# Introduction a) Background of the Study fter post economic growth in Sri Lanka, banking and financial sector expanded their operations including north and eastern provinces. As per the Central Bank report (2015), the banking and financial sector in Sri Lanka showed improved performance which support to the economic performance. It helped to strengthen the financial system stability of the country. As per the literature also, Wijesinghe and which recorded tremendous improvement in recent years. As per the Central Bank statistics, there were twenty five Licensed Commercial Bank (LCBs) and seven licensed specialized bank (LSBs) by end 2015. And also there were twelve branches of foreign banks within the total number of Licensed Commercial Bank (LCBs). It also stated that banking and financial sector helped to economic growth and development by introducing new products and expanding their branch network. Recently, as per the regulations of Central Bank of Sri Lanka, in the year 2015, DFCC Bank PLC was merged with DFCC Vardhana Bank to start up DFCC Bank PLC. ABC Merchant Bank amalgamated with ABC Savings Bank and ABC Financial Services Limited to improve financial stability in the country. As well as improvements, in present banks are facing challenges. Based on the literature, Shrivastara and Purang (2009) stated that the performance of private banks are higher than state sector banks and private banks applied total quality management more successfully than state banks. Same authors highlighted high employee turnover, poor performance and inadequate application of total quality management as challenges for banking sector in Sri Lanka. In generally, employees play significant role in providing financial services to their customers. As employees are playing significant role, every organization in banking sector is trying to retain their employees in the organization. Since, there are plenty of banks and financial institutes, it provides golden opportunity to employees to change their employer. This create difficulty to the organizations in financial sector to retain employees in same organization for long period of time. In order to get the maximum utilization of best talents and skills of employees, every organization has the objective of employee retention. With poor employee retention or high employee turnover. According to Shrivastara and Purang (2009) private sector banks experienced 93% employee turnover and public sector banks experienced 6% employee turnover in year 2010. Due to this high employee turnover, commercial banks in Sri Lanka have # b) Rationale for the Study Researcher has selected ABC Merchant Bank PLC in order to examine the high employee turnover as it is difficult to study all organizations in banking and financial sector. In terms of human resources management perspective, selected organization is experiencing major issues (for example organizational conflicts issues and high employee turnover among certain levels in their organizational employee category). In recently the selected organization explored that they have experienced high employee turnover among staff assistants. After that ABC Merchant Bank conducted an employee satisfaction survey in order to identify employee grievances among staff assistants in head office of ABC Merchant Bank. Based on the survey it revealed that most staff assistant have issues with their salary, poor relationship and interpersonal issues with their co-workers and supervisors and issues with workload. Table 1.2 illustrates the summary of employee which was conducted in year 2016 by using sixty staff assistants in ABC Merchant Bank head office branch. According to the observations, huge arguments on job task issues, disagreements and tension between the employees in the same department. Some members of the group do not talk to each other. Sometimes there is rude behavior anger, frustration and constant complaining about the group from the employees in the organization. Most of the employees do not prefer to work in the particular group for long time and they do not like the other members of the group. They only focused into their own work and do not try to support each other. Always they try to avoid work allocated and think that why employee should do it, someone else have to do it. Always most of the group members think about their personal matters much other than the group work or organizational objectives. As another fact, senior members do not like respect new comers if they are in the higher rank than senior employees. The main reason is those senior employees have membership in trade union of bank employees. As a final result, this can lead to poor employee retention and organization loses best talent due to this high employee turnover. According to the table 1.3 analysis of employee turnover of ABC Merchant Bank, it was detected that most of staff assistants are leaving their jobs continuously (as percentage, it is 42%). This high employee turnover is influenced to the organizational performance in an unfavorable manner. ABC Merchant Bank hopes staff assistants have a significant role to act in selling the financial products (savings accounts, fixed deposits, leasing and loans) of the bank and dealing with the existing customers and potential customers. The job of staff assistants is crucial one, because they are the people who are dealing with the customers. To handle the customers and money of the customers, they should have clear and stress free mindset. If the employees are not satisfied and stressed, they will unable attract new customers or retain existing customers. As a service based organization, ABC Merchant Bank expects to have customer friendly and competent sales staff including staff assistants to handle customers and provide services whenever the requirement arises. Even though ABC Merchant Bank invests in attracting new employees to the organization, orientation programs, training and development programmes. It will be a waste of time and cost to the organization, if employees are leaving from the organization frequently due to the interpersonal issues. All operational activities were disturbed because of continuous resignations of staff assistants in the field to achieve each functional objectives. ABC Merchant Bank is searching for earliest remedial actions for staff assistants' turnover to face new challenges favorably. # c) Problem Statement Based on the above discussion, the researcher intends to carry out this research while researching the relationship between organizational conflicts and employees' intention to leave with special reference to staff assistants of ABC Merchant Bank in Sri Lanka. Accordingly, the research problem for this study would be: "Is there any relationship between organizational conflicts and employees' intention to leave?" There are previous studies on organizational conflicts from many western countries. They showed inconsistency between results. It means that culture and attitudes of people in the country have significant influence on conflicts. Therefore this study be significant to find out the cultural influence on organizational conflicts in Sri Lankan context. # II. # Literature Review a) Organizational Conflicts In addition from theoretical importance, organizational conflicts are important in practical scenario. Contemporary organizations are unable to avoid conflicts in the workplace. And there is no organization without a minor organizational conflict. When there are two parties dealing with any situation, there is a chance for organizational conflicts. Two individual, two groups or organizational units, two organizations and two nations can be included in the major parties in conflicts. # i. Definition of Organizational Conflicts There is no universally accepted definition for conflicts as different authors defined conflicts in different ways. This is an attempt to identify several definitions of Organizational conflicts and understand important terms in those definitions. Organizational conflicts can be defined as a situation occurs when one employee perceives that his or her interests are negatively affected by another party (Aquino, 2000). Also organizational conflict can be defined as any interaction between workers and clusters with irreconcilable differences or not compatible characters (Rahim, 2001). Based on the critical analysis of those above mentioned definitions, common elements can be identified with regard to definition of organizational conflicts. Organizational conflicts are involved with perceptions and beliefs, organizational conflicts can be derived between two individual, groups, departments or two organizations. One Party or both parties interest negatively affected. # ii. Reasons for Organizational Conflicts Opatha (2015) presented more appropriate classification for the reasons for organizational conflicts. According to him, all the reasons for organizational conflicts can be categorized in to two main groups; they are organizational causes and personal reasons. Organizational reasons occurred due to issues in organizational structure and personal reasons can be occurred from the differences among employees. The examples for organizational reasons are competition for scarce resources, goal differences, role differences, ambiguous jurisdictions, status differences, dependence of one party, overspecialization. The examples for personal causes are perceptions, domination, greed or avarice, unwillingness to communicate, rudeness and incivility. # iii. Types of Organizational Conflicts Various authors classified organizational conflicts into different ways. For example, Rahim (2001) classified organizational conflicts into two main levels as intra-organizational conflicts and interorganizational conflicts. Further he has classified intra-organizational conflicts into intrapersonal conflicts, interpersonal conflicts, intragroup conflicts and intergroup conflicts. As this research is limited to one organization, interorganizational conflicts are ignored. # i. Definitions of Employee Turnover The generic purpose of Human Resource Management is to generate and retain best talented and appropriate employees in the organization who give maximum contribution to the success of the organization (Opatha, 2009). Because of that, it is important to study employees' intention to leave from the organization in the field of human resource management and organizational behavior. According to the literature employees' intention to leave is the best predictor of employee turnover. Employee turnover and employees' intention to leave are most researched areas in the literature. As per the extensive research, employee turnover can be defined as the phenomena of employees leaving from an organization (Shaw et al., 2005). Employee turnover refers to the process in which employees leave an organization and have to be replaced by the organization (Mathis and Jackson, 2006). Also same authors argued that there are two types of employee turnover, namely voluntary turnover and involuntary turnover. On other hand Janssen et al., (1999) defined employee turnover as voluntarily leaving the organization. Those authors did not recognize the involuntary turnover. # ii. Definitions of Employees' Intention to Leave Joo (2010) argued that employees' intention to leave from the organization is the best predictor of actual employee turnover. According to literature, employees' intention to leave from the organization can be defined as a conscious and deliberate willfulness to leave the organization (Tett and Meyer, 1993). In simple words, employees' intention to leave refers to individual's own expected chance that they will quit the organization permanently in near future (Vandenberg and Nelson, 1999). # iii. Factors of Employees' Intention to Leave Since, there is a difference between employee turnover and employees' intention to leave and there are several factors or reason which affect to employees' intention to leave. Based on literature, there are three reasons can be identified that affect for employees' intention to leave. Current study selected three reasons as job hopping and perceived alternative employment opportunities of employees' intention to leave from organization. # c) Association between Organizational Conflicts and Employees' Intention to Leave Based on the previous studies on organizational conflicts and employee's intention to leave in different study settings and different organizations, there are associations between Organizational Conflicts and Employees' Intention to Leave. There are major impacts of organizational conflicts including withdrawing from colleagues, performance decline, decline cooperation and health problems (Tonder et al., 2008). Also Riaz and Junaid (2014) identified that organizational conflicts caused for low morale of employees, reduced productivity, excessive employee turnover, quality problems and inability to meet deadlines. Also several researchers emphasized that there is a positive relationship between organizational conflicts anxiety, psychosomatic problem, frustration, employee intention to leave and dimension of burnout (Spector andLee, 2007 andDe Dreu et al., 2004). Relationship conflicts which come under organizational conflicts showed positive relationship between turnover intentions (Jehn et al, 1999;Medina et al., 2005). Also relationship conflicts help to increase employees' affective reactions to their jobs in a negative way and to develop the thoughts of leaving from the job (Maertz and Griffeth, 2004). Khan and Junaid (2013) stated that relationship conflicts are negatively associated with affective reactions of employees and positive influence on the intention to leave from current job. As cited by Jehn (1994) Argyris (1962) stated when there are emotional conflicts/ relationship conflicts in the group, group members find uncomfortable and upset with other members in the group and they do not focus on task completion. Another study confirmed that there is a strong correlation between relationship conflicts and withdrawal behavior and also employees involve with withdrawal behavior in order to face the stressful situations due to relationship conflicts (Spector et al., 2006). Jehn (1995) stated that not only relationship conflicts, both task and relationship conflicts were negatively associated with employee satisfaction, liking of other group members and intent to remain in the group. For example, high levels of task conflicts and relationship conflicts lead to high levels of propensity to leave from present job (Medina et al., 2005). They have presented this finding after conducting the research by using one hundred sixty nine employees from six service organizations in Spain. De Dreu and Weingart (2003) stated that there is strong and negative correlation between task conflicts, team performance and team member satisfaction. Same authors suggested that relationship conflicts more than task conflicts negatively influence to turnover, absenteeism and organizational citizenship behavior. Most recent study from Cheong and Kim (2017) stated that not only relationship conflicts task conflicts are positively related with employee intention to leave and employee turnover. To support Cheong and Kim (2017) study, Jehn (1994) ii. Employees' intention to Leave from the Organization Intent to leave can be defined as employees' determination for intention to leave the current job and looking forward to find another one (Purani and Sahadev, 2007). # a. Job hopping It refers to the behavior and attitude where employees transfer from one job to another job without any rationale or better alternatives (Kumar and Govindarajo, 2014). Based on the original scale of above authors and literature review job hopping measured through follow co-workers in switching jobs , leave without any intention and important for career progression. # b. Perceived alternative employment opportunities It can be defined as individual's perception of the availability of alternative job opportunities in the job market (Kumar and Govindarajo, 2014) Also another findings suggest that task conflicts and relationship conflicts are positively associated with the employee performance (Weerarathna, 2014). All these findings proved that there is an association between organizational conflicts and employees' intention to leave. # III. # Research Methodology a) Conceptual Framework The conceptual framework is developed based on the extensive literature review. It is described network of associations among the variables as well. According to the research objectives, two variables are selected as employees' intention to leave from the organization can be labeled as the dependent variable and organizational conflicts are selected as independent variable. scale of Intention to Leave Instrument (Kumar and Govindarajo, 2014). # c) Hypotheses The following hypothesis could be suggested and at the end of the findings, it could be determined the validity of the suggestions H1 0 = There is low level of organizational conflicts H1 1 = There is high level of organizational conflicts H2 0 = There is low level of employees' intention to leave H2 1 = There is high level of employees' intention to leave H3 0 -There is a no relationship between organizational conflicts and employees' intention to leave H3 1 -There is a relationship between organizational conflicts and employees' intention to leave # d) Research Philosophy Research philosophies can be divided into pragmatism, realism, interpretivism and positivism (Saunders et al., 2012). As current study aims to test the relationship between organizational conflicts and employees' intention to leave by using hypothesis testing and also current study focuses on testing existing theory, this study adopted positivism philosophy. Present study assumes that organizational conflicts is the only factor that caused for employees' intention to leave and this can be a one characteristic of positivists' paradigm as it applies factor control techniques. Also present study targets to test the liner way of thinking based on testing two hypotheses. Also this study employs the deductive reasoning to test the theories which utilized by the current study. # e) Research Approach As stated before this research study adopted positivists' paradigm. As a main feature of positivism, this study utilizes deductive research approach. Deductive approach can be defined as it involves the testing of a theoretical proposition with utilization of research strategy (Saunders et al., 2012). There are other characteristics that can be used to justify that this current study comes under deductive approach. On feature is, with the support of literature review this study built clear theoretical position before the data collection. And with the extensive literature review, researcher was able to build conceptual framework. Also this study explains the casual relationships between variables and this study involves with collection of data. In addition, researcher has operationalized the concepts of organizational conflicts and employees' intention to leave. With the results of collected data, researcher will aim to generalize the results of gathered data to other organizations of same industry. Those can be characterized as features of deductive research. # f) Research Strategies Current study also adopted the survey strategy which is closely linked to deductive research approach to achieve the research objectives. There are other reasons which support for selection survey method as research strategy. Survey strategy helps to gather data from most of the staff assistants in ABC Merchant Bank in a cost effective manner. According to the research objective, to test the relationship and generate descriptive and inferential statistics, it is necessary to have quantitative data. Researcher has selected questionnaire method and interview methods, under the survey research strategy. i. Questionnaire Method This research study planned to collect data from primary sources and secondary sources. Present study is purely founded on primary data which collected through questionnaire for the research analysis. This research is completed with the support of questionnaires which prepared according to the measures of dimensions based on literature review. ii. Questionnaire Design Questionnaire method was adopted as a research strategy as it provides speedy responses, responses for questionnaires can be analyzed in more scientifically method and data can be gathered from large sample. # g) Methods of Measurements Variable of this study were measured through questionnaire with 5-point Likert scale. A scale is tool or mechanism by which individuals are distinguished as to how they differ from one another on the variables of interest for the study. Two types of scales were used for the current study. To measure the demographic factors, researcher used nominal scale. i. Methods of Measuring Organizational Conflicts Rahim Organizational Conflicts Inventory (ROCI-I) was used to measure organizational conflicts. This scale consists with twenty four statements under three dimensions (intrapersonal conflicts, intragroup conflicts and intergroup conflicts). Also it is 5 point likert scale instrument. In that instrument, there are positive statements as well as negative statements in this scale. Researcher used reverse scale to measure the negative questions. ii. # Methods of Measuring Employees' Intention to Leave from the Organization In order to measure the dependent variable, researcher has included twelve (12) statements. Researcher has adopted Intention to Leave Instrument (Kumar and Govindarajo, 2014) to measure the dependent variable. This is also 5 point likert scale instrument. This scale consists with eight statements under three dimensions (Job hopping, perceived alternative employment opportunities). Kumar and Govindarajo (2014) used confidence in finding other job and present job is a stop gap arrangement to measure perceived alternative employment opportunities dimension. # h) Purpose of the Study/ Type of the Investigation/ Study Setting and Unit of Analysis Based on the purpose of this study, it can be taken under hypotheses testing. In the present study there are two hypotheses developed based on the relationship between organizational conflicts and employees' intention to leave. This research study attempts to establish a relationship between independent variable and the dependent variable. When the researcher is interested in identifying the important variables associated with the problem the study is called a correlational study Correlational studies conducted in organizations known as field studies. Since the current study was correlational; study setting can be known as a field study where the study has arranged in noncontrived setting with minimal disturbance of the researcher. Sekaran and Bougie (2010) categorized unit of analysis to individuals, dyads, group, organizations and cultures. Since the main issue of this study focuses on the identification of the relationship between organizational conflicts and employee intention to leave in staff level employees. The researcher is interested in individual employees (Staff Assistants) in the selected organization. Present research study is aimed to collect data in one month period, it can be consider as crosssectional study. # i) Population and Sample of the Study ABC Merchant Bank consists of 681 employees. As staff assistant record the highest employee turnover, 243 staff level employees are selected as the population of this research. As cited by Sekaran and Bougie (2010) Krejcie and Morgan (1970) and Cohen (1969) stated that 148 respondents should be selected as sample, if the population is 240. 148 staff assistants were selected as the sample by using SPSS version 17 based on simple random sampling .According to the selection, researcher has initially circulated 148 questionnaires and 102 respondents filled the questionnaires which counted 69% response rate. # j) Reliability of the Measures Reliability can be defined as the degree to which your data collection techniques or analysis procedures will yield consistent findings (Saunders et al., 2012). Before conducting the survey, a pilot study was implemented to check the reliability. Cronbach's alpha was counted to measure the reliability and internal consistency of the measurement scales. # k) Validity Test of the Measures Validity refers to the degree to which data collection methods accurately measure what they were intended to measure (Saunders et al., 2012). Researcher has used content validity, external validity and construct validity to check the accuracy of the measurements. Mat Roni (2014) suggested that there are two methods available to test the content validity of the research as comprehensive literature review and expert review. According to that researcher, to build the content validity of the scales experts' reviews of literature survey were implemented. Researcher used Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) test to check the external validity as well as sample adequacy. Also researcher used Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) test to check the suitability of gathered data to run construct validity. Researcher expected to calculate average variance extracted values to prove discriminant validity and expected to calculate average variance extracted values and composite reliability values to prove convergent validity. # l) Data Presentations and Data Analysis Techniques The collected data were analyzed by using Statistical Package for Service Solution (SPSS) version 17. Also to test two hypothesis, researcher used one sample t-test. Under the inferential statistics, researcher has used correlation coefficient to test the hypothesis. # m) Limitations of the Study Firstly, this study ignored the relationship between inter-organizational conflicts on employees' intention to leave. The possibility of receiving filed questionnaires from respondents might be low. As expected, researcher was able to achieve only 69% response rate. And it would be better to study the entire population to identify the relationship between organizational conflicts and employees' intention to leave. # IV. # Data Analysis and Discussion # a) Characteristics of the Sample From the findings, it proved that majority of the selected sample, belongs to the age category of 31 years to 40 years which counts 56.9% from the sample. figured that the most of the respondents are females, comprising 54% and it is 55 persons from the total respondents while only 46% respondents are males. Most employees of the selected sample posse degree level qualification which counts 49 staff assistant and as a percentage as 48%. As per the below table that the half the respondents married and other half of the respondents are single. Findings of the study exhibited that 58% of the sample was laid in the category of 0-5 years as service period and it is 60 from the total respondents. Above table shows the allocation of 102 employees to the departments of selected bank. 16 According to table 4.9 and table 4.10, employees in ABC Merchant Bank experience high level of organizational conflicts as it recorded mean value / average score as 3.81. With that results, researcher can reject H1 0 = There is low level of organizational conflicts and accept H1 1 = There is high level of organizational conflicts. # iii. Correlation between Organizational Conflict and Employees' Intention to Leave from the Organization The correlation coefficient measures the strength of a linear relationship between two variables. The correlation coefficient is always between -1 and +1. The closer the correlation is to +/-1, the closer to a perfect linear relationship. According to the results of the Pearson's correlation shown in the table 4.13, there is a positive significance relationship between organizational conflict and employees' intention to leave. For this analysis the organizational conflicts is correlated against the employees' intention to leave scores. According to the table 4.13 the correlation coefficient is 0.820 at significance level of 0.01 (2tailed test). This is a positive value and the value is significant at 0.01 (p=0.000). So there is a strong positive relationship between organizational conflicts and employee's intention to leave from the organization. Thus, there is statistical evidence to claim that organizational conflicts and employee's intention to leave from the organization are positively related. Therefore hypothesis H3 1 -There is a relationship between organizational conflicts and employees' intention to leave is accepted and also based on the results, there is positive relationship between organizational conflicts and employees' intention to leave. # f) Discussion The primary objective of this research study is to find the relationship with organizational conflicts and employees' intention to leave from the organization with special reference to staff assistants of ABC Merchant Bank. The effects of organizational conflicts have been studied from long period of time. Also as mentioned under the extensive literature review, the relationship between types of conflicts (task conflicts and relationship conflicts) and employee turnover intentions have been tested during the past few years. In this study, researcher has selected intrapersonal conflicts, intragroup conflicts and intergroup conflicts to identify their relationship with employee turnover intention. In present study proved that there is a positive relationship between organizational conflicts and employees' intention to leave. Also researcher has discovered that staff assistants in ABC Merchant Bank has experienced high level of organizational conflicts and as the same time they possess high level employee turnover intentions as well. Those findings are consistent with most of previous studies which focused about conflicts and employee turnover. For example, previous studies found that there is negative association between relationship conflicts and employee affective reactions while there is no direct association between task conflicts and employee affective reactions and the same study proved that conflicts directly influence to employees' propensity to leave (Median et al., 2005) # Conclusions a) Level of Organizational Conflicts One of the secondary objectives of this study is to investigate the level of organizational conflicts in ABC Merchant Bank of Sri Lanka. After analyzing the collected data, researcher was able to determine that ABC Merchant Bank experiences high level of organizational conflicts with mean value of 3.81. Based on the literature, the selected organization should properly manage the level of organizational conflicts inorder to eliminate the negative consequences of organizations as well as to utilize positive benefits of organizational conflicts. Finally the results of onesample-t-test proved that research has achieved one of secondary objective in this study. # b) Level of Employees' Intention to Leave As per the research objectives of the present study, to understand the level of employees' intention to leave can be considered as another secondary objective of this study. With the aid of one-sample-t-test researcher was able to determine the level of employees' intention to leave from the organization as high level, moderate level or low level. With the results of one sample-t-test researcher found that there is high level of employees' intention to leave with the mean value of 3.80. Selected organization should take immediate actions to minimize the high employee turnover and high employees' intention to leave. As a conclusion, the results of one-sample-t-test of employees' intention to leave proved that research has achieved one of secondary objective in this study. # Global Journal of Management and Business Research Volume XVII Issue IV Version I # Year ( ) c) Association between Organizational Conflicts and Employees' Intention to Leave The main aim of this study is identify the relationship of organizational conflicts and employees' intention to leave from the organization. Researcher has used correlation analysis to test the relationship between two variables. The findings of this study proved that there is a strong positive relationship between organizational conflicts and employees' intention leave from the organization with the Pearson correlation value of 0.820. With those statistical findings researcher was able to achieve the main objective of this study. According to the results organizational conflicts are also positively associated with employees' intention leave from the organization which is the similar to past studies. It means all the types of organizational conflicts increases the employee intention to leave and actual employee turnover. As per the previous studies when employees have disagreements with the co-workers, if their job does not competencies of job holder and conflicts with other group and organizational units, it increases the employee intention to leave from the organization. # d) Recommendations Those findings can be significant to the banking sector in Sri Lanka which has been facing an improvement in the last few years. Normally intra group conflict is becoming a more common scenario in banking sector as they are working with different people. Employees are experiencing more occupational stress and banking firms are facing more turnover. These results can be important for the employers, top management and are also useful for regulatory institutions such as Central Bank of Sri Lanka and Ministry of Finance. Though it is difficult to avoid those conflicts in groups, departments and organization, it is recommended that managers of ABC Merchant Bank should maintain low level of organizational conflicts to minimize present employee turnover. According to the results of the study, selected organization could not manage their organizational conflicts successfully. In order to reduce employee turnover and organizational conflicts, HR department should play major role. Firstly Human Resources department should conduct awareness sessions for employees about the consequences of workplace conflicts. Awareness session should conduct for Managers as well in order to educate them about the conflict management styles. Researcher of this current study recommends that managers of this selected organization should encourage open discussion within their departments and managers should provide supportive team environment. Also immediate supervisors should conduct one to one meetings with their subordinates in monthly basis. Sometimes subordinates are hesitate reveal their grievances at the open forums and staff meetings. Also selected bank provide variable reward opportunities to employees who build positive relationship with their co-workers and superiors in the organization. In addition, ABC Merchant Bank should manage conflicts continuously, because any kind of disagreement can lead to higher organizational conflicts. Also manager's capabilities to handle the situation also became prominent in certain cases therefore, developing managers to handle conflicts in the workplace. Researcher used intrapersonal conflicts, intragroup conflicts and inter-group conflicts. Simply inter group conflicts can be defined as the conflicts in between different department or groups in same organization. Management of ABC Merchant Bank should pay attention to build strong relationships in between the departments in a way to increase cross functional cooperation. # e) Directions for Future Research There are certain suggestions for future researchers in this field from the findings of present study. This study is limited to only one selected organization to test the practical issue (high employee turnover and conflicts) of ABC Merchant Bank, future researchers can expand the study to different sectors and different organizations. Future researchers should find the relationship between the each type of organizational conflicts and the employees' intention to leave separately, for example the relationship between intragroup conflicts and employees' intention to leave. Also future researchers can study the relationship between organizational conflicts and other employees' affective reactions in Sri Lankan context. ![Athauda (2011) stated that Sri Lankan banking sector A Study of the Relationship between Organizational Conflicts & Employees' Intention to Leave with Special Reference to Staff Assistants in ABC Merchant Bank of Sri Lanka costs, selection costs, training and development costs, induction costs etc.](image-2.png "") 41![Figure 4.1: Histogram of Organizational Conflict Source: Survey data](image-3.png "Figure 4 . 1 :") 11S/NNature of grievanceNumber of EmployeesPercentage (%)01Salary Issues203302Interpersonal Issues172803Requests for Transfers050804Requests for Promotions101705Heavy Workload0814Total Employees60100Source: ABC Merchant Bank of Sri Lanka and Finance PLC Year( ) Ab) Definitions of Key Dimensionsi. Organizational ConflictsAs independent variable organizational conflictscan be defined as a cohesive framework of behavior oforganizational members or perception of organizationalmembers which is maintained by the feelings of beingdeprived with an awareness of incompatibility withothers organizational members (Chaudhry and Asif,2017).a. Intrapersonal conflicts: Intrapersonal conflicts canbe defined as conflicts occur when individual isunable perform role which does not match with hisor her expertise and skills (Rahim, 2001)b. Intragroup Conflicts: Rahim (2001) definedintragroup conflicts as conflicts among two subgroups in the same organization and it is known asinterdepartmental conflicts.c. Intergroup Conflicts: According Rahim (2001), intergroup conflicts can be referred as conflicts between two departments or two organizational units in the same organization. mentioned that if there are high level of task conflicts and relationship conflicts, there is high level of propensity to leave from the organization. As cited by Jehn (1994) Baron (1990) mentioned that when group members identify personality clashes in the group, they find that they are unsatisfied with fellow group members and entire group. As cited by Jehn (1994) Roloff (1987) stated that task conflicts can be a reason for uncomfortable feelings for group member though task A Independent Variable conflicts help to increase the performance of the group.Dependent VariableYear 2017Organizational Conflict ? Intrapersonal Conflicts ? Intragroup Conflicts ? Intergroup ConflictsEmployees' intention to leave ? Perceive alternative employment opportunities ? Job hoppingVolume XVII Issue IV Version I( ) AFigure 3.1: Conceptual Framework Source: Researcher's original constructionGlobal Journal of Management and Business Research 41YearVolume XVII Issue IV Version I( ) AGlobal Journal of Management and Business Research 42Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin Measure of Sampling Adequacy..750Bartlett's Test of SphericityApprox. Chi-Square543.242Df10Sig..000b. Construct Validity4.3 composite reliability value is 0.913 and averageConstruct validity can be assessed throughvariance extracted value is 0.643. As per Hair et al.convergent validity and discriminant validity. In order to(2014), CR values should be greater than 0.6 while AVEcheck the convergent validity, researcher calculatedshould be above 0.5 to protect the convergent validitycomposite or construct reliability (CR) and averageconcept.variance extracted value (AVE). According to the table 43DimensionsComposite Reliability (CR) ValuesAverage Variance Extracted (AVE) ValuesIntrapersonal Conflicts0.9820.860Intragroup Conflict0.9650.812Intergroup Conflicts0.9750.920Perceived Alternative Employment Opportunities0.9320.890Job Hoping0.8600.910Source: Survey dataA 44**. Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).Source: Survey datac) Frequency Distribution Analysis of OrganizationalConflictThis research study has obtained a mean scoreof 3.81 45NValid Missing102 0Mean3.81Median4.00Mode4Std. Deviation.754Variance.569Skewness-.382Std. Error of Skewness.239Kurtosis.052Std. Error of Kurtosis.474Minimum2Maximum5Source: Survey data 46Organizational ConflictsFrequencyPercentValid PercentCumulative PercentValid254.94.94.932524.524.529.445654.954.984.351615.715.7100.0Total102100.0100.0Source: Survey data 47YearVolume XVII Issue IV Version I( )NValid Missing102 0Global Journal of Management and Business ResearchMean Median Mode Std. Deviation Variance Skewness Std. Error of Skewness Kurtosis Std. Error of Kurtosis Minimum Maximum3.80 4.00 4 .965 .931 -.942 .239 1.394 .474 1 5Source: Survey dataA 48FrequencyPercentValid PercentCumulative PercentValid154.94.94.932928.428.433.344443.143.176.552423.523.5100.0Total102100.0100.0 4A Source: Survey dataHistogram2017Mean=3.8YearStd.Dev. = 0.965N=102FrequencyVolume XVII Issue IV Version IINTENTION TO LEAVE( ) A9: One-Sample Statistics One-Sample StatisticsGlobal Journal of Management and Business ResearchNMeanStd. DeviationStd. Error MeanOrganizational Conflicts1023.81.754.075Source: Survey data 410: One-Sample TestTest Value = 3tdf Sig. (2-tailed)Mean Difference99% Confidence Interval of the Difference Lower UpperOrganizational Conflicts 10.896 101.000.814.621.01Source: Survey dataii. One Sample T-Test of Employees' Intention to LeaveIf EIL>3, then employees' intention to leave is High.As mentioned above, researcher used one sample t-test to determine the level of employees' intention to leave. Researcher calculated, OC be the average score of the respondents for employees' intention to leave.According to table 4.11 and table 4.12, employees in ABC Merchant Bank records high level of organizational conflicts as it recorded mean value / average score as 3.80. With that results, researcher can reject H2 0 = There is low level of employees' intention toIf EIL<3, then employees' intention to leave level is Low.leave and accept H2 1 = There is high level ofIf EIL=3, then employees' intention to leave is Moderate.employees' intention to leave. 411: One-Sample StatisticsOne-Sample StatisticsNMeanStd. DeviationStd. Error MeanIntention to Leave1023.80.965.096Source: Survey dataTable 4.12: One-Sample StatisticsTest Value = 3tdfSig. (2-tailed)Mean Difference99% Confidence Interval of the Difference Lower UpperIntention to Leave 8.413101.000.804.551.05Source: Survey data 413Organizational ConflictsIntention to Leave One ofcontemporary research studies on organizationalconflicts by Cheong and Kim (2017) stated thatrelationship conflicts and task conflicts which comeunder intra-group conflicts positively related to theemployees' intention to leave. Finally, De Dreu andWeingart (2003) pointed out that srelationship conflictsmore than task conflicts negatively influence to turnover,absenteeism and organizational citizenship behavior.With all this support from the previous researchfinding it can concluded that irrespective type oforganizational conflicts such as intrapersonal conflicts,intra-groupconflictsandinter-groupconflictscontributed in positive way for employees' intention toleave or actual employee turnover. As per the researchfindings of gathered data proved that selectedorganization has high level of employees' intention toleave due to the various types of organizational conflicts.V. © 2017 Global Journals Inc. (US) A Study of the Relationship between Organizational Conflicts & Employees' Intention to Leave with Special Reference to Staff Assistants in ABC Merchant Bank of Sri Lanka © 2017 Global Journals Inc. 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