Topic > Influence of social interactions on work behavior

In general, people tend to set goals for themselves during free time and, more importantly in this context, at work. Goals are outcomes that have some value to the individual and are therefore motivating to engage in actions to achieve that goal (Locke & Latham, 2006). Locke and Latham (2006) demonstrated that setting specific but difficult goals would lead to better performance, as one tends to have more motivation to perform tasks that lead to such goals. Furthermore, setting personal goals can foster intrinsic motivation and personal control and has been found to be a significant predictor of increased job performance (Locke, Shaw, Saari, & Latham, 1981; Mento, Steel, & Karren, 1987; Locke & Latham, 1990). The literature suggests that performance, motivation, self-confidence and well-being can be positively influenced by setting personal goals (e.g. Wood and Bandura, 1989). This shows the importance of goal setting in general, but also in the workplace. Therefore, disrupting these self-set goals through social demands could also impact well-being and overall intrinsic motivation, in addition to work outcome. Therefore, interrupting goals makes subsequent task completion more difficult. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Regarding goal setting and resulting performance, Barker (1963, 1968) proposed that daily activities can be separated into distinct episodes that appear in a sequence and are organized around goals, other people, or entities themes and are coherent. Behaviors are assumed to be directed toward a desired outcome, which is what all episodic units have in common (Barker, 1963). Beal et al. (2005) linked these behavioral episodes to the workplace and developed the concept of performance episodes. These are different from behavioral episodes in that they focus only on work-related activities. Furthermore, researchers have linked performance episodes to affective episodes, which integrate the temporary effect of emotions and moods. Taken together, performance episodes and affective episodes are assumed to compete for the individual's resources, influence attentional focus and task completion due to behavioral styles (Beal et al., 2005). Therefore, experiencing an intense emotion would lead to the induction of an affective episode, interrupting the performance episode in an attempt to achieve a goal by working on a task. Previous literature has also shown that moods and emotions, stimulated by social interactions, can influence work behavior quite a bit. Examples of these work behaviors are behaviors related to workers' negotiation strategies (Forgas, 1998), performance-related momentary response tendencies (Weiss & Cropanzano, 1996), and prosocial behaviors (George, 1991). To summarize, social conflict and the resulting emotions have been shown to lead to various outcomes and, therefore, it is worth analyzing strategies for regulating emotions caused by social demands in the workplace. Social connections: resource and stressor The way one interacts with people, in this case superiors, co-workers and colleagues, can have a strong influence on people's well-being. Sonnentag and Frese (2012) explain social stressors at work as aggressions such as bullying, (sexual) harassment or simply conflictsinterpersonal with supervisors, customers, or the like. Consequently, higher rates of turnover, lower job satisfaction, and lower organizational commitment may follow negative social interactions (Frone, 2000; Spector & Jex, 1998; Thomas, Bliese, & Jex, 2005). Furthermore, Volmer, Binnewies, Sonnentag, and Niessen (2012) found that social conflicts at work can extend into nonwork time as well, making it difficult to detach from work and replenish resources for future needs. Therefore, social conflict can not only lead to worse work outcomes, but also affect the individual's personal lives. This statement is supported by a finding by Fritz, Yankelevich, Zarubin, and Barger (2010), who demonstrated that mental distance from one's work has a positive influence on overall life satisfaction and a negative relationship with emotional fatigue. Emotional exhaustion, in turn, would likely be followed by less motivation to achieve one's goals the next day. This process would resemble a downward spiral for individuals, which should be stopped at the beginning (Volmer et al., 2012). Social connections in the workplace also serve as resources for individuals, essential to a functioning workspace. Job resources have an impact on the achievement of one's goals, personal growth and development (see Bakker & Demerouti, 2007). Referring to the focus of this paper, effectively managing stressful or unpleasant social situations would restore those job resources and maintain stable job performance, leading to goal achievement. Based on these considerations, we proposed: Hypothesis 1: Social conflict at work is positively related to unfinished tasks. Emotion regulation The basic thought is that social conflict prevents people from completing their tasks, for example because they are distracted by thoughts of an argument they had earlier or being in a tense emotional state that makes it difficult to concentrate on the task at hand. Beal et al. (2005) suggest that no matter where the distraction comes from, whether physical, psychological or emotional in nature, the consequence is poorer task performance. This obstacle is caused by a disruption in the episodic memory process, which can be further explained by a finding by Thomas (1990), who suggests that there is a decline in the ability to think during an emotionally arousing situation. Furthermore, interactions or interruptions through colleagues, for example, occupy attentional resources that subsequently reduce the ability to complete work-related tasks (Jett & George, 2003). Distracting thoughts have also been found to persist over time and cause further distracting thoughts (Klinger, 1996; Yee & Vaughan, 1996), thus preventing individuals from completing further tasks. Referring to the idea that social conflicts impair work performance, the resulting emotions should be considered in more detail. Gross, Sheppes, and Urry (2011) explained a three-level process of how emotions are generated. They suggest that emotions arise when an interaction between a person and a situation attracts attention, has reasonable meaning to the person, and leads to a multisystem response in the individual. This multisystem response can be coordinated but also flexible. This very general explanation is based on the fact that emotions can be both, almost not noticeable or very intense for individuals (Gross et al., 2011). Furthermore, Gross (1998) defines the concept of emotion regulation as processes that direct emotions, i.e. when and which emotions are experienced, and also.