University of Twente Student Theses
Exploring willingness to participate in and expectations about mediation when experiencing negative asymmetrical conflicts in the workplace
Halle, R. ter (2022) Exploring willingness to participate in and expectations about mediation when experiencing negative asymmetrical conflicts in the workplace.
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| Abstract: | This research examined whether people experiencing asymmetrical power conflicts will have lower outcome expectation and are therefore less willing to participate in mediation compared to people in symmetrical power conflicts. Participants were requested to read a scenario and imagine being an employee in a company who experienced a conflict. The conflict was about a task that had been done wrong by the employee and another employee of the company. To manipulate power symmetry versus power asymmetry, participants were randomly assigned to either the asymmetry condition or the symmetry condition. Each condition had to read the exact same story, except the asymmetry condition read about a conflict with a manager and the symmetry condition read about a conflict with a co-worker. Then they had to answer questions about willingness to participate in mediation and about outcome expectations targeting positive outcome expectations, relationship outcome expectations and five different negative outcome expectations about mediation. Results showed that unexpectedly, the experimental manipulation did not affect participants’ willingness to participate in mediation, nor where there differences in outcome expectations. The only exception was wanting to quit the job. People imagining asymmetrical conflicts in the workplace were more likely to quit their job after mediation than when imagining symmetrical conflicts. Moreover, there was a correlation between quitting the job and being dependent on the other party. People imagining asymmetrical conflicts felt more dependent on the other party than people imagining symmetrical conflicts, which could explain why imagining asymmetrical conflicts led to being more likely to quit the job. However, future research is needed to investigate more factors like whether being dependent on the other party is related, for example, to feeling forced to take part in mediation. |
| Item Type: | Essay (Bachelor) |
| Faculty: | BMS: Behavioural, Management and Social Sciences |
| Subject: | 77 psychology |
| Programme: | Psychology BSc (56604) |
| Link to this item: | https://purl.utwente.nl/essays/91217 |
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