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Conflict is a pervasive organizational problem that affects employees’ work and interactions. Researchers describe conflict as the experience between parties or among parties that their goals or interests are incompatible or in opposition (De Dreu and Gelfand, 2008; Korsgaard et al., 2008). In particular, conflict between co-workers often results in decreased productivity and job satisfaction (De Dreu and Weingart, 2003; Iverson and Zatzick, 2011). In this respect, research from social psychology suggests that the manner in which we resolve our day-to-day conflicts does not only have significant implications for interpersonal relationships (especially at work) but also have major implications on employees’ well-being (De Dreu et al., 2004). Effective conflict resolution strategies are therefore critical to successful interpersonal interactions that are important for increased cooperation and performance at work.
Literature on conflict and conflict management is replete with studies that have examined conflict management strategies and styles such as avoidance, accommodation, compromising, forcing and collaboration (Rahim, 1983) on work outcomes (De Dreu et al., 2004). However, many conflict episodes are rarely fully resolved (Coleman, 2000). Rather, conflicts flare up from time to time (Ayoko and Härtel, 2003). Additionally, there is evidence that conflict triggers negative emotions such as shame and guilt (Chen and Ayoko, 2012), especially for the victim. Also, the interactive effect of relationship and task conflict is a key predictor of the intention to leave the current job (Medina et al., 2005). The above suggests that conflict has the propensity to elicit employees’ unwillingness to cooperate at work. In this paper, I draw on a more recent and growing stream of literature on alternative workplace conflict management strategies, namely, apology and forgiveness (Butler and Mullis, 2002; Struthers et al., 2005), to argue that forgiveness is not only a viable means of restoring interpersonal workplace interactions after a transgression such as conflict (Freedman and Enright, 1996), but also plays an important role in promoting employees’ willingness to cooperate after a workplace conflict episode.
Cooperation is the process by which individuals, groups and organizations come together, interact and form different relationships for mutual gain or benefit (Smith et al., 1995). In this regard, the willingness to cooperate is core to interpersonal relationships that can eventually foster employee performance (Beersma et...