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0277-9536/$ - se

doi:10.1016/j.so

�CorrespondE-mail addr

tores.theorell@

(G. Oxenstierna

Social Science & Medicine 63 (2006) 2218–2227

www.elsevier.com/locate/socscimed

Workplace conflict resolution and the health of employees in theSwedish and Finnish units of an industrial company

Martin Hydea,�, Paavo Jappinenb, Tores Theorellc, Gabriel Oxenstiernac

aUCL, London, UKbStora Enso Oyj, Havurinne 1, 55800 Imatra, Finland

cDivision for Psychosocial Factors and Health, Department of Public Health Sciences, Karolinska Institute, Stockholm 17177, Sweden

Available online 19 June 2006

Abstract

New patterns of working, the globalisation of production and the introduction of information technologies are changing

the way we work. This new working environment has eliminated some risks whilst introducing others. The importance of

the psychosocial working environment for the health of employees is now well documented, but the effects of managerial

style have received relatively little attention. Yet management is an increasingly important aspect of companies’ policies. In

this paper, we examine the relationship between conflict management in the workplace and self-reported measures of

stress, poor general health, exhaustion and sickness absence due to overstrain or fatigue. Our sample consists of non-

supervisory employees (N ¼ 9309) working in the Swedish and Finnish plants of a multinational forestry company who

were surveyed in 2000. Bivariate analyses show that those who report that differences are resolved through discussion are

least likely to report stress, poor general health, exhaustion or sickness absence. Those who report that authority is used or

that no attempts are made to resolve differences have quite similar rates across all measures. Binary logistic regression

analyses were performed for all health outcomes controlling for age, sex, occupational group, job complexity, job

autonomy and support from superiors. Results show significantly lower likelihoods of reporting stress, poor general

health, exhaustion or sickness absence amongst employees who report that differences of opinion are resolved through

discussion compared to those who report that no attempts are made. No significant differences were found between those

who reported that differences were resolved through use of authority and subjects in the ‘no attempt’ category. These

results suggest that the workplace conflict resolution is important in the health of employees in addition to traditional

psychosocial work environment risk factors.

r 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Workplace conflict management; Health; Sweden; Finland; Private company

e front matter r 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

cscimed.2006.05.002

ing author. Tel.: +44 20 7679 9522.

esses: martin.hyde@ucl.ac.uk (M. Hyde),

ki.se (T. Theorell), gabriel.oxenstierna@ipm.ki.se

).

Introduction

The psychosocial work environment has longbeen identified as an important factor in the healthof the working population (Bosma et al., 1997;Karasek & Theorell, 1990; Marmot & Siegrist, 2004;Marmot, Bosma, Hemingway, Brunner, & Stans-feld, 1997). However, the work environment has

.

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changed and continues to change with the introduc-tion of new technologies, work practices and theglobalisation of communication, production andservices (Beck, 2000; Castells, 1996; Lash & Urry,1987; Sparks, Faragher, & Cooper, 2001). Severalauthors have argued that these changes have led to adeterioration of the psychosocial work conditions ofemployees and had a detrimental effect on thehealth of the workforce (Landsbergis, 2003; Lan-gan-Fox, 2005). Although, it is difficult to directlyconfirm or refute these sentiments, due to therelative lack of international studies, there isevidence of an increase in psychosocial healthproblems amongst employees throughout Europeand North America over the past decades (Taris &Kompier, 2005). However, there is concern that theestablished measures of the psychosocial workenvironment fail to capture the full range of workexperiences in this ‘brave new world of work’(Polanyi & Tompa, 2004; Widmark, 2005).

Managerial practice and employee health

Traditional (sociological) approaches to worktake it as axiomatic that workplace relations areconflictual (Burawoy, 1979; Edwards, 1992). Em-pirical evidence would seem to support this view.Every second woman and every third man in theSwedish working population report that during thepast 12-month period they have been in conflict withsuperiors and every third employed person has hadconflicts with work mates during the same period.Other studies, however, have reported substantiallylower proportions of employees reporting proble-matic relationships with work mates (Varita &Paananen, 1992). Research has shown that conflictsat work have a negative effect on work satisfactionand well-being amongst employees and constitutean important source of stress, work disability andpsychiatric morbidity (Appelberg, Romanov, Heik-kila, Honkasalo, & Koskenvuo, 1996; Cooper &Marshall, 1976). A recent study found that conflictswith supervisors but not with workmates had a clearand independent correlation with sickness absenceafter controlling for traditional work environmentfactors such as control and support. The resultindicates that conflicts with supervisors present anadditional risk factor for the health of employees inrelation to traditional work environment factors(Oxenstierna, Ferrie, Hyde, Westerlund, & Theorell,2005).

Organisational psychology research has devel-oped more nuanced models of employer–employeerelations, which accord greater agency to individualmanagers. Key amongst these are the ‘MichiganStudies’ which developed the democratic–autocraticcontinuum of leadership. Using this frameworkLikert proposed four types of management: exploi-tative autocratic, benevolent autocratic, consulta-tive and democratic (Likert, 1961). He argued thatdemocratic management fostered greater employeeloyalty, higher productivity and employee jobsatisfaction. In more recent work using ‘organisa-tional ethnographies’ Hodson identified three typesof workplace. The first, in which there is poormanagement and worker restraint, he labelled‘disorganised workplaces’. The second group, whichhe called ‘participative workplaces’, was charac-terised by high levels of citizenship behaviours.Finally, there were the ‘unilateral workplaces’, inwhich accommodation is supposed to be enforcedfrom the top down. He argues that it is ‘disorga-nised workplaces’ which pose the greatest risk toemployee well being but that they are also the onesthat are overlooked in the debate which has beenpolarised between ‘authoritarian’ and ‘democratic’workplace organisations (Hodson, 2001).

Therefore, it might not be conflict per se that isdetrimental to health but the way in which thatconflict is resolved. Studies have begun to look atthe effects of concepts such as leadership style,organisational justice and employee participationon employee health. Although, these concepts arenot without their critics (Ezzy, 2001) research showsthat employees who work in organisations whichare more democratic, encourage employee partici-pation in decision making and are judged to be fairhave lower incidence of psychiatric disorders anddepression (Kivimaki, Elovainio, Vahtera, Virta-nen, & Stansfeld, 2003; Mackie, Holahan, &Gottlieb, 2001), better general health (Kivimakiet al., 2004), higher levels of organisational commit-ment (Bakan, Suseno, Pinnington, & Money, 2004;Thompson & Heron, 2005), and less likely to fosteraggressive employee behaviour (Homant & Kenne-dy, 2003; Kennedy, Homant, & Homant, 2004).Although, the body of research and the literature onleadership is extensive, only a few empirical studiesdeal with the way leadership affects subordinateemployees in terms of their stress and health(Arnetz, 2001; Bernin & Theorell, 2001). Researchon conflict management styles inside and outside ofthe workplace suggests that ‘autocratic leaders who

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manage through highly centralised power structuresoften generate high levels of interpersonal friction.yweak leaders also engender interpersonal conflictbecause the power vacuum at the top encouragesmanagers to jockey for positions’ (Eisenhardt,Kahwajy, & Bourgeois, 1997) and that avoidance,as a strategy for coping with conflict, has a robustnegative impact on interpersonal relations andconflict resolution (Vandevliert, Huismans, & Eu-wema, 1995).

Yet there are relatively few studies that haveexplicitly explored the effects of workplace conflictmanagement on well being at work (Sparks et al.,2001). However, these more general concepts mighthelp us to devise hypotheses about possible relation-ships between conflict management at work andhealth. Although, conflict at work can arise from awhole range of interpersonal issues that are notrestricted to problems at work or employer–em-ployee relations, the manner in which these areresolved will rely largely on the formal structures inplace at the workplace. Employees and employersalike operate within a set of prescribed (andproscribed) rules pertaining to how to act in certainsituations. The power to set those rules and todiscipline those who contravene them rests withthose higher up the organisational hierarchy. There-fore, it seems that managerial practice would havean important effect on how conflicts are resolved,and potentially the health of employees. However,the mechanisms by which it does are undoubtedlycomplex and probably involve a series of feedbackloops in which strategies are assessed and adjustedaccording to the success or failure of the resolutionof the conflict. Yet it would seem reasonable tohypothesise, on the basis of the foregoing studies,that conflicts that are perceived to be dealt with in afair and equitable matter this will have a positive, orat least not a negative, effect on the health ofemployees.

Cross-national studies

There are few cross-national studies of the effectsof the psychosocial work environment on the healthof employees. This is principally due to the lack ofcross-national studies, which contain comparablemeasures of the work environment. Yet such studiesare essential if we are to be able to assess the extentto which these risks are universal or whether thechanges in the global economy have had any realeffect on the health of employees. A study of over

900 managers from nine different countries foundthat there are different sources of workplace stressin different cultures (Perrewe et al., 2002). Theapplicability of ‘Western’ measures of work envir-onment risks to other cultures has been questioned(Jamal, 1999; Xie, 1996). Of great importance to thisstudy is whether there are common or differentforms of workplace conflict management in differ-ent countries. Evidence from cross-national studiesdemonstrates that there is an elective affinitybetween (aspects of) national culture and leadershipqualities and behaviour (Gerstner & Day, 1994;House, Wright, & Aditya, 1997). This is not to saythat culture determines leadership style or manage-rial practice but, rather, that certain behaviours andstrategies are more likely to fit better with thedominant norms and values of a society andtherefore be more successful. This would seemself-evident. Different countries have differentsocial, cultural and institutional histories. Fracturesalong one or more of these lines, even betweencountries that share the some geographical land-mass or linguistic group, are likely to producedifferent value structures. However, much researchhas been undertaken principally by organisationalpsychologists and management studies to attempt toidentify whether leadership or managerial styles arepurely national or if they share some transnationalelements. Here, the evidence seems to suggest thatthere is strong evidence for a range of country–culture clusters that share some common elementsof managerial practice or leadership style. A studyof 600 top managers from across Europe identifiedfour different national–cultural managerial styles;‘Leading from the front’ (UK, Ireland and Spain);‘Consensus’ (Sweden and Finland); ‘Managing froma distance’ (France); ‘Towards a common goal’(Germany and Austria) (Hofstede, 1980) . Otherstudies have identified distinctive Germanic, Fran-co, Anglo-Saxon, Nordic and Asia-Pacific manage-rial typologies (Hofstede, 1991; Ronen & Shenkar,1985; Smith, Dugan, & Trompenaars, 1996; Trom-penaars, 1993). Although, other studies havereplicated the finding that there is a distinctiveNordic cultural cluster of leadership or managerialvalues in relation to other country clusters, such asAnglo-Saxon, Germanic or Arab (Gupta, Hanges,& Dorfman, 2002), closer inspection has revealedimportant differences between Finnish and Swedishmanagers. In their study of leadership qualities in 60different countries Brodbeck and colleagues foundthat team integration and collaboration were more

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1In the Swedish plants, managers and supervisory staff were

significantly more likely to rate their managerial practice more

positively than non-supervisory employees. Although, the man-

agers and supervisory staff in the Finnish plants were also

inclined to view their practice more positively the difference was

less pronounced and not significant (data not shown).

M. Hyde et al. / Social Science & Medicine 63 (2006) 2218–2227 2221

highly valued in Finland whilst ‘humane orienta-tion’ was more highly valued in Sweden (Brodbecket al., 2000). Thus, Swedish and Finnish managersmight have more in common when compared to sayGerman or American managers but they are quitedifferent when compared to one another. This oughtnot to be surprising. For example, few people wouldassume that France and Germany would sharesimilar cultural values regarding managerial prac-tice simply because they share a border. Sweden andFinland do not share a common linguistic group,unlike Sweden and Norway for example. They havequite different ethnic compositions, Finland beingmuch more ethnically homogenous than Sweden,and cultures. Finally, given Finland’s proximity towhat was then the Soviet Union, the two countrieshad very different experiences during the Cold Warand more recently have pursued different pathsalong EU integration resulting in different institu-tional developments and international engagement.

Furthermore, it is plausible that differences in therelationship between work environment factors andhealth outcome might arise from the differences inthe organisational contexts in which people areemployed as much as their different cultures. AsMorris (Morris, 2004) argues any understanding ofthe debate on changes in the workplace must berooted within specific organisational contexts.However, as mentioned above, these contexts arebeing transformed through changes in telecommu-nications and international competition. One of themost recognisable changes is the growth in sheernumbers as well as geographic coverage of Multi-national Corporations (MNCs). Millions aroundthe world are employed either directly or indirectlyby these global firms. Thus, it is imperative that inorder to understand the experience of contemporaryemployment more research needs to be carried outwith employees in MNCs (Roth & Kostova, 2003).However, this does not mean that one ought toloose sight of the national or local context. Contraryto the belief of some (Debrah & Smith, 2001) MNCsdo not automatically aspire to the homogenisationof managerial practice. In their study of MNCplants in five countries Pavett and Morris (1995)found that management systems in each of theplants reflects the expectations of the society and thelocal workforce.

The present study aims to explore how the way inwhich conflicts are resolved in the workplace isrelated to self-rated stress, general health, sicknessabsenteeism and exhaustion amongst employees in

two different Nordic countries within the sameMNC. We hypothesised that those employees whoreported that differences of opinion were resolvedthrough discussion would be the least likely toreport health problems compared to those whoreported that differences of opinion were solved byrecourse to authority or that no attempts weremade.

Data and methods

The data come from a company wide question-naire study of employee well-being carried out in amultinational forest products company. The presentcompany was formed in 1999 from the merger oftwo existing companies one based in Sweden andthe other in Finland. From the outset, the manage-ment was concerned about the effects the mergermight have on the work practices and well-being ofthe employees. Thus, in the Autumn 2000 a self-completion questionnaire, available in any one often languages, was issued to all employees with theaim of gathering information about the experiencesrelated to the merger, their work environment andtheir health. This information was intended for theassessment of any areas that needed improvementand to facilitate their implementation in the wholecompany and in its units according to local needsand resources.

Our sample consisted of the non-supervisoryemployees in the Swedish and Finnish units.Managers and supervisory staff were excluded toeliminate potential difficulties caused by potentialdifferences in how they assess their managerialpractice and the assessments made by their employ-ees1. The sample comprises 3725 Swedes and 5584Finns, totalling 9309 individuals. The response rateswere 55 per cent in the Swedish plants and 61 percent in the Finnish plants.

Independent variables

Workplace conflict management was operationa-lized on the basis of the question: ‘How aredifferences of view mainly settled in your workunit?’. Three response options were available, ‘By

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discussing and negotiation’, ‘Using status, authorityor order’, or ‘No attempt is made to resolve them’.Respondents were asked which employee groupthey belonged to. After excluding managers andtechnical supervisors, for the reasons given above,the remaining categories were ‘office worker’ and‘production or maintenance worker’. The psycho-social work characteristics were measured using theOccupational Stress Questionnaire (OSQ,) (Elo,Leppanen, & Jahkola, 2003). The OSQ is a surveyquestionnaire developed at the Finnish Institute ofOccupational Health and comprises of a measure ofjob autonomy and job complexity. The OSQ hasbeen used in several studies and has been shown tohave good internal reliability and associations withthe health of the workforce (Kivimaki, Kalimo, &Toppinen, 1998; Toppinen-Tanner, Kalimo, &Mutanen, 2002; Vaananen et al., 2004). Supportfrom superiors was measured by asking respondentswhether they felt that their superior provide supportand help when needed. Response options were ‘Verymuch’, ‘quite a lot’, ‘to some extent’, ‘rather little’ or‘very little’. We felt it was important to include thisvariable to ensure that the measure of workplaceconflict management we had was not simply servingas a proxy for a support from superior. Wehypothesised that employees who had complex jobs,autonomy at work and good support from superiorswould also be more likely to be involved indiscussions when resolving conflicts in the work-place. Bivariate analyses showed that this was thecase in both countries (data available on request).Hence, psychosocial work characteristics wereincluded in the final multivariate analyses in orderto control for potential confounding of the relation-ship between managerial practice and health.

Dependent variables

Stress was measured using a single-item measurefrom the OSQ. The validity of the measure has beenconfirmed in analyses of four large Finnish work-place studies (Elo et al., 2003). The item has a five-point response option, which was dichotomised into‘A lot of stress’ versus ‘Not a lot of stress’. Poorgeneral health was measured using a single item.Such single-item measures of general health havealso been shown to have good validity and arepredictive of total mortality (Borg, Kristensen, &Burr, 2000). Respondents were asked to assess theirown health compared to persons of the same ageusing a five-point-graded response option. These

were dichotomised into ‘Good health’ (comprising‘Not good or bad’, ‘Good’ and ‘Very good’) and‘Poor health’ (comprising ‘Very bad’ and ‘Ratherbad’). Self-reported sickness absenteeism was basedon the answer to the question; ‘Have you been offwork because of overstrain or fatigue during the last12 months?’. Response options were ‘Yes’ or ‘No’.Exhaustion was measured by summing the re-sponses to five questions concerning job- relatedfeelings, such as ‘I feel emotionally drained from mywork’ and ‘I feel exhausted at the end of the workday’. The scale demonstrated good internal relia-bility (Cronbach’s a ¼ 0.88). The summed scale wasthen dichotomised into ‘A little stress’ (comprisingthe bottom tertile) and ‘A lot of stress’ (comprisingthe two top tertiles).

Analyses

On the basis of other research, which showsdifferences in managerial practice in Sweden andFinland in particular (Brodbeck et al., 2000) and inMNCs in general (Pavett & Morris, 1995) andbecause prior to the merger the Swedish and theFinnish plants had been part of separate companies,with potentially different organizational culturesand practices, the effects of managerial practice oneach of the outcome measures were tested separatelyfor employees in the Swedish and the Finnishplants. Binary logistic regressions controlling forage, sex, work characteristics and occupationalgroup were performed separately for likelihoodof reporting stress, poor health, exhaustion andsickness absence. ‘No attempt is made to resolvethem’ was used as the reference category formanagerial practice. All analyses were performedusing SPSS 12.1.

Results

The results of the descriptive analyses, shownin Table 1, show that, in terms of their socio-demographic characteristics, the Swedish and theFinnish plants are remarkably similar. Participantsin the Finnish plants tend to be a little older andthere are somewhat higher proportions of officeworkers in the Swedish plants. Similarly, there arefew differences in the psychosocial work character-istics between the plants in the two countries. Thereare, however, differences in the types of managerialpractice reported by the employees in the differentplants. Although, the majority in both the Swedish

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Table 1

Socio-demographic profiles, work environment conditions and

workplace conflict management for employees in the Swedish and

Finnish plants (percentages)

Swedish plants Finnish plants

Age, sex and occupation

35 years and under 28.49 17.84

36–50 years 45.17 51.09

51 years and over 26.34 31.07

Female 24.45 25.82

Office workers 25.77 14.06

Work environment

High job autonomy 54.46 51.52

High job complexity 53.67 47.77

High support from superior 55.94 49.77

Managerial practice

By discussing 66.60 60.84

Using authority 18.78 30.74

No attempts 14.62 8.42

Base 3725 5584

Table 2

Percentages of employees in the Swedish and Finnish plants

reporting poor general health, stress, sickness absence and

exhaustion for each type of workplace conflict management

Poor general

health

Stress Sickness

absence

Exhaustion

Sweden

By discussing 6.81 8.22 8.85 35.11

Using

authority

11.82 15.55 13.75 52.46

No attempts 15.03 20.83 15.59 53.27

Finland

By discussing 4.90 5.54 4.22 17.81

Using

authority

8.10 10.02 6.83 30.85

No attempts 11.30 12.81 8.31 36.49

2A quick search on Amazon produced in excess of 30,000

books on the subject.

M. Hyde et al. / Social Science & Medicine 63 (2006) 2218–2227 2223

and the Finnish plants, over 60 per cent in each,report that differences of view are settled throughdiscussion, employees in the Finnish plants are morelikely to report that authority and order is used and,correspondingly those in the Swedish plants aremore likely to report that no attempts are made toresolve them.

Table 2 shows the proportions reporting poorgeneral health, stress, sickness absence and exhaus-tion for each type of managerial practice in the twocountries. The results clearly show that there aremuch lower proportions who report any of thesehealth problems amongst those who feel thatdifferences of view are settled by discussion wherethey work. However, the proportions reportingthese health problems are quite similar for thosewho report that differences of opinion are settledthrough authority or that no attempts are made toresolve them.

The results of the binary logistic regressionmodels are presented in Table 3. Analyses wereperformed separately for each of the outcomemeasures and for each country. In line with otherstudies that have used the OSQ (Kivimaki et al.,1998; Toppinen-Tanner et al., 2002; Vaananenet al., 2004) we found that high job complexity,high job autonomy and good support from super-iors were negatively associated with the outcomemeasures in both countries. High support fromsuperiors was significantly associated with stress,

sickness absence and exhaustion in Sweden andstress and exhaustion in Finland. Both high jobcomplexity and autonomy were significantly asso-ciated with exhaustion in Sweden. In Finland highjob autonomy was significantly associated withstress and high job complexity was associated withpoor general health and exhaustion. The results forworkplace conflict management show that foremployees in both the Swedish and Finnish plantsthose who report that differences of view in theirplace of work are settled through discussion areconsistently around 50 per cent less likely than thosewho report that no attempts are made to report anyof the health problems identified in this study. Thesedifferences are statistically significant for each of thehealth outcomes with the exception of reportingsickness absence amongst the employees in theSwedish plants (although this is almost significant atthe .05 level). In contrast there are no significantdifferences in the likelihood of reporting any ofthe health outcomes between those who say thatdifferences are resolved through the use of authorityand the reference group.

Discussion

Management and managerial practice are increas-ingly important aspect of contemporary workinglife to which thousands of pages are dedicated everyyear in the form of journal articles and guidebooks2.However, there has been relatively little work done

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Table 3

Binary logistic regression analyses for likelihood (odds ratios and 95% confidence intervals) of reporting stress, poor general health,

sickness absence and exhaustion for employees in the Swedish and Finnish plants

Stress Poor general health Sickness absence Exhaustion

OR 95% CI OR 95% CI OR 95% CI OR 95% CI

Sweden

Age 0.92 (0.87–0.98) 1.05 (0.98–1.12) 0.99 (0.93–1.05) 0.87 (0.84–0.91)

Femalea 0.88 (0.65–1.19) 1.20 (0.86-1.68) 1.61 (1.20–2.17) 1.06 (0.86–1.31)

Office workerb 1.88 (1.38–2.57) 0.63 (0.43–0.93) 0.98 (0.70–1.35) 1.32 (1.06–1.64)

High job autonomyc 0.73 (0.55–0.96) 0.83 (0.62–1.12) 0.93 (0.70–1.23) 0.83 (0.69–1.00)

High job complexityd 0.93 (0.71–1.22) 0.79 (0.59–1.06) 0.83 (0.63–1.10) 0.80 (0.66–0.96)

Good support from superiore 0.62 (0.46–0.83) 0.79 (0.57–1.09) 0.74 (0.55–1.00) 0.63 (0.52–0.76)

No attempts made

By discussion 0.42 (0.30–0.58) 0.48 (0.34–0.69) 0.71 (0.50–1.01) 0.54 (0.43–0.70)

Through authority 0.78 (0.55–1.09) 0.79 (0.54–1.17) 1.05 (0.72–1.54) 0.94 (0.71–1.23)

Finland

Age 1.06 (0.99–1.14) 1.24 (1.16–1.34) 1.14 (1.06–1.23) 1.03 (0.99–1.08)

Femalea 0.68 (0.47–0.99) 0.42 (0.27–0.63) 1.52 (1.08–2.12) 0.92 (0.75–1.13)

Office workerb 2.12 (1.42–3.17) 0.40 (0.21–0.77) 0.52 (0.32–0.84) 1.25 (0.97–1.62)

High job autonomyc 0.73 (0.55–0.97) 0.92 (0.70–1.21) 1.01 (0.76–1.36) 0.87 (0.73–1.02)

High job complexityd 1.05 (0.80–1.38) 0.68 (0.52–0.90) 0.89 (0.66–1.20) 0.65 (0.55–0.76)

Good support from superiore 0.58 (0.43–0.79) 0.83 (0.62–1.12) 0.81 (0.59–1.12) 0.44 (0.37–0.53)

No attempts made

By discussion 0.46 (0.31–0.69) 0.49 (0.33–0.74) 0.53 (0.34–0.82) 0.54 (0.42–0.70)

Through authority 0.80 (0.55–1.16) 0.80 (0.54–1.19) 0.91 (0.59–1.40) 0.83 (0.65–1.06)

Figures in bold are significant at po0.05 level.aMale as reference.bProduction or maintenance worker as reference.cLow job autonomy as reference.dLow job complexity as reference.ePoor support from superior as reference.

M. Hyde et al. / Social Science & Medicine 63 (2006) 2218–22272224

on looking at how managerial practice might affectthe health of the workforce. We set out to explorethis issue by using data on how conflicts wereresolved for those employed in the Finnish andSwedish units of a MNC. The results clearlydemonstrate that, even after controlling for tradi-tional psychosocial workplace risks, those who feltthat conflicts were resolved through discussion weremore likely to report better general health and lesslikely to report being stressed or exhausted com-pared to those who said that conflicts were resolvedthrough the use of authority or that no efforts weremade. These findings accord with those of otherstudies that have investigated the broadly synon-ymous concepts of workplace democracy, employeeparticipation and organizational justice. As Kivi-maki and colleagues (Kivimaki et al., 2004) note,with regard to (relational) occupational justice,these concepts represent an additional psychosocial

risk factor, which addresses more general aspects ofthe social and human condition, over the more taskbased focus of the Job-Demand model or the rolebased model of the Effort Reward Imbalancemodel. Drawing Habermas’ theory of communica-tive action (Habermas, 1986, 1989) one couldhypothesise that the denial of equal representationand/or consideration of a person’s views whenresolving conflicts represents the unequal powerrelations within a workplace. As such these actionsare a threat to the health and well being of thesubordinate actor by restricting their ability to actas a full human being. However, the psycho-biological mechanisms that translate this ontologi-cal injury into poor physical and/or psychologicalhealth require further research.

There are, however, some important methodolo-gical issues that need be addressed when assessingthese findings. The cross-sectional nature of the

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present study is problematic as it does not allow usto account for potential effects of selection of peoplewith health problems into different types of work-places. The assumption that managerial practice ismore likely to affect the health of the employeesrather than the other way around is based onevidence from several prospective longitudinal workenvironment studies which have shown the pre-dictive effects of work environment conditions onemployee health (Bosma et al., 1997; Chandola,Bartley, Sacker, Jenkinson, & Marmot, 2003).However, without a prospective longitudinal studydesign it is impossible to entirely discount thepossibility that our findings are the result of thesocial selection of those in better health into workunits characterised by more democratic manage-ment styles. It is possible that individuals who aresuffering from stress or poor health may be lesslikely to engage in participative ways of resolvingdifferences. In addition, the reliance on self-reporteddata for both the assessment of the work environ-ment and for the health outcomes raises theproblem of common method variance. Potentiallythose in worse health could simply have a morenegative view of managerial practice at their work-place, thus confounding the relationship reportedhere. Or it is possible that pessimistic individuals arelikely to rate both their health and the managerialpractice at their workplace negatively regardless ofthe actual state of both. In the absence of a measureof negative affectivity in the study it is impossible toentirely discount this eventuality. However, ifnegative affectivity were the sole cause of thesefindings then we ought to expect to see uniformassociations with all the forms of adverse psycho-social work characteristics included in the analysesand each of the health outcomes. Furthermore,several of the outcome measures employed in thestudy are rather crude. Although, the stress measurehas been validated elsewhere (Elo et al., 2003) theseresults need to be validated using another, multi-dimensional measures. Additionally we were re-stricted to a broad measure of sickness absence.Again these findings need to be repeated withmeasures number and duration of sickness absence.A final issue concerns potential national or culturaldifferences in the interpretation of managerial style.Although, considerable energy was devoted totranslation and back-translation of the question-naire into both Swedish and Finnish there is alwaysa risk that words and phrases may be perceiveddifferently in different countries due both to

linguistic and cultural differences. Although, Swe-den and Finland share many characteristics com-mon to the Nordic countries there are cultural andlinguistic differences. As Table 1 shows, althoughthe proportions in each country reporting thatconflicts are solved by discussion are roughly equal,Finns are more likely than Swedes to report thatconflicts are resolved through the use of authoritywhilst Swedes are more likely to report that noattempts are made. Whether these figures representa real difference in the managerial styles betweenthe two countries or are, again, an artefact ofsubjective, culture-bound, perceptions is an inter-esting question that warrants more research butwhich is beyond the scope of the present paper.However, they do accord with other researchthat shows national differences in managerialpractice between the two countries and justifies thedecision to treat the analyses separately for employ-ees in the different countries. Yet despite thesedifferences, and difficulties, the pattern of associa-tions between management practice and healthrelated variables are strikingly similar between thetwo countries.

Future work environment studies ought toinclude measures of these factors alongside tradi-tional work environment scales if they are tocapture the full range of psychosocial risks thatface the contemporary workforce. More impor-tantly, however, our findings offer real practicalopportunities for improving the health of theworkforce. Management training is a huge industryand forms a crucial part of any successful enterprise.Thus, if the benefits of resolving conflicts in a co-operative manner can be taught to trainee managersthis could have a real effect on the health of theworkforce. This has an obvious and immediatebenefit for the company by reducing the number ofworking days lost through sickness absence, an issuethat is of great importance in both the countriesstudies here. It is also possible that healthier andmore satisfied workers are likely to be moreproductive workers (Likert, 1961). Future researchcould test this by examining the productivity ofunits with different managerial styles, which mightoffer an additional incentive for managers to workin more consultative fashion. In conclusion manage-rial practice represents a potential work environ-ment risk for the health of the workforce over andabove the traditional psychosocial risks identified inresearch which requires more research both at thebiological and macroeconomic level.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the fouranonymous reviewers for their helpful and instruc-tive comments and Anna Nyberg for her helpfuldiscussions and contributions.

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