Cultivating a conflict-positive workplace: How mindfulness facilitates constructive conflict management Adam A. Kay, Daniel P. Skarlicki Abstract What can organizations do to cultivate a more conflict-positive workplace? A promising line of inquiry can be found in mindfulness. This paper examines the effect of mindfulness on the constructive management of workplace conflict - conceptualized as high collaboration and low avoidance - and tests the mediating role of cognitive reappraisal. Results reveal that mindfulness facilitates constructive conflict management by increasing collaboration and reducing avoidance, showing that the advantages of mindfulness in conflict management stem from more than its benefits for affect. Results further reveal that while cognitive reappraisal explains how mindfulness increases collaboration, it does not clarify why mindfulness reduces conflict avoidance. Ultimately, this paper shows that mindfulness can be an effective tool for promoting constructive conflict management in the workplace. Introduction Whenever you’re in conflict with someone, there is one factor that can make the difference between damaging your relationship and deepening it. That factor is attitude. ~ William James Conflict is a pervasive and inescapable part of organizational life (De Dreu, 2011). Defined as perceived incompatibilities between two or more parties (Jehn, 1995), conflict tends to make employees less productive and satisfied with their jobs (Chiaburu & Harrison, 2008), resulting in lower performance (De Dreu & Weingart, 2003). As such, conflict is commonly assumed to be harmful to employees and organizations alike. However, as William James suggests in the epigraph, when conflict is approached in a constructive manner it can also be beneficial. Employees who approach conflict constructively tend to feel more connected with others at work (Tjosvold, Huang, Johnson, & Johnson, 2008), and the conflict-positive organizations that embrace and encourage constructive conflict can realize tremendous gains (Tjosvold, 2008). Thus, an important question for research and practice is: what can organizations do to cultivate more constructive attitudes and behaviors around workplace conflict? A rapidly developing body of research suggests that a promising line of inquiry may be found in mindfulness. Mindfulness has been defined as self-regulated attention on present moment experience with an open, non-judgmental and accepting attitude (Bishop et al., 2004). Organizational scholars have theorized that mindfulness broadly promotes prosocial attitudes and behaviors (Glomb et al., 2011, Good et al., 2015), and growing research supports this view (Donald et al., 2019). Mindfulness has also been shown to attenuate antisocial behaviors associated with conflict, such as interpersonal aggression (Liang et al., 2018) and retaliation (Long & Christian, 2015). Indeed, Yu and Zellmer-Bruhn (2018) even suggested that mindfulness in teams reduces workplace conflict altogether. However, given the pervasive and inescapable nature of conflict, we question whether mindfulness reduces workplace conflict per se or whether instead it alters the way conflict is managed. In the present research we examine whether and to what extent mindfulness promotes constructive conflict management in the workplace. By constructive conflict management, we mean managing conflict in such a way that minimizes the chance of loss and maximizes the prospect of gain for both parties. We focus in particular on two conflict management styles - namely, collaboration and avoidance - which respectively imply a high vs. low level of concern for both oneself and the other party (Rahim, 2015). A high level of concern for others is a signature of prosociality (Grant, 2007). Adding to the budding literature on the prosocial implications of mindfulness at work (Hafenbrack et al., this issue), we theorize that mindfulness fosters more constructive conflict management in the workplace, which we operationalize as a high level of collaboration and low level of avoidance. The manner in which mindfulness brings about prosocial outcomes, however, is not yet well understood (Donald et al., 2019). To advance theory and research in this regard while examining how mindfulness promotes constructive conflict management, we focus on cognitive reappraisal as a hitherto unexamined mechanism in the literature on mindfulness at work. Cognitive reappraisal entails cognitively shifting the perceived meaning of a situation (Gross, 1998a) and is uniquely associated both with mindfulness (Hanley, Garland, & Black, 2014) and conflict management (Halperin & Gross, 2011). Drawing on metacognitive theory (Kudesia, 2019) and the mindfulness coping model (Garland et al., 2009, Garland et al., 2011), we theorize that mindfulness facilitates constructive conflict management by altering not only the way employees feel around conflict, but the way they think about it. This research has implications for both theory and practice. From a theoretical perspective, the burgeoning literature on mindfulness at work has been criticized for lack of attention to the mechanisms by which mindfulness functions (Miksch, Lindeman, & Varghese, 2015). By examining the mediating role of cognitive reappraisal, this research adds theoretical and empirical precision to an important mechanism of mindfulness, shedding new light on its implications for how employees manage conflict. From a practical perspective, insofar as organizations want their employees to manage conflict constructively and realize the benefits of a more conflict-positive workplace, this research provides insights to help them do so. Section snippets Conflict management Conflict management refers to the actions people take to deal with conflict (Tjosvold, Wong, & Chen, 2014). The most widely considered taxonomy of conflict management is the dual concern model (Blake & Mouton, 1964). Although numerous variations of the model exist (e.g., Hall, 1969, Pruitt, 1983, Rahim, 1983, Thomas, 1988), general agreement among scholars has emerged that individual conflict management styles stem from cognitions along two dimensions: concern for self vs. concern for other. Mindfulness and conflict management Research on the implications of mindfulness for constructively managing conflict is beginning to emerge. To date, the primary focus of this work has been on conflict in intimate relationships. Karremans, Schellekens, and Kappen (2017) detailed how mindfulness is associated with adaptive physiological responses to conflict, including lower cortisol levels (Hertz, Laurent, & Laurent, 2015) and less cardiovascular reactivity (Kimmes, May, Seibert, Jaurequi, & Fincham, 2018). Consistent with the Metacognition and cognitive reappraisal If mindfulness is positively associated with collaboration and inversely related with conflict avoidance, an important issue for theory and practice is to identify the psychological mechanisms that drive these relationships. We propose that a key means by which mindfulness facilitates more constructive conflict management is by augmenting people’s ability to metacognitively reappraise conflict. Metacognition involves second-order cognitions about first-order thoughts and emotions (Jost, Overview of the present research In the following sections we detail two studies conducted to test our model. The first was an exploratory study to examine the relationship between the variables in our model at the dispositional level, and to test the soundness of our underlying theory as a precursor to an experimental field study. The second study entailed a randomized controlled trial with one month of online mindfulness training at a healthcare organization, with active and passive control conditions and three waves of data Study 1 As a first step in our research, we conducted an exploratory study to examine whether trait mindfulness relates to collaboration and conflict avoidance in the hypothesized manner (Hypotheses 1a and 1b), and whether and to what extent cognitive reappraisal explains these relationships (Hypotheses 2a and 2b). Study 2 With preliminary data supporting three of our four hypotheses, we sought to move beyond the trait level and test the causal effect of mindfulness training on conflict management in the field. To do so, we conducted a randomized controlled trial involving 30 days of online mindfulness training with both active and passive control conditions. General discussion Research on the role of mindfulness in workplace conflict is in its infancy. Organizational scholars have proposed that mindfulness can benefit conflict management in the workplace (Glomb et al., 2011, Good et al., 2015). However, research to date has focused solely on the role of mindfulness in reducing destructive conflict (e.g., Krishnakumar and Robinson, 2015, Liang et al., 2018, Long and Christian, 2015). By contrast, little attention has been paid to the role of mindfulness in Theoretical contributions The present research makes at least three contributions to research and theory on mindfulness at work. First, it shows that mindfulness cultivates attitudes and behaviors that characterize not just less destructive conflict, but more constructive conflict management. This perspective is unique because it moves research beyond the effect of mindfulness on aggressive attitudes and behaviors associated with workplace conflict. In addition, while individual conflict management styles have Practical implications The present research also has at least three notable implications for managerial practice. First, to the degree that organizations wish to encourage their employees to manage conflict more constructively, and insofar as they want to reap the rewards of a conflict-positive workplace (Tjosvold, 2008), 2008), this research shows that they have at least two options: (1) test for trait mindfulness in prospective employees, and (2) offer mindfulness training to current employees. Second, this Limitations The results of this research should be considered in light of at least two limitations. First, since all of our measures were gathered by selfreport, potential concerns arise about common method bias (Podsakoff et al., 2012). We attempted to mitigate the potential impact of common method bias by using multiple procedural safeguards (Study 1), by manipulating mindfulness with experimental methods (Study 2), and by measuring the variables in our model at separate points in time (Study 2). Still, Strengths The present research also has some notable strengths. First, it employed both survey and experimental methods to develop and test new theory about the beneficial role of mindfulness in managing workplace conflict. The results of the two studies, which together involved more than 1,600 participants, covered both the trait and state levels of analysis and helped inform one another about whether and how mindfulness facilitates constructive conflict management at work. These features provide Future research This research opens up several avenues for future research. First, although prior theory and research suggest that cognitive reappraisal ought to reduce conflict avoidance, controlling for negative affect appears to reverse this effect. Indeed, although three of our four hypotheses were supported in both studies, neither study supported our hypothesis that cognitive reappraisal would help explain how mindfulness lowers conflict avoidance (H2b). One possibility for this finding might be that Conclusion The present research treads new ground by investigating whether and how mindfulness facilitates constructive conflict management in the workplace. Results show that mindfulness increases collaboration and reduces conflict avoidance, even after controlling for affect. Results further show that cognitive reappraisal explains how mindfulness increases collaboration but does not clarify why mindfulness reduces conflict avoidance. Accounting for the role of affect, these results suggest that by CRediT authorship contribution statement Adam A. Kay: Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Methodology, Project administration, Writing - review & editing. Daniel P. Skarlicki: Conceptualization, Supervision, Writing - review & editing. Acknowledgements The authors would like to acknowledge the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (F13-04921) for supporting this research.
