Conflict and Conflict Response Styles of Educational Administration Officers in School Organizations

Abstract

This research study aimed to examine conflicts of educational administration officers in schools with teachers, convertees, and temporary school workers, and conflict response styles by applying mixed research methods, and understand conflict situations perceived by educational administration officers in a multilateral manner. To achieve this, two in-depth interviews were conducted with 20 educational administration officers, and a questionnaire survey was given to 431 educational administration officers working at elementary, middle, and high schools located in Gyeongsangnam-do, Korea. Educational administration officers experienced diverse conflicts arising from job, relationship, and structural factors with the three groups, which was mainly caused by task interdependency, negative communication, and relative deprivation. Together with this, as conflicts between educational administration officers and teachers or temporary workers in school intensified, educational administration officers responded to them with an avoidance style. High conflict groups and low conflict groups showed no significant difference in the use of adaptation, domination, and compromise styles except for the avoidance style. But there were clear differences in the concrete application of conflict response styles: high conflict groups showed inflexible conflict response styles which caused a vicious circle of conflicts while low conflict groups showed paternalistic conflict response styles focusing on communication and sympathy. This research is significant in that it offers basic data of managing workplace conflicts by analyzing conflict phenomena among school organization members and seeking conflict mitigating methods.