Conflict Management Literature Research Articles

Political Speech on Campus: Shifting the Emphasis from “if” to “how”

Universities in many liberal democracies, such as the US, the UK, or Germany, grapple with a pivotal question: how much room should be given to controversial utterances? On the one side, there are those who advocate for limiting permissible speech on campus to create a safe environment for a diverse student body and counter the mainstreaming of extremist views, particularly by right-wing populists. On the other side, concerns arise about stifling the free exchange of ideas and creating an atmosphere of fear and censorship. The debate is further complicated by participants’ occasional uncertainties about the legal norms relevant in the given context, such as when freedom of speech is an issue and when it is not. This paper addresses the question of whether universities should allow actors with primarily political (as opposed to scholarly) agendas to speak on campus. Focusing on German universities, we begin by discussing some of the potentially relevant legal norms. We then propose shifting emphasis from whether we should make room for public political discussions on campus to how such events must be organized so that they deliver the goods that their advocates emphasize while avoiding the dangers of which critics warn. Drawing on conflict management literature concerned with process design, we make several practical suggestions on how to organize an event that brings political discourse to the university campus without causing harm.

Do good relationships contribute to innovative behaviour? A study of relationship conflict affecting team innovative behaviour

AbstractThis study examines the relationship between relationship conflict and cross‐functional team innovative behaviour with transactive memory system (TMS) as a mediator and team‐oriented leadership as a moderator. Adopting a two‐wave data collection procedure, 584 team members and 113 team leaders from 20 organizations participated in this study. The PROCESS macro for SPSS was used to test the hypothesized relationships. The results indicate that the TMS mediates the relationship between relationship conflict and cross‐functional team innovative behaviour. Moreover, team‐oriented leadership moderates the relationship between relationship conflict and cross‐functional team innovative behaviour as well as between relationship conflict and the transactive memory system. Additionally, it moderates the indirect effect of relationship conflict and cross‐functional team innovative behaviour via the TMS. In particular, all three relationships become weaker when team‐oriented leadership is high. Based on social information processing theory, this study makes an additional contribution to the current conflict management literature by providing empirical evidence on the mediating role of the TMS and the moderating role of team‐oriented leadership in how relationship conflict affects cross‐functional team innovative behaviour.

Big Five factor and facet personality determinants of conflict management styles

Previous research has found consistent relations between dispositions and conflict management styles (CMS). Much of this research has established relations between CMS and the Big Five model of personality. However, studies have primarily focused on relations with the factors, despite evidence that facets account for greater variance and provide theoretical insight in other areas. The present research contributes to the personality and conflict management literature by investigating whether facets account for greater variance in CMS than factors and whether differences in facet-level predictors contribute to greater differentiation between CMS in light of evidence that some styles are not empirically distinguishable. Analyses use a sample of 11,219 participants that provides adequate statistical power for examining relations between 30 facets and CMS simultaneously. Results revealed that, on average, facet models account for approximately 1.5 times the variance attributable to factor models. Further, there is evidence for masking and cancellation effects that indicate there are distinctions between styles identifiable at the facet-level that are obscured when comparisons focus on the factors. We discuss the implications of our findings for the advancement of personality and conflict management research and for practitioners seeking to link personality to conflict handling in applied settings.

Exploring the U.S. Coast Guard's stance agility on Twitter during Hurricane Harvey

AbstractDrawing on the contingency theory of strategic conflict management, this study examines how the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) used Twitter to communicate during Hurricane Harvey. A content analysis was conducted on tweets (N = 273) by using stances along the contingency's continuum, finding that the USCG frequently adopted stances on both sides of the continuum's spectrum throughout the disaster event. The analysis of USCG tweets provides a real‐world case study of how Twitter is used by organizations to strategically communicate with the public during a disaster event. Like many disaster aid organizations, the USCG must balance competing goals of assisting the impacted population, while continuing to secure funding from the U.S. government. The current study contributes to contingency theory of strategic conflict management literature by applying the theory to a disaster, providing tangible evidence that disaster communication research should consider incorporating different stances across the continuum, sometimes simultaneously, that could help guide strategies, ultimately helping the organization and public being affected during a disaster.

An Examination of the Antecedents and Consequences of Customer Mistreatment

Considerable research has documented the detrimental impact of customer mistreatment on service employees’ well-being and behaviors. Extending this research, we have integrated the conservation of resources theory and conflict management literature to investigate the antecedents and consequences of customer mistreatment and the boundary conditions around these effects. Specifically, we propose that when service employees have bad sleep at night, they are likely to experience negative affect in the next morning due to the loss of emotional resources, which in turn lead to their perceived customer mistreatment, and resulting in customer-directed sabotage on that day. We further propose that employees’ problem-solving conflict management style could attenuate the effects of customer mistreatment on sabotage and the indirect effect of sleep quality on sabotage via negative affect and customer mistreatment such that these direct and indirect effects exist only among employees with lower (versus higher) problem-solving conflict management style. We conducted a daily diary survey to test our predictions among 88 call center employees on five consecutive working days. Our findings supported most of our predictions. Our research highlights the importance to consider employees’ resource gain/loss at home when studying customer mistreatment and emphasizes the employees’ knowledge and skills in attenuating the effects of customer mistreatment.

Teachers’ Perceptions on Management of Conflict in Primary Schools in Mberengwa District

Introduction: Conflict is major social construct happening in most communities where people of divergent and different backgrounds finds themselves inhabiting a common environment. Schools formulate habitat with semi-seclusion from the rest of society and conflict arising needs to be managed. Also engaging is conflict resolution without taking sides in such environments where children interact with adults more frequently requires skills and training which aspects do not form part of teaching and learning curriculum. Peri-urban schools find themselves as rich ground for conflict due to their being neither urban or rural but tend to receive influence from both settlements. Conflict nature and conflict resolution may tend to take different forms from an aggregate of approaches seen or taken in urban and rural settings. Therefore, the study explored school teachers’ perceptions on conflict management in eight representative schools in Mberengwa District.
 Materials and Methods: The sample of the study comprised of eight school managers, thirty-two members of school disciplinary committee members and twenty-four junior classroom practitioners Both qualitative and quantitative approaches were used in the study. The qualitative research design followed focused group discussions and open-ended questions fielded during interviews to school heads and school disciplinary committee members who formed the management team of the schools. Quantitative data was obtained through closed ended questionnaires given to primary school teachers. The school teachers were selected using a stratified simple random sampling technique and purposive sampling were used to select both the school heads and the school disciplinary members.
 Results: The study revealed that poor communication(100%),unfairness (87.5%), shortage of resources(100%), role-conflicts(70.3%), poor governance (87.5%) and political afflictions (87.5%) were the root causes of conflict in primary schools when compares to other causes (P <0.05). Thirty disciplinary committee members (100%) and twenty-four teachers (92.2%) indicated that student-student, teacher-teacher and teacher-managers conflicts were common in peri-urban schools contrasted to other forms of conflict (P <0.05). Conflict resulted in strained relationships (100%), caused of disunity (100%), disrupted teaching and learning (88%), was time consuming (78%), lowered production (78%), caused stress and high blood pressure (100%) and diverted attention from crucial activities (75%). Heads of schools displayed a conflict avoidance as a conflict resolution strategy. Conflict management literature was in short supply in schools and schools rarely conducted conflict management meetings. Confrontation, collaboration and compromise were the most used conflict management strategies. Managed conflict had benefits of creating social change and allowed staff to engage more and needed to be included in curriculum development.
 Conclusion: Primary school head teachers need to conduct meetings on conflict management and procure literature on conflict management to resolve conflict appropriately. Members of disciplinary committee need to handle conflict fairly and to consult literature on conflict management so that they can handle conflicts progressively and as benefit to teaching and learning. Educational officers need to facilitate and ensure that conflicts are handled appropriately and progressively. Introduction of conflict management as a learning tool, study area or be taken as a cross-cutting component in the competency-based curriculum was necessary.

Conflict Aftermath: Dispute Resolution and Financial Performance in Franchising

Franchisor–franchisee relationships entail frequent disputes, some of which escalate to litigation. Yet, the filing of litigation does not represent the end of conflict management. Firms can still choose to de-escalate conflicts after the filing of litigation by choosing alternative dispute resolution (ADR) mechanisms. To date, the impact of post-litigation dispute resolution mechanisms on franchise systems’ financial performance has not been studied in the extant literature. This study investigates the impact of franchisor- versus franchisee-initiated litigations, individually and jointly with dispute resolution mechanisms and franchise statutory regimes (i.e., relationship law and registration law), on franchise system performance. To address these research questions, a longitudinal study of actual conflict episodes based on objective accounts of dispute initiation, resolution, and corresponding outcomes was conducted. Theoretical contributions to the distribution channels conflict management literature and managerial implications for the franchise industry are offered.

The business of peace: understanding corporate contributions to conflict management

ABSTRACT Do private firms act beyond “business as usual” and proactively build peace? Firms are largely absent from the conflict management literature, despite studies suggesting their importance. What conditions encourage firms to actively prevent or resolve violent conflict? Are such actions interdependent with ongoing international conflict prevention and management efforts? I argue international efforts encourage corporate conflict management-related activities since conflict management interdependencies can decrease the costs of conflict management, while increasing the benefits and success of their efforts. In addition, firms respond to gaps in governance and instability, especially when they are norm entrepreneurs or their reputation is threatened. I test these arguments on original cross-national data of conflict management-related efforts by large, domestic firms in Latin America, the Middle East, and Africa from 1999–2013. The findings bring large-N empirical analysis to a topic dominated by case studies and emphasize the need for conflict management scholars to account for the role of the private sector in our studies.

Playing with Fire: An Assessment of the EU’s Approach of Constructive Ambiguity on Kosovo’s Blended Conflict

ABSTRACTThis article introduces ‘blended conflict’ as a novel approach for the understanding of the multi-levelled interconnectedness of factors that lead to, and sustain, complex conflicts. It assesses the impact of the European Union’s efforts to manage Kosovo’s blended conflict, focusing on the EU-facilitated dialogue and the establishment of the Association/Community of Serb Majority Municipalities. It shows that the EU’s tactic of constructive ambiguity has produced short-term results at the state level, but it endangers stability in the long term by exacerbating the situation on the ground. Empirically the study draws on data from repeated fieldtrips and semi-structured interviews with EU personnel, governmental, non-governmental and international actors in Kosovo and Serbia. This article contributes theoretically and empirically to the wider conflict management literature.

<i>Uscio e Bottega</i>: an exploratory study on conflict management and negotiation during family business succession in Tuscany

This paper aims to explore how conflicts are managed, also through negotiations, during the succession phase in family businesses. The paper adopts a qualitative methodology and develops case studies of two companies, based on the interviews of the family business members belonging to multiple generations. The findings are interpreted with the dual concern model for the conflict management styles and the two-class model for the prototype of negotiators. The results of the study show an evolutionary path regarding the conflict management style adopted by the incumbent generation, which is influenced by the role taken in the company and the historical moment. The favourite negotiator's prototype of the incumbent generations is the emotional one. The study, although exploratory, investigates a topic that is under researched both in terms of family business literature and conflict management literature. Moreover, the study offers an interesting and important bridge of the two bodies of literature, which could benefit from cross-fertilisation.

<i>Uscio e Bottega</i>: an exploratory study on conflict management and negotiation during family business succession in Tuscany

This paper aims to explore how conflicts are managed, also through negotiations, during the succession phase in family businesses. The paper adopts a qualitative methodology and develops case studies of two companies, based on the interviews of the family business members belonging to multiple generations. The findings are interpreted with the dual concern model for the conflict management styles and the two-class model for the prototype of negotiators. The results of the study show an evolutionary path regarding the conflict management style adopted by the incumbent generation, which is influenced by the role taken in the company and the historical moment. The favourite negotiator's prototype of the incumbent generations is the emotional one. The study, although exploratory, investigates a topic that is under researched both in terms of family business literature and conflict management literature. Moreover, the study offers an interesting and important bridge of the two bodies of literature, which could benefit from cross-fertilisation.

Peacemaking at the Workplace: A Systematic Review

AbstractResearch on third party interventions in conflict has mostly focused on formal interventions by professional mediators or supervisors. Studies on informal and voluntary third party interventions by peers or someone else in a nonhierarchical position are very limited. The aim of this systematic review is to investigate empirical studies on peacemaking to (a) define the concept; (b) search for scales that measure peacemaking; (c) and identify outcomes of peacemaking. In total, our search led to 713 unique hits of which 12 were retained based on the predefined selection criteria. Based on the findings from the reviewed articles, we propose a definition of peacemaking and identify four components of peacemaking: relational, procedural, emotional, and content help. This study contributes to the current conflict management literature by focusing on informal and voluntary helping behavior in the context of conflicts (instead of formal interventions), while linking the literature on organizational citizenship behavior and research on third party interventions in the context of conflict. In practice, peacemakers play a crucial role in solving conflicts constructively and contribute as such to both individual and team functioning.

Resentment against the rich

PurposeBecause of increasing wealth inequality, China has been confronted with resentment against the rich (referred to hereafter as RAR or Choufu in Chinese), which is a growing concern owing to its potential to foment social conflict. Drawing on social comparison and deonance theories, this paper aims to provide theoretical insights into RAR within the Chinese context and to develop an RAR scale. Following spillover theory, the attitudinal and behavioral outcomes of RAR in organizational settings will be explored.Design/methodology/approachThis research consists of two studies. Study 1 conceptualizes RAR and develops an RAR scale by using three separate samples. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses are conducted to establish scale reliability and validity. Study 2 uses hierarchical linear regression analysis to test whether employees’ RAR attitude spills over from the societal to the organizational setting.FindingsResults suggest that RAR can be conceptualized as two distinct but related dimensions – emotional RAR and moral RAR. These two forms spill over to the workplace, influencing employees’ work attitudes and behaviors. Emotional RAR relates negatively to life satisfaction and prosocial organizational behaviors and positively to unethical organizational behaviors. Moral RAR relates negatively to pay satisfaction and positively to prosocial behaviors.Practical implicationsThis research suggests that RAR has spillover effects from societal to organizational settings and demonstrates that a more robust understanding of employees’ workplace experience requires acknowledging social experiences, such as conflicts beyond the workplace.Originality/valueThis research contributes to the conflict management literature by exploring RAR as a negative attitude that serves to potentially ignite social conflict. It not only develops a theory-grounded, conceptual RAR model and a reliable RAR scale but also for the first time explores RAR attitudinal and behavioral outcomes beyond the social domain. This study serves as a meaningful touchstone for future research to incorporate social attitudes into organizational behavior research.

Promoting Workplace Safety: Teaching Conflict Management and De-Escalation Skills in Graduate Medical Education.

Promoting Workplace Safety: Teaching Conflict Management and De-Escalation Skills in Graduate Medical Education.

Minorities and mistrust

An enduring debate in the conflict management literature concerns the wisdom of recognizing versus avoiding reference to ethnic identities in institutions to manage ethnic conflict. Understanding why ethnic recognition occurs is crucial for informing this debate. We develop a theory based on functional and political mobilization effects of recognizing ethnic groups. Contrary to reasoning that minority leaders would be most interested in recognition, the theory suggests that recognition consistently favors the interests of leaders from larger, plurality groups, whereas minority leaders face a ‘dilemma of recognition’ between functional gains and mobilization threats. We use mixed methods to test our theory. For our quantitative analysis, we draw on an original coding of recognition in constitutions and comprehensive political settlements from 1990 to 2012. We find that for cases with leaders from plurality groups, recognition is adopted 60% of the time. With leaders from minority groups, the rate is about 40 percentage points lower, even after accounting for many background factors. Additional quantitative tests and a qualitative analysis present more detailed evidence to show that the processes correspond to the logic of our theory. Answering these questions about when and why recognition is adopted is a crucial step in evaluating its effects on conflict.

Conflict between Leaders and Employees: The Role of Transformational Leadership

This study empirically investigates the dynamics and outcomes of leader-member conflict. It demonstrates the value of cooperative conflict and the damage of competitive conflict between leaders and employees, while testing the effectiveness and universality of Deutsch's (1973) cooperation and competition theory. By bridging leadership and conflict management literature, it also identifies the role of transformational leadership in managing conflict effectively. Specifically, transformational leadership was found to induce cooperative conflict and reduce competitive conflict between leaders and employees, approaches to conflict that in turn contributed to task performance and leader effectiveness.

Invited reaction: Managing workplace incivility: The role of conflict management styles—antecedent or antidote?

Research examining the relationship between incivility and conflict management styles is sorely lacking. This is surprising, given the natural fit between these two research streams. That is, it seems prudent to draw on knowledge gleaned from the vast conflict management literature to help inform the workplace mistreatment literature and to provide potential solutions for dealing with workplace incivility. In this issue, Trudel and Reio (2011) aim to redress this gap in the literature by investigating the relationship between workplace incivility and conflict management styles. This is a commendable and important first step to bridge the ideas from these two literatures. We comment on this study by providing our assessment of the contributions of the study and by addressing some concerns about both the study itself the broader issues in the field. We also provide some suggestions for further research in this area. In their study, Trudel and Reio asked two broad research questions: 1. Which conflict management styles make people more likely to engage in uncivil behaviors? 2. Which conflict management styles make one more likely to be the target of uncivil behaviors? The study found that after controlling for gender, hierarchical position, and organization, two of the conflict management styles are related to both enacting and being the target of incivility. Specifically, persons with an integrative style (i.e., those who seek a win–win solution to conflicts) are both less likely to instigate incivility and less likely to be targets of incivility. In contrast, those with a dominating style (i.e., those who are highly concerned with their own goals while exhibiting little concern for the goals of others)

Getting to the Table and Getting to Yes: An Analysis of International Negotiations1

This paper analyzes the conditions that encourage (or hinder) conflicting states in coming to the negotiating table. It also explores the factors that influence the successfulness of such negotiation attempts. A main argument of the paper is that it is important to look at what brings states to the table, because this may have a direct or indirect impact on the outcome of such negotiations. While confirming some of the findings within the conflict management literature, this paper demonstrates that contextual factors seem to have different effects or a different impact on each stage, implying that while certain factors may bring states to the table, they may not be the same factors that make agreements possible.

Managing for Innovation: The Two Faces of Tension in Creative Climates

Part of managing for innovation is creating the appropriate climate so that people can share and build upon each other's ideas and suggestions. Yet, there are increasing pressures and potential unproductive levels of tension within organizations. This article points out the distinction between two forms of tension that appear within the research on organizational climates for creativity as well as the conflict management literature. The Debate dimension is described as reflecting a more productive idea tension and the Conflict dimension suggests a more non‐productive personal tension. A series of studies, across multiple levels of analysis, are summarized and a new study is reported in order to highlight the finding that relatively higher levels of Debate, and lower levels of Conflict are more conducive to organizational creativity and innovation. A practical model for the constructive use of differences is shared, along with a few strategies for reducing the negative tension associated with Conflict and increasing the positive aspects associated with Debate.

Ten years of conflict management studies: themes, concepts and relationships

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to map the intellectual structure of conflict management studies and to investigate the key themes, concepts, and their relationships of conflict management literature in the past decade.Design/methodology/approachCitation and co‐citation analysis and social network analysis were used to trace the development path of conflict management research. The data were collected by searching the SSCI databases, based on 556 journal articles which were published between 1997 and 2006, and their cited references were analyzed and profiled.FindingsThe paper shows that conflict management literature focuses on three key themes: workplace conflict and conflict management styles, cultural differences in conflict management, and conflict management in practice. In addition, research on group conflict and work performance has gained momentum in recent years.Originality/valueThe intellectual structure of conflict management literature has received little attention in spite that a large number of studies have been done on conflict management. This paper will expose researchers to a new way of profiling key themes and their relationships in conflict management area, which will help academia and practitioners understand better contemporary conflict management studies.