Patterns of Styles in Conflict Management and Effectiveness

Abstract

Access to this document was granted through an Emerald subscription provided by emeraldsrm:463575 [] For AuthorsIf you would like to write for this, or any other Emerald publication, then please use our Emerald for Authors service information about how to choose which publication to write for and submission guidelines are available for all. Please visit www.emeraldinsight.com/authors for more information. About Emerald www.emeraldinsight.comEmerald is a global publisher linking research and practice to the benefit of society. The company manages a portfolio of more than 290 journals and over 2,350 books and book series volumes, as well as providing an extensive range of online products and additional customer resources and services.Emerald is both COUNTER 4 and TRANSFER compliant. The organization is a partner of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and also works with Portico and the LOCKSS initiative for digital archive preservation.Most studies of conflict handling styles in organizations analyze these styles separately. These studies assume that individuals are oriented towards the use of one of the styles of conflict management. As a result, different styles are compared one by one as if they were independent. In contrast, from a more all-embracing perspective people are seen as adopting configurations of styles. The interest in this alternative perspective lies in exploring the relations between these styles, how they combine and form patterns of conflict styles. This article presents an exploratory study that seeks to identify empirically the specific combinations of conflict handling styles that result in differentiated patterns within groups of managers. By using hierarchical and non-hierarchical cluster analyses of a sample of managers, different patterns of conflict management were identified. The effectiveness of each of the resulting patterns was analyzed in terms of its influence on the parties' joint substantive outcomes and their mutual relationship. Results show that patterns using multiple conflict handling styles were more effective than patterns based on a single style. Patterns of Styles in Conflict ManagementBlake and Mouton's (1964Mouton's ( , 1970) two-dimensional model for handling inter personal conflict has given rise to several theoretical approaches dealing with

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“…Previous research concluded that ERs tend to combine cooperative and competitive behaviors (Elgoibar 2013;Munduate et al 1999). However, such combinations usually represent either a more cooperative or competitive approach (Van de Vliert et al 1995).…”

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“…As mentioned above, ERs tend to combine cooperative and competitive styles (Elgoibar 2013;Euwema and Van Emmerik 2007;Van de Vliert et al 1995). This combination can include a more cooperative or competitive approach and here we appreciate differences between the countries (Munduate et al 1999). For example, in Denmark, Germany and Estonia, ERs show a more cooperative pattern (relatively high on cooperation, and relatively low on competition), whereas in Belgium, the UK and Spain, ERs tend towards a more competitive pattern, with competitive behavior more prevalent than cooperative behavior.…”