Relationship between primary school administrators' conflict management strategies and their leadership styles

When the relevant literature is examined, it is seen that there are few studies that deal with conflict management strategies and leadership styles. The purpose of this research is to determine the causes of conflict, to determine the effects of professional seniority, age and gender variables in conflict management, to determine how conflict is managed, to determine the strategies used in conflict management, to determine the relationship between leadership styles. It is also aimed to determine which leadership style is used together or separately with which management strategy. The research is limited to the school administrators working in the public primary schools affiliated to the Directorate of National Education in the Çankaya district of Ankara and the scales applied to them. In the research, quantitative research method was used to determine the situations affecting the relationship between the conflict management strategies of school administrators and the style of leadership they apply. The data were obtained by the survey method. The design of the research is the relational descriptive model. The sample number consists of 128 school administrators working in 68 public primary schools in Çankaya district of Ankara. Two scales were used to collect data in this research. The first scale is the Conflict Management Strategies scale developed by Özgan (2006) and Gümüşeli (2004), which is the adapted version of Rahim's Organizational Conflict Scale to our language. Second scale is the Multi-Factor Leadership Scale, which was developed by Bass (1985) and Avolio (1990) and adapted to language by Akdoğan (2002). The data were analyzed using the SPSS 25.0 program. Within the scope of the findings obtained from school administrators working in public primary schools in the Çankaya district of Ankara province, it is seen that the administrators adopt traditional management and leadership styles. In addition, it can be seen that managers avoid taking initiative and risk. This inference can be seen especially from the relationship between the laissez -faire leadership style and the problem-solving-oriented integrative conflict resolution strategy. Research participants, who show traditional managerial characteristics in a dominant and meaningful way, first exhibit avoidance behavior in solving problems, then show conciliation and integration behaviors, and finally conformity behavior. Keywords: Conflict, conflict management, leadership, leadership styles.