Can absent leadership be positive in team conflicts?

Inju Yang,Ming Li

doi:10.1108/ijcma-12-2015-0083

Abstract

PurposeThis paper aims to examine how leaders’ avoidance influences followers’ attitudes and well-being in China. Although conflict avoidance is one of the most commonly used conflict resolution styles in China, there has surprisingly been no explicit investigation of the effects of leaders’ avoidance.Design/methodology/approachData were collected from 245 subordinates in three large companies in the People’s Republic of China through an online survey. Multiple regression analysis was adopted to test three sets of competing hypotheses.FindingsLeaders’ avoidance behavior is positively related to followers’ perception of justice, supervisory trust and emotional well-being in Chinese organizations.Originality/valueThis paper joins growing attempts to consider conflict management in the context of leadership. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to examine empirically the relationships between a team leader’s avoidance behavior and his or her subordinates’ perceptions of justice, supervisory trust and emotional well-being in a single study. The findings are provoking by illustrating positive effect of leader’s conflict avoidance behavior in China. This paper supports that conflict avoidance could be a sustainable rather than one-off strategy by a leader, and that identifying conditions (e.g. culture) that affect the outcomes of conflict avoidance is important.

Highlights

Conflict is one of the most common phenomena in team interactions (Rahim, Magner, &Shapiro, 2000; Zhang, Cao, & Tjosvold, 2011)
The findings are provoking by illustrating positive effect of leader's conflict avoidance behavior in China
Our paper supports that conflict avoidance could be a sustainable rather than one-off strategy by a leader, and that identifying conditions that affect the outcomes of conflict avoidance is important

Summary

Introduction

Conflict is one of the most common phenomena in team interactions (Rahim, Magner, &Shapiro, 2000; Zhang, Cao, & Tjosvold, 2011). Given the information asymmetry between supervisors and subordinates (Restubog, Hornsey, Bordia & Esposo, 2008), team members expect the team leader or manager to take charge of a conflict situation. Managers spend substantial amounts of their time (around 25%) dealing with conflicts (Bass & Bass, 2008), which indicates the important role played by team leaders in team conflict situations. Fo conflict management is useful for helping employees to develop high quality leader relationships with their foreign managers, studies have suggested that a leader’s avoidance or non-involvement could be detrimental in a wide range of situations, including team conflicts (Chen, Tjosvold, & Fang, 2005; Tjosvold, 2008). It is worth noting that most leadership and conflict research cautioning against vi conflict avoidance by leaders has been based in Western contexts. Different cultures lead ew individuals to prioritize different sets of values and behaviors; the globalization of management prompts the question of whether particular leadership styles and behaviors

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