Antecedents and precedents of employee conflict among academics of higher education institutions in Pakistan

Abstract

Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in Pakistan are consistently witnessing an increased level of conflicts among employees. This increase impacts significantly the culture of the institutions. Furthermore, literature has indicated the importance of organizational culture in reshaping employees’ work practices and empowerment, specifically, in relation to the three types of conflicts such as task, process and relationship. However, the relationship of each conflict type with employees’ performance is unclear and there have been limited studies to identify antecedents of the conflicts in organizations. Thus, the objectives of this study are to examine the interrelationship of organizational culture, employee empowerment and employee conflict, and its impact on employee performance with moderating role of conflict management. A proportionate random sample of 240 academic staff from HEIs in Pakistan was respondents for the study. Structural equation modeling was used to examine the empirical relationship. Results indicated that HEIs’ culture has a negative relationship with employee conflict, and this conflict has a negative relationship with employee’s performance. The findings showed that employee empowerment mediates the relationship between organizational culture and employee conflict, whilst conflict management moderates the relationship of employee conflict and employee performance. Besides, the study also found that relationship conflict has a negative relationship with employee performance while task conflict has a positive relationship. However, the study did not find any evidence of a relationship between process conflict and employee performance. The results of the current study are helpful for HEIs’ management to develop strategies to reduce relationship conflicts by empowering their employees.