Conflict, Health, and Well-Being

The authors propose a model in which they incorporate what they do know about the effects of conflict on health and well-being and propose areas for further empirical and theoretical investigation. For the purpose of this chapter, the implications of conflict in the workplace on employee health and well-being are reviewed using a stress model perspective. Although the conflict literature has traditionally differentiated between task and relationship conflict, research on conflict and well-being has largely ignored this distinction. The authors venture to say that this may be due to the lack of integration of the business and occupational stress literatures on this topic. Consequently, empirical support for the impact of conflict on well-being comes from studies that overall operationalize it as relationship conflict. Thus, the authors have limited our proposed model to relationship conflict until future research elucidates the process whereby task conflict may impact health and well-being