CONFLICT MANAGEMENT The Psychology of conflict and conflict ...

278 SPECTOR AND BRUK-LEE
social in nature, such that they were caused by social interactions with
superiors, subordinates, or colleagues. As expected, one of the most cited
stressors was interpersonal conflict at work. Narayanan et al. (1999b)
also used the SIR in a study that asked respondents from clerical, sales,
and academic groups to report an incident that occurred within the past
month and which they considered stressful. Interpersonal conflict was the
most reported stressor for both the academic and sales groups. Gender
analysis showed that women in the sales and academic groups reported
interpersonal conflict as the leading stressor whereas men reported it to
be the second most frequent stressor. Further, the clerical group reported
conflict to be the third major source of stress among nine types.
Kandel, Davies, and Raveis (1985) studied sources of stress for women
in three specific roles. In particular, the researchers examined the marital,
occupational, and household roles. The occupational role was found to
be one of the most stressful roles for women. A factor analysis of the data
revealed seven sources of stress associated with the occupational role. Two of
the sources were interpersonal in nature. Further, regression analyses indicated
that interpersonal conflict was the strongest predictor of a measure of
overall stress for the occupational role. Also, psychological well-being was
shown to be more strongly affected by interpersonal conflicts than by any
other situational characteristic, such as the noxiousness of the work environment.
Pearlin (1980) also found depersonalization, one of the sources of
interpersonal conflict reported in the previous study, to be the most stressful
in the occupational role for a sample of women and men. Depersonalization,
as measured by Kandel et al. (1985), included similar items to those found in
widely used measures of interpersonal conflict at work.
Further evidence supports the notion that this stressor is among the
most cited across occupations and cultures. Taylor and Daniel (1987) examined
the sources of stress among a sample of soccer referees using the Soccer
Official’s Stress Survey and found that interpersonal conflict and peer
conflict were two of the five stress factors that emerged from the data.
Rainey’s (1995) factor analysis of stress data gathered from a sample of
baseball and softball umpires also included interpersonal conflict as one
of four factors. Similarly, Stewart and Ellery (1998) examined the sources
of stress among high school volleyball officials and indicated that interpersonal
conflict was one of four factors that emerged from the data as
significant sources of stress. In their study, items loading on the interpersonal
conflict factor were individually rated as being mild to moderate
and strong sources of stress.
Cross-cultural evidence for the prevalence of interpersonal conflict at
work as a source of significant stress has also been found. Narayanan et al.
(1999a) reported that interpersonal conflict was the third most cited source
of stress in a U.S. sample and the fourth most cited source of stress in an
Indian sample. Respondents in both samples consisted of clerical workers
and eleven possible stressor categories were considered. In this study,
role stressors traditionally studied in occupational stress were the least