Abstract
In order to identify the relationship between conflict handling styles and personality traits of call centre representatives and to extract and appraise any existing model, i.e., style of public dealing/conflict resolving, we have carried out this research. A total of 128 call centre representatives from a Bank and a Telecommunication Company have participated in the study. We assumed that for Bank and for Telecommunication Company both, the most commonly used conflict handling styles would be integrating and obliging, regardless of the personality traits of the call centre representatives and without having control on gender and age. The participants were asked to complete two scales, the big five inventory and the conflict handling style scale. Results confirm our assumptions through correlations, factor analysis, and SEM. We have found significant relationships among personality traits and conflict handling styles. Three conflict-handling styles were persistent in all statistical analyses and i.e., integrating, obliging, and compromising. However, SEM extracts the same variables in models with low regression weights and high residual variance on Neuroticism that may be indicative of depiction of trait by representatives at certain places in certain situations.
Highlights
Conflicts are inevitable and even the one who researches or practices conflict handling or conflict management, faces conflicts
The Big Five Inventory (BFI) scales showed adequate convergent-discriminant validity coefficients. These findings suggest that the BFI is a succinct measure of the Big Five personality traits and it provides satisfactory reliability and validity data (Fossati, Borroni, Marchione & Maffei, 2011)
We have attempted to find any correlations among conflict handling styles and personality traits of employees in our initial analyses
Summary
Conflicts are inevitable and even the one who researches or practices conflict handling or conflict management, faces conflicts. Everyone has to face conflicts at any point of time in life at personal as well as organizational level. Conflicts are defined as the process, which shows incompatibility or disagreement in two social entities (Rahim 2002). We can classify conflicts as positive, negative, or balanced. The positive view claims that the conflict is a force, which proves to be helpful or motivating in achieving the organizational goals (Jameson, 1999; Pelled, Eisenhardt & Xin, 1999; Rahim, 2001, 2002, Wall & Callister, 1995). On contrary negative view says that the conflict is a force, which does not add something useful to the organization or individual
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