Peacemaking at work and at home

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to explore the relations between peacemaking at work and peacemaking at home. Peacemaking is defined as voluntarily helping behavior in interpersonal conflict, by a person who has no formal authority over the conflicting parties, acts impartial and works with either one or more parties to solve the conflict constructively (Zhang et al., 2018).

Design/methodology/approach

In total, 639 participants engaged in a survey to measure their peacemaking behavior at work and at home. First, the peacemaking scale is validated using factor analysis. To test the hypotheses regression analysis is conducted.

Findings

Results show that peacemaking at work and at home are positively-related. Further, compared to peacemaking at work, people tend to be more often engaged in peacemaking at home; are more focused on settling the issues, provide more emotional support and use more humor, however, are less multi-partial.

Research limitations/implications

Although based on self-reports, the results regarding the positive relation between peacemaking at work and at home may be enlightening in human resource management such as personnel selection.

Originality/value

The study provides the first theory-based instrument to measure peacemaking as informal helping behavior in interpersonal conflict, at work and at home. Five components are measured, namely, peacemaking in general, multi-partiality, settlement-oriented, emotion-oriented and humorous peacemaking behaviors.

Citation

Zhang, X., Bollen, K. and Euwema, M. (2020), "Peacemaking at work and at home", International Journal of Conflict Management, Vol. 31 No. 5, pp. 801-820. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJCMA-10-2019-0186