Effects of interpersonal conflict on organisational performance of selected Hotels in Kisii Town

Abstract

Success in businesses and other entities, like international organizations, depends on several issues, a key one being conflict management. Yet most leaders and their senior managers seem unaware of the negative impact that interpersonal conflict in the workplace can have on their bottom line. Maintaining a good working environment devoid of interpersonal conflicts is critical for the survival of a company in a competitive environment as in the hospitality sector as it can greatly influence the performance of an organization. Further, limited literature and studies related to interpersonal conflict exist in the hotel sector in Kenya, hence the need for this study. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of interpersonal conflict on organizational performance of selected hotels in Kisii town. This was carried out by investigating the types of interpersonal conflict, outcomes of interpersonal conflict and strategies for managing interpersonal conflict. The study employed both descriptive survey design and explanatory research design. The target population was three hundred and fifty four employees while the sample size was one hundred and eighty four employees. Purposive sampling technique was used to select the hotels for the study while stratified random sampling was used to select the respondents and the criteria for stratification was according to the department worked in and the rank. Data was obtained from primary and secondary sources. Instruments for collecting primary data included self-administered questionnaires. A pilot test was conducted to test the content validity of the data collection instruments while reliability was measured using the Cronbach’s Alpha. Both descriptive and inferential analysis was performed and multiple regression used to test the hypotheses. Results showed that interpersonal conflict strategies, relationship conflict and task conflict significantly affects organisational performance respectively, while outcomes of interpersonal conflict does not significantly affect organisational performance .To improve the performance of hotels in Kisii, more emphasis should be placed on improving strategies to cope with costs, followed by alleviation of task conflicts, relationship conflicts and finally outcomes of conflicts. The recommendation from the study was that hotels should prioritize training on conflict competencies and strategies particularly for supervisors, while employees should be trained on how to select and use the appropriate styles of handling interpersonal conflict so that various situations can be effectively dealt with.