTOR

supervision and social undermining are theoreticallydistinct from interpersonal conflict in that the latterdoes not necessarily require the victimization of atarget, thus each construct warrants individual atten-tion. Based on these findings, the following hypoth-eses are proposed:

Hypothesis 1: Organizational CWB will be pre-dicted by conflict with supervisors and not byconflict with coworkers.

Hypothesis 2: Interpersonal CWB will be pre-dicted by conflict with coworkers and not byconflict with supervisors.

Affective reactions to conflict at work have beenreported by a number of studies. Keenan and New-ton (1985) reported that the most frequently citedemotional reactions by their sample were anger,annoyance, and frustration. Similarly, Narayananet al., (1999b) found that feelings of anger, annoy-ance, and frustration were the most cited affectivestrains reported across three occupations that ratedinterpersonal conflict as a major source of stress.Frustration and anxiety were also positive corre-lates of conflict in a longitudinal study by Spectorand O’Connell (1994). A meta-analysis by Spectorand Jex (1998) reported mean correlations betweenconflict and a number of negative emotional states,such as anxiety, depression, and frustration thatranged in the mid .30s.

Clearly, interpersonal conflict at work is a socialstressor that seems to elicit a variety of negativeaffective outcomes, including feelings of frustration,anger, annoyance, and anxiety. It seems logical,therefore, that it is not the specific emotional reactionthat is experienced as a result of conflict that matters.Rather, it is the experience of negative affect that hasbeen found across the previously reviewed studiesthat may require closer attention. Fox et al. (2001)used the Job-Related Affective Well-Being Scale toobtain a negative emotion score derived from theresponses to 15 items measuring negative emotionalstates. The results indicated a significant positivecorrelation between conflict and negative emotions,thus, indicating that the variety of negative affectivestates resulting from conflict at work can be studiedby using a measure of overall negative emotions.Consequently, the following hypothesis is proposed:

Hypothesis 3: Conflict with supervisors and co-workers will be positively correlated with ameasure of overall negative emotions.

Counterproductive Work Behaviors

CWB researchers have referred to these acts usingnumerous terms, including deviance (Hollinger,1986; Robinson & Bennett, 1995), organizationalretaliatory behavior (Skarlicki & Folger, 1997), andantisocial behaviors (Giacalone & Greenberg, 1997).Regardless of the term used for describing thesebehaviors, it can be said that each refers to detrimen-tal behaviors that affect an organization’s productiv-ity and coworkers’ performance.

Despite the various terms that exist in the literatureto refer to CWB, the research has commonly dividedthese behaviors into two types: organizational andinterpersonal. Bennett and Robinson (2000) sug-gested that the target of CWB is important because itmay be that employees engaging in one type ofbehavior are different from those engaging in anothertype. They used a multidimensional scaling tech-nique to develop a typology of what they refer to asdeviant behaviors and are labeled CWB in this paper(Robinson & Bennett, 1995). The results indicatedthat these behaviors varied across two dimensions,were divided into four quadrants, and ranged fromminor to serious. Specifically, organizational CWBincludes production deviance and property deviance.The 1st group is composed of minor behaviors thatrefer to ways in which employees may withdrawefforts and, consequently, affect productivity (i.e.,leaving early and without permission). The 2ndgroup includes behaviors aimed at damaging organi-zational property (i.e., sabotaging equipment). Inter-personal CWB is divided into political deviance andpersonal aggression. Political deviance includes be-haviors that are considered to be minor, such asspreading rumors. However, personal aggression re-fers to verbal abuse and other forms of harassment(Robinson & Bennett, 1995).

An emotion-centered model of voluntary behav-iors at work was developed to explain the connectionbetween stressors, emotions, and CWB (Spector &Fox, 2002). The model describes a process wherebyenvironmental characteristics are perceived and ap-praised by employees, which may, in turn, elicitnegative emotions. These negative emotions are nottarget specific, but augment the possibility that em-ployees will engage in behaviors that are counterpro-ductive. Spector and Fox (2002) suggested that “Asituation that induces a negative emotion will in-crease the likelihood that CWB will occur, either toactively and directly attack the agent of the situationor to passively and indirectly cope with the emotion”(p.273). In fact, a measure of overall negative emo-tion was found to correlate significantly with organi-

147SOCIAL STRESSORS AND COUNTERPRODUCTIVE BEHAVIORS

zational and interpersonal CWB, such that negativeemotions were associated with higher levels of CWB(Fox et al., 2001). Considering that conflict is astressor associated with negative emotional states andthat these states are, in turn, associated with CWB, itcan be expected that conflict at work will be relatedto CWB. Fox et al. (2001) found some support forthis claim. In particular, an emotion-centered modelof CWB was partially supported in that a pattern ofmediation was established for overall negative emo-tions in the conflict-CWB relationship. The followinghypotheses will, thus, be tested:

Hypothesis 4: Overall negative emotions will bepositively correlated with interpersonal and or-ganizational CWB.

Hypothesis 5: Overall negative emotions willmediate the relationship between conflict withsupervisors and organizational CWB.

Hypothesis 6: Overall negative emotions willmediate the relationship between conflict withcoworkers and interpersonal CWB.

The Current Study

Interpersonal conflict at work has received grow-ing attention among researchers in occupationalstress. Conflict is a predominant source of socialstress in the workplace across occupations. Neverthe-less, researchers have ignored the source of the con-flict, such that conflicts with supervisors and withcoworkers have been mostly examined without dis-tinguishing between the two. However, evidence sup-ports differential personal and organizational out-comes depending on the source of the conflict (Frone,2000). It is also evident from the review that thissocial stressor is associated with a number of emo-tional reactions, including anger, frustration, andannoyance.

The emotion-centered model described above sug-gests that the target of the counterproductive behav-ior will depend on “the perceived agent of the situ-ation that induced the emotion” (Spector & Fox,2002, p. 275). Greenberg and Barling (1999), whoexplained that employees would choose to aggressagainst the source of their dissatisfaction, also sug-gested the target specificity of CWB. Likewise, Ben-nett and Robinson (2000) suggested that the target ofCWB is important because it may be that employeesengaging in one type of behavior are different fromthose engaging in another type.

Researchers have proposed that future studies ex-

amine the antecedents of the different types of CWBin greater detail (Fox et al., 2001). In response to theneed for further development of the interpersonalconflict-CWB relationship, the goals of this studywere twofold. First, it was to determine if conflictswith coworkers and supervisors resulted in differen-tial behavioral responses. Second, it was to gatherfurther support for an emotion-centered model ofvoluntary behaviors while elucidating the conflict-CWB relationship.

Given the sensitive nature and consequences thatmay be associated with CWB if employees are iden-tified, researchers have often relied on the use ofsingle-source self-reports. This methodology wasrecommended to be a practical way to assess theoccurrence of CWB as long as participants are guar-anteed anonymity (Bennett & Robinson, 2000). Fur-ther, Ones, Viswesvaran, and Schmidt (1993) sug-gested that actual behaviors and admissions of suchbehaviors are correlated significantly, thus providingmore support for the use of self-report measures inthe study of counterproductive behaviors. Neverthe-less, reliance on self-report measures has attractedseveral criticisms, including the possibility that rela-tionships among variables are inflated because ofcommon biases such as social desirability (Lee,1993). To address the methodological issues associ-ated with only using self-reports, researchers havecalled for the inclusion of measures in addition to thetraditional incumbent report (Spector, 1992). In re-sponse, Spector et al. (2003) collected both self andcoworker reports of stressors and strains and foundgood convergence between the two data sources. Thecurrent study will use a similar method to collect datafrom participants and their coworkers. As a result, wepropose the following hypothesis:

Hypothesis 7: Self-report findings will be repli-cated using coworker reports of conflict andCWB.

Methods

Participants

Participants in this study consisted of 133 dyads (em-ployee-coworker pairs) that were full-time University Sup-port Personnel Systems (USPS) employees at the Universityof South Florida. A total of 858 questionnaire packets weremailed to employees, containing 1 employee and 1 co-worker questionnaire. Of these, 157 employees and 142coworkers mailed back questionnaires; however, 33 ques-tionnaires were not included in the analyses because theywere missing a matching coworker or employee question-naire. The response rate for employees (N � 157) was18.3%, and of these 84.7% (N � 133) had a matching


coworker questionnaire. The final sample represented avariety of occupations, including professional, administra-tive, clerical, secretarial, technical, service, and mainte-nance duties. Of the 133 participants who completed theemployee questionnaires that were used 29 (21.97%) weremale, 103 (78.03%) were female, and one did not identifyhis or her gender. On average, they were 43.9 years old andworked in their current jobs for 8.7 years. Managerial po-sitions were held by 36 (28.35%) of these respondents. Ofthe 133 participants who completed the coworker question-naires that were used 31 were male (24.6%), 95 were female(75.4%), and 7 did not report their gender.

Procedure

The most recent list of all main campus USPS employeeswas obtained from the University of South Florida’s humanresources department at the time of data collection. A ran-dom sample of employees was sent a survey packet includ-ing an informational letter describing the purpose of thestudy and 2 questionnaires by interoffice mail. Employeeswere instructed to create a secret password consisting of atleast 5 digits, letters, or a combination of both. They placedtheir secret password on their questionnaire and the cowork-er’s questionnaire for matching. The employee completedhis or her questionnaire and gave a coworker his or hercorresponding shortened questionnaire (with the identifica-tion code on top). The coworker was instructed to completethe questionnaire with regards to the incumbent. Completedemployee and coworker questionnaires were mailed to theresearcher through campus mail.

Measures

Demographics. Information regarding the employee’sage, gender (1 � male, 2 � female), tenure, and type of job(1 � managerial, 2 � nonmanagerial) was collected. Co-workers were asked to report only their gender.

Stressor. Conflict at work was measured using Frone’s(2000) modified version of the Interpersonal Conflict atWork Scale (ICAWS; Spector & Jex, 1998). Each set ofquestions measured the extent to which the employee ex-perienced arguments, yelling, and rudeness when interact-ing with the supervisor or with coworkers, respectively(e.g., “How often do you get into arguments with yoursupervisor?”). The scale consisted of 4 items rated on a5-point scale ranging from 1 � Never to 5 � Every day.High scores represent high levels of conflict where totalscores ranged between 4 and 20. Frone (2000) reported aCronbach’s alpha of .86 for conflict with supervisor and .85for conflict with coworkers.

Affect. The Job-Related Affective Well-Being Scalewas used to measure emotional reactions to job conditions(JAWS; Van Katwyk, Fox, Spector, & Kelloway, 2000).Respondents rated how their jobs made them feel each of 15negative emotions in the past 30 days (e.g., “My job mademe feel angry”). Each item was rated on a 5-point scaleranging from 1 � Never to 5 � Every day. A total negativeemotion score was calculated by summing the scores on all15 negative emotion items resulting in a total score range of15–75. The negative emotion subscale of the JAWS wasreported to have a Cronbach’s alpha of .80 (Van Katwyk etal., 2000).

CWB. Counterproductive work behaviors were mea-sured using a modified version of the behavioral checklistcreated by Fox et al. (2001). Three graduate students cate-gorized 45 of the items using Robinson and Bennett’s(1995) typology of organizational and interpersonal CWB.Only items in which all 3 raters agreed on their categoriza-tion and which were reported as having been done by atleast 10% of people in a study by Fox et al. (2001) were keptin the final checklist. This resulted in 25 items from which11 were targeted at the organization (e.g., “Took supplies ortools home without permission”), and 14 were interpersonalin nature (e.g., “Insulted or made fun of someone at work”).Respondents indicated how often they or their coworkerperformed each of the behaviors in their current job on ascale from 1 � Never to 5 � Every day. Total scores forinterpersonal CWB ranged between 14 and 60 and between11 and 55 for organizational CWB.

Results

Means, standard deviations, Cronbach’s alphas,and zero-order correlations for all of the study vari-ables are shown in Table 1. Coworker data are pre-sented only for conflict with supervisor, conflict withcoworkers, interpersonal CWB, and organizationalCWB. All other data are self-reported demographics,supervisor and coworker conflict, emotion, andCWB. Although age showed significant correlationswith several key study variables, its inclusion in theregressions did not change the results. Consequently,it was removed as a control variable from furtheranalyses.

Regression analyses were performed to testwhether conflict sources differentially predictedCWB targets. As seen in Table 2, conflict with co-workers was the only significant predictor of inter-personal CWB, which lends support to hypothesis 2.This was true for same source and cross-source data,thus also providing support for hypothesis 7. It isworth noting that coworker reported conflict withsupervisor seems to be acting as a suppressor variablein the case of self-reported interpersonal CWB byincreasing the predictive power of coworker reportedconflict with coworkers.

The results for organizational CWB to test hypoth-esis 1 are more complex. In the case of same sourcedata, the results indicate that both predictors havesignificant beta weights. However, the same is nottrue for cross-source data. Table 2 shows that self-reported conflict with coworkers is the only signifi-cant predictor of coworker-reported organizationalCWB at Step 2. Further, neither coworker-reportedconflict was predictive of self-reported organizationalCWB.

Hypothesis 3 proposed that conflict with supervi-sors and coworkers would be positively related toself-reported negative emotions. The data indicated


positive significant relationships between the nega-tive emotions measure and self-reported conflict withsupervisors (r � .24), self-reported conflict with co-workers (r � .23), coworker reports of conflict withsupervisors (r � .30), and coworker reports of con-flict with coworkers (r � .23), thus providing supportfor this hypothesis and hypothesis 7.

To test hypothesis 4, the relationship between neg-ative emotions and CWB was calculated. The resultsshowed that both organizational (r � .41) and inter-personal (r � .21) self-reported CWB were signifi-cantly related to negative emotions. Significant find-ings were replicated using coworker reports oforganizational (r � .24) and interpersonal (r � .25)CWB.

The four multiple regression analyses used to testhypotheses 5 and 6 reported mixed results for themediating role of negative emotions in the specifiedpredictor-criterion relationships using self and co-workers reports of CWB. Baron and Kenny’s (1986)procedure for testing mediation, which tests threeregression models, was used. First, CWB was re-gressed on conflict. Second, negative emotion wasregressed on conflict. Last, CWB was regressed onboth conflict and negative emotion.

It was expected that conflict would become non-significant or substantially reduced when the media-tor was entered into the equation. Results of theseanalyses are presented in Table 3. Evidence for themediation of negative emotion in the relationshipsbetween self and coworker reports of organizationalCWB and self-reports of supervisor conflict wasfound. In these two instances, the beta of the stressorbecame nonsignificant when emotion was added tothe regression model. Although shown in Table 3, atest of mediation was not necessary for the relation-ship between self-reports of organizational CWB andcoworker reports of conflict with supervisor becausethe variables did not meet the first criterion definedby Baron and Kenny (1986). A pattern of mediation,as indicated by reduced but still significant stressorbetas, was also found for the relationships betweencoworker reports of interpersonal CWB and self-reports of coworker conflict, as well as, betweenself-reports of interpersonal CWB and coworker re-ports of conflict with coworkers. Support for media-tion was not found for the relationships betweenself-reports of both interpersonal CWB and conflictwith coworkers, coworker reports of both organiza-tional CWB and supervisor conflict, and coworkerreports of both interpersonal CWB and conflict withcoworkers. In these three instances, emotion did notT

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Overall, there was convergence between self andcoworker reports for both sources of conflict andtypes of CWB. Significant correlations were foundbetween both data sources for conflict with supervi-sor (r � .42), conflict with coworkers (r � .37),organizational CWB (r � .37), and interpersonalCWB (r � .21). However it seems that incumbentsmade better discriminations between the two sourcesof conflict and the two types of CWB than did co-workers. Specifically, the correlation between thetwo sources of conflict among self-reports (r � .11)was much smaller than among coworker reports (r �.58). Similarly, the correlation between interpersonaland organizational CWB for self-reports (r � .45)was smaller than for coworker reports (r � .86).

Discussion

The purpose of this study was to investigate theimpact of different sources of interpersonal conflict atwork on the target specificity of CWB using anemotion-centered model. Research that has differen-tiated between conflicts with supervisors and co-workers found differential outcomes depending onthe source of conflict (Frone, 2000). Specifically,conflict with supervisors impacted outcomes of orga-nizational importance whereas conflict with cowork-ers resulted in personal outcomes. Researchers havesuggested that the antecedents of CWB aimed at theorganization may be different from those of CWBaimed at the individuals within an organization (Foxet al., 2001) and that employees will retaliate againstthe agents causing the employee to experience neg-

Table 2Differential Relationships of Conflict Source with CWB

Independent variable

Dependent variable: Organizational CWB

Self-report Coworker

Step 1 Step 2 Step 1 Step 2

Conflict with supervisor .21* .19* .19* .15Conflict with coworkers .21* .33***R2 at each step .05* .09** .03* .14***R2 change .04 .11

Independent variable(Coworker report)




Conflict with supervisor .17 .07 .41*** .20*Conflict with coworkers .17 .38***R2 at each step .03 .05* .17*** .27***R2 change .02 .10


Dependent variable: Interpersonal CWB



Conflict with coworkers .45*** .44*** .40*** .40***Conflict with supervisor .10 .02R2 at each step .20*** .21*** .16*** .16***R2 change .01 0





Conflict with coworkers .23** .30** .47*** .46***Conflict with supervisor �.13 .02R2 at each step .05** .06* .22*** .22***R2 change .01 0

* p � .05. ** p � .01. *** p � .001.


ative emotions or job dissatisfaction (Spector & Fox,2002; Greenberg & Barling, 1999). In response to theresearch need for a more detailed understanding ofthe conflict—CWB relationship, this study assessedconflict with both supervisors and coworkers usingmultiple data sources and conflict’s relationship witheither organizational or interpersonal CWB. Giventhe role of negative emotions in the relationshipbetween conflict and CWB, tests of mediation werealso conducted.

Overall, employees who reported experiencingmore conflict or whose coworkers reported them asexperiencing more conflict also reported experienc-ing more negative emotions at work. Interestingly,the cross-source correlation between coworker re-ports of conflict with supervisor and self-reportednegative emotions was higher than the correlation

using same source data. Similarly, negative emotionswere significantly related to both types of CWB usingmultiple data sources. Employees who reported ex-periencing more negative emotion at work also re-ported and were reported to have engaged in morecounterproductive behaviors. These findings are con-sistent with those of other studies that have foundconflict and CWB to be related to the experience ofspecific and overall measures of negative emotions(Fox et al., 2001; Fox & Spector, 1999; Spector et al.,2003; Spector & Fox, 2002; Spector & Jex, 1998;Spector, Dwyer & Jex,1988; Spector & O’Connell,1994). A contribution of the current study was inshowing that these findings held not only for allself-report but for mixed self- and coworker-reports.

Previous research, which has not differentiatedbetween sources of conflict, has reported inconsistent

Table 3Hierarchical Regression Analysis of the Mediating Role of Negative Emotions





Conflict with supervisor .21* .13 .19* .14Emotion .37*** .20*R2 at each step .05* .18*** .03* .07**R2 change .13 .04





Conflict with supervisor .17 .05 .41*** .37***Emotion .39*** .13R2 at each step .03 .17*** .17*** .18***R2 change .14 .01





Conflict with coworkers .45*** .42*** .40*** .36***Emotion .12 .17*R2 at each step .20*** .21*** .16*** .19***R2 change .01 .03





Conflict with coworkers .23** .19* .47*** .44***Emotion .17* .15R2 at each step .05* .08** .22*** .25***R2 change .03 .03

* p � .05. ** p � .01. *** p � .001.


relationships between conflict and organizationalCWB. Fox et al. (2001) reported that conflict wasmore strongly related to interpersonal CWB than toorganizational CWB. Spector et al. (2003), however,found a nonsignificant relationship between conflictand organizational CWB. As a result, it was sug-gested that the antecedents of organizational CWBmight differ from those of interpersonal CWB andthat conflict is more likely to result in counterproduc-tive behaviors aimed at others in the organization(Spector et al., 2003). The findings of the currentstudy support the notion that the antecedents of or-ganizational and interpersonal CWB differ and pro-vide evidence to show that the source of the conflictis important in determining the target chosen forcounterproductive behaviors. In fact, the results arestrong in supporting that counterproductive behaviorsaimed at other individuals in the organization arepredicted by conflict with coworkers and not withsupervisors. It is possible that previous studies thathave not differentiated between conflict sources andhave found significant relationships only with inter-personal CWB may have been, in fact, assessingmostly coworker conflict without intending to so.Further, the fact that both conflict sources are predic-tive of organizational CWB raises some importantquestions for future research. For example, it is clearthat conflict with supervisors is predictive of onlyorganizational CWB, but why is conflict with co-workers also a significant predictor? It could be thatindividuals blame the organization for some of theirconflicts with coworkers because a conflict resolutionsystem in not in place to alleviate coworker tensions.It could also be that the causes of some coworkerconflicts are organizational policies, and therefore,the organization remains to blame. Future stress re-search may benefit not only from measuring theconflict source, but also, from assessing the type orcause of the conflict.

Baron and Kenny’s (1986) test of mediation wasused to investigate the final four hypotheses, whichpredicted that negative emotion would mediate therelationship between conflict and CWB. The findingsof this study provided mixed evidence for the medi-ating role of emotions using same source and cross-source data. A fully mediated model was supportedusing self-reports of both organizational CWB andconflict with supervisor, as well as for coworkerreports of organizational CWB and self-reports ofconflict with supervisor. In addition, the results are inthe direction of mediation when using coworker re-ports of interpersonal CWB and self-reports of con-flict with coworkers, as well as, for self-reports ofinterpersonal CWB and coworker reports of conflict

with coworkers. Nevertheless, mediation was notsupported when the following relationships were in-vestigated: conflict with supervisor (coworker re-port)—organizational CWB (self and coworker),conflict with coworkers (self)—interpersonal CWB(self), and conflict with coworker (coworker) andinterpersonal CWB (coworker).

Overall, the findings concur with previous conflictstudies that showed stronger support for the mediat-ing role of emotion for organizational CWB than forinterpersonal CWB (Fox et al., 2001; Spector et al.,2003). Fox and Spector (1999) found that angrytemperament had stronger relationships with counter-productive behaviors aimed at other individuals inthe organization while angry reaction was morestrongly related to organizational CWB. This sug-gests that interpersonal CWB may be linked more totrait anger and less to negative affective states, whichmay explain the weaker mediation findings with re-gards to it. Future studies could address this possi-bility by including a trait measure in addition to astate measure. Fox, Spector, and Rodopman (2004)also noted that although emotion is theoretically pos-ited to precede CWB, it may not immediately resultin behavior, thus, making this a complex process toassess. Further, it is possible that mediation results inthe conflict-CWB relationship are mixed because ofweakness in the level of measurement. That is, al-though our current measures assess chronic levels ofconflict, emotion, and CWB, the process works at theindividual event level, such that a specific conflictleads to anger and to CWB (Fox et al., 2004).

Convergence Between Self and CoworkerReports

Incumbent and coworker reports showed goodconvergence for all of the study’s variables for whichmultiple data sources were collected. The highestconvergence was found for conflict with supervisorsand organizational CWB. This differs from the find-ings of Spector et al. (2003), who found higher con-vergence between incumbent and coworker reportsfor interpersonal CWB and, therefore, suggested thatcoworkers were better able to report on public be-haviors than private behaviors, such as putting in tobe paid for more hours than actually worked. Thisdifference in findings may be due to the measure ofCWB used in each of the studies. The current studyused a subset of the 45 items of the behavioralchecklist included in Spector et al. (2003). The itemswere chosen for their base rate of occurrence asreported by a previous study using the full checklist


(Fox et al., 2001) and, therefore, mostly representbehaviors categorized as being minor deviance byRobinson and Bennett (1995). In turn, it might be thatminor organizational CWB is as publicly known assome interpersonal behaviors.

Although convergence between data sources wasgood, coworkers discriminated less between the twotypes of counterproductive behaviors and the twosources of conflict than did incumbents. Previousstudies showed that incumbents differentiated betterbetween job characteristic dimensions than did ob-servers (Glick, Jenkins, & Gupta, 1986; Spector, Fox,& Van Katwyk, 1999). Therefore, the findings aresimilar to those of other researchers who used mul-tiple data sources.

Convergence of sources in correlations betweenconflict and CWB tended to yield similar patterns inmost cases, although the correlations within co-worker measures were higher than within incumbentmeasures. For example, the correlation between su-pervisor conflict and organizational CWB was .21 forall incumbent data but .41 for all coworker data. Thecross-source correlations were .19 and .17. Similarly,the correlation between supervisor conflict and per-sonal CWB was .28 for all coworker data, but non-significant for the other 3 cases, including all incum-bent. Correlations tended to be more consistent forcoworker conflict than supervisor conflict, particu-larly for personal CWB. The reason for this greaterconsistency is not clear and might be worth furtherexploration in future research.

In addition, some cross-source relationships werestronger than same source relationships for the samevariables. Some of these included the relationshipbetween self-reported negative emotion and co-worker reported conflict with supervisors. Thesefindings address the criticism that self-report mea-sures result in same source bias by dispelling thepossibility that the method of data collection inflatesthe relationships between variables.

Limitations

A limitation of this research was the low responserate of participants. There are several explanations asto the low number of employees and coworkers whomailed back questionnaires. Employees were notcontacted by phone before they were mailed a surveypacket, and reminder letters were not mailed to sam-pled employees. Therefore, there was no personalcontact with the participants to help foster commit-ment to the study. Data were mostly collected duringthe summer months, which are typically slowerworking months for universities, and potential par-

ticipants may have been on vacation or away fromtheir offices during the summer break. Also, becauseof the sensitive nature of the behaviors assessed,employees may have chosen not to participate forfear of being identified.

Further, although employees were instructed tochoose a coworker who was a part of his or herdepartment and with whom they worked on a regularbasis, it was not possible to determine how long theyhave worked with each other or the amount of timeduring the day that they interacted with each otherbecause of the limited demographic information col-lected. The nature of the relationship between theincumbent and the coworker may have impacted theaccurate report of conflict and CWB experienced bythe employee. Also, it was not known if some par-ticipants completed the employee questionnaire andwere also asked to complete the coworker question-naire by someone else in their department. In caseswhere this may have occurred, participants may havebeen influenced by their own experiences in respond-ing to the coworker questionnaire. As a result, thismay have affected the convergence between em-ployee and coworker reports. It should be noted thateven though incumbents and coworkers are intendedto be different data sources, these may not be inde-pendent as there was contact between the two indi-viduals and the coworker was ultimately nominatedby the participant.

In addition, it is worth noting that the sample waslargely female and may not be representative of otherworking samples. Although gender was, overall, notsignificantly correlated with the variables of interest,caution is recommended when generalizing thesefindings to a mostly male population.

Last, it is possible that the relationships observedwere attenuated due to range restriction in the vari-ables measured. For the most part, employees re-ported low levels of conflict and CWB. Nevertheless,the fact that significant relationships were still foundis a promising outlook for future studies using sam-ples with more variability in responses.

Practical Implications and Conclusion

These findings have some interesting practical im-plications for organizations. Understanding the con-flict source is not only vital in understanding itspotential consequences, but also in the developmentof conflict management systems. For example, orga-nizations seeking to address troublesome levels ofinterpersonal conflict would gain valuable informa-tion from assessing the frequency of conflict withdifferent sources (supervisors, coworkers, customers)


in addition to the traditionally measured conflictstyles. This would allow organizations to focus ondeveloping the specific conflict management behav-iors that are best suited in dealing with supervisors,coworkers, and other entities. In addition, organiza-tions may maximize the benefits of process and struc-tural intervention programs by tailoring such pro-grams to specific conflict sources given thatorganizational outcomes may differ.

From a research standpoint, this study addressed acall for further investigation of the different anteced-ents and target specificity of interpersonal and orga-nizational CWB, the different sources of conflict atwork, and the mediating role of negative emotion(Frone, 2000; Greenberg & Barling, 1999; Fox &Spector, 1999; Spector & Fox, 2002). Past researchof the relationship between conflict and counterpro-ductive behaviors neglected to differentiate betweenconflict with supervisor and coworkers. Conse-quently, results have suggested that conflict is morestrongly related to behaviors targeted at others in theorganization (Fox et al., 2001; Spector et al., 2003).However, the current study found evidence for adifferential relationship between the source of theconflict and the target of the CWB, especially in thecase of interpersonal CWB. Therefore, it seems thatemployees are more likely to retaliate against otherswhen conflict is with coworkers. Further, althoughthe results are weaker with regards to a differentialimpact of conflict on organizational CWB, the resultsreveal an interesting possibility. Given the relation-ship between conflict with coworkers and organiza-tional CWB, it might be that employees view theorganization at fault for coworker conflict and mightalso choose to target the organization if they cannottarget other employees.

Interpersonal conflict at work has been identifiedas a leading source of stress by numerous researchers(Bolger et al., 1989; Hahn, 2000; Keenan & Newton,1985; Narayanan et al., 1999a, b). The current studyprovided further evidence for the detrimental impactthat this social stressor can have on employee behav-ior and affective states, yet more research is neededin this area. As a result, it is fundamental that futureresearch of conflict at work differentiates betweencoworker and supervisor conflict as this is the 2ndknown study that found differential outcomes forsources of conflict (see Frone, 2000). In sum, thesocial environment is an important correlate of CWBat work, and the source of interpersonal conflicts atwork can impact the target of the counterproductivebehaviors employees choose to engage in.

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Received February 10, 2005Revision received September 9, 2005

Accepted September 20, 2005 y


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