Effect of Conflict on Project Success with Mediating Role of Employee Performance: A Study of Service Sector of Pakistan

Abstract

While working on projects, three types of conflict put a destructive effect on project success out of many types of conflict. These three types of conflict include; relationship conflict, task conflict and process conflict. Organizations are trying their best to minimize the conflict impacts at workplace but despite of all efforts, questions remains why conflict management is not effective. This research study aims to explore the effect of various forms of conflicts on project success. The research has investigated the association of independent variables i.e. relationship conflict, task conflict and process conflict on project success. In addition, it has also explored the mediation role of employee performance. The research design is quantitative. Data has been collected through questionnaires from the local and multination private companies operating in the services sector. 700 questionnaires were distributed and responses from 468 were utilized for data analysis. SPSS was used to analyze the feedback of the respondents. The analysis revealed that relationship conflict, task conflict and process conflict negatively associated to employee performance and project success. The study has also successfully predicted the mediation role of employee performance on project success which has never done before in the research and contributes significantly towards available literature. Furthermore, no research was conducted in Pakistan where 3 types of conflict has been investigated on project success on the service sector of Pakistan. This contributes on that front as well as and gives insights to managers to effectively deal with it.