CONFLICT MANAGEMENT The Psychology of conflict and conflict ...

7. WORKPLACE AGGRESSION AND CONFLICT 225
perpetrator at one moment, yet a target at the next moment (for theory on this,
see Andersson & Pearson, 1999). This simplistic division of people as either
actors or targets ignores the evidence from the broader literature on human
aggression showing that aggression most frequently emerges from ongoing
social exchanges (e.g., dispute-related aggression; Felson & Tedeschi, 1993).
In contrast, research and theory on conflict and conflict resolution have
long recognized the existence of dynamic exchanges between parties. For
example, negotiation research commonly adopts methodologies for studying
exchanges of offers and counteroffers as they occur throughout negotiations
or disputes. Conflict studies from a communication perspective
have explored how conflicts are perpetuated through dialogue between
parties. Research on conflict escalation has also evidenced this tendency
toward dynamic perspectives (Pruitt, chapter 8, this volume).
Level of Analysis and Methodological Techniques
Research on workplace aggression has predominantly been conducted at
the individual level, despite the existence of more than one party in aggressive
exchanges, and emerging evidence that aggression is a meaningful group-level
construct with outcomes that are masked by an exclusive individual-level focus
(cf. Glomb & Liao, 2003; Glomb et al., 1997; Raver & Gelfand, 2005; Robinson
& O’Leary-Kelly, 1998). Although aggression research implicitly refers
to another party involved in the incident, there have been few attempts to
involve a second party to understand dyadic processes, much less group
processes. We thus know little about how multiple parties’ perspectives
and roles may be influencing the dynamics of aggression, or about how the
social context influences aggression.
In contrast, research on conflict has been conducted at the intrapersonal,
dyadic, group, intergroup, organizational, interorganizational,
and cross-national levels. Conflict research methodologies are extremely
diverse, including dyadic negotiation experiments, surveys of team conflict,
discourse analysis, and case studies of interorganizational conflicts.
One factor that distinguishes these methods from aggression research is
the emphasis on assessing dyadic or group processes. For example, there
is a large amount of research on group outcomes of task and relationship
conflict, yet no comparable body of work on aggression at the group level
exists. Conflict research has often recognized that the behaviors of one
person in isolation of the social context in which he/she operates is not
sufficient to understand the conflict at hand.
Summary
Although workplace aggression is conceptually a form of conflict at
work, a substantial empirical divide remains between the constructs. We
argue, however, that this discussion regarding the divide between the