Investigating the relationships between transformational and transactional leadership style and organizational conflict management

The history of leadership began with the process of people's transition to collective life. Although being one of the most studied and discussed topics to date, research on leadership continues at an increasing rate. In modern societies, developments and changes in social life, economic and technological fields take place rapidly. To keep up with this development and change, societies need some fundamental elements. One such basic element is that organizations should have an effective leader. In addition, conflicts are inevitable in organizations where a large number of people work, regardless of whether they produce products or services. The importance of the leader is increasing in the correct management of conflicts, as conflicts not managed properly can lead to chaos and prevent the change and development of organizations. For these reasons, this study aimed to investigate the relationship between the perceived transformational and interactional leadership style of the managers and the perceived organizational conflict management strategies and to compare the subordinates in terms of their demographic characteristics. The study was carried out with the quantitative research method and three different forms were used, namely the interactionist and transformational leadership scale, the organizational conflict management scale, and the demographic information form. Considering there are no studies conducted in public institutions producing social services on leadership style and conflict management approaches, and that the performance of the organization should be high since it produces social services; the study was conducted at Düzce Provincial Directorate of Family and Social Services and its affiliates and the personnel working there formed the participant pool. A probabilistic sample selection technique was employed in the sample selection, and 189 social workers were reached. SPSS 21.0 package program was used in the data analysis. The research revealed significant differences between the perceived interactionist and transformational leadership styles and conflict management strategies of the managers and the demographic characteristics of their subordinates. In addition, no significant relationship was found between transactional leadership and conflict management strategy dimensions such as integration, compromise, and concession. It was also found that there is a moderate positive relationship between transactional leadership and domination, which is one of the dimensions of conflict management strategy, and a weak positive relationship between avoidance. Among the dimensions of transformational leadership and conflict management strategy, a high level of positive correlations between the integration scores, a high level of positive correlations between the concession scores, a moderately negative relationship between the domination scores, a moderately positive relationship between the avoidance scores and a high level of positive correlations between the reconciliation scores were found. Keywords: Transformational Leadership, Transactional Leadership, Conflict Management