Perspectives of conflict management

 

Five major conflict-management patterns:

• Dominating: high concern for self and low concern for the other
• Obliging: low concern for self and high concern for the other
• Avoiding: low concern for self and low concern for the other
• Integrating: high concern for self and high concern for the other
• Compromising: moderate concern for self and moderate concern for the other

 

Five approaches to handle conflicts are:

• Collaborating
• assertive and cooperative, or so-called integrating and win-win
• Competing
• assertive and uncooperative, also called dominating or zero-sum
• Accommodating
• unassertive and cooperative, also called obliging
• Avoiding
• unassertive and uncooperative, also called inaction or the ignoring style
• Compromising
• mid-range on both assertiveness and cooperativeness

 

Four main perspectives of conflict management:

• Cooperation Behaviour (Kuhn and Poole, 2000; Alper et al., 2000)
• Recognizes the identity of others and serves the joint welfare best, solving problem by this method can balance factors on all dimensions and lead to the best result
• Contingency Perspective (Rahim, 1986, 2002; Callanan and Benzing, 2006; Wall and Callister, 1995)
• States that the answer regarding what is effective can only be given in the light of situational realities, and that each mode of conflict management is appropriate under some circumstances
• Time Perspective Thomas (1992)
• Deals with the longer term task, and choosing different way based on different questions can result in different levels of performance
• Conglomerated Perspective (De Dreu and Van de Vliert, 1997; Euwema et al., 2003)
• State that, generally, people will not adopt a single way to manage conflict, but combine various actions

Shared from:

Helena Syna Desivilya, Dana Yagil, (2005), "The role of emotions in conflict management: the case teams", International Journal of Conflict Management, Vol. 16 Iss: 1 pp. 55 - 69

Jun Liu, Pingping Fu, Songbo Liu, (2009), "Conflicts in top management teams and team/firm outcomes: The moderating effects of conflict-handling approaches", International Journal of Conflict Management, Vol. 20 Iss: 3 pp. 228 – 250

Xiao-Hong Chen, Ke Zhao, Xiang Liu, Desheng Dash Wu, (2012), "Improving employees' job satisfaction and innovation performance using conflict management", International Journal of Conflict Management, Vol. 23 Iss: 2 pp. 151 - 172