This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Poor sleep can cause employees to clash with their supervisors and other higher-ranking colleagues, according to a series of new studies from the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School and other institutions. The primary study collected data from U.S.
Army soldiers about their sleep, conflict and hierarchy. Results showed that soldiers' sleep problems predicted more conflict with everyone, but, surprisingly, the uptick was most pronounced in conflicts with higher-ranking individuals. A preprint of the full study, "Sleep and Strife: The Effects of Sleep on Conflict within Organizational Hierarchy," was published online in August in Academy of Management Discoveries.
"Avoiding conflict with higher-rank individuals in organizations involves following strict workplace norms," said Brian Gunia, a professor and area chair for management and organization at the Carey Business School. "That requires more self-control, but we know that sleep problems compromise people's self-control." The researchers wrote: "When sleep problems were low, daily conflict was low regardless of the target rank. In contrast to our expectations, when sleep problems were high, conflict with those of higher rank increased significantly more than conflict with those of lower or same rank." A series of subsequent studies and analyses validated that finding and also provided an explanation for why conflict with higher-ranking individuals increased when subordinates experienced sleep problems, pointing to the association between poor sleep and lack of self-control.
The findings offer various implications for workplaces. Perhaps one of the most important is that if employees are sleeping poorly, organizational norms, rules or protocols may lose their influence over those individuals. For example, employees rely on their self-control to suppress hostile reactions, hold back arguments and keep their behavior aligned with organizational expectations.
While organizations typically have strong expectations when it comes to interacting and collaborating with higher-ranking colleagues, those norms hold less influence over tired employees. "Employees starved for self-control simply find it harder to follow those workplace norms," Gunia said. In contrast, the norms surrounding conflicts with lower-ranking colleagues or those of the same rank are usually weaker, so less self-control is required for compliance, and the effects of poor sleep and compromised self-control aren't as pronounced in those interactions.
Previous research suggests that most major forms of conflict are detrimental to organizational performance because they collectively prevent employees from collaborating to achieve shared goals, which affects morale, productivity and profit. "Accounting for the possibility of increased conflict should further incentivize organizations to promote healthy sleep patterns or at least to avoid imposing excessive work demands," the research states. "The knowledge that poor sleep not only compromises individual processes like decision-making but results in potentially destructive social dynamics such as conflict should strongly motivate efforts to curtail poor sleep, particularly since interpersonal conflict in the workplace has direct relevance for many other important outcomes such as team climate, turnover and job satisfaction." Discover the latest in science, tech, and space with over 100,000 subscribers who rely on Phys.org for daily insights. d research that matter—daily or weekly.
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