Interpersonal conflict handling styles in organization

Name and Surname : Turner DEDE Field : Business Administration Programme : Business Supervisor : Professor İnci Erdem ARTAN Degree Awarded and Date rMaster - July 2004 Keywords : Style, Handling, Interpersonal, Conflict SUMMARY Conflict management style is interesting subject. It has been studied widely around the world. However, only a few emprical studies on the subject have been conducted in Turkey. As in other countries, conflict is major problem of major organizations in Turkey. The major objectives of this study were to identify respondent's dominant conflict management styles and to examine differences in the prefered conflict management style based on individual variables such as respondents gender, age, organizational level, tenure, length of work experience at their current organization etc. Conflict management data for this study were collected with the ROCI-IJ, which measured how organizational members handle interpersonal conflict with superiors (FORM A), subordinates (FORM B) and peers (FORM C). Form C was used for this study. The ROCI-IJ asseses the 5 conflict hanling styles; integrating, obliging, dominating, avoiding and comprimising. A sample of an important corporation which is in the press sector has been chosen in Istanbul. A total of 160 questionaire have been distributed by the researcher. A total of 122 questionaire have been colected with a response rate of 76%. After analysing the data, 5 factors of conflict management style were produced as same as ROCI-IJ. These factors were labeled as; integrating, obliging, dominating, avoiding and comprimising.A study found that integrating was the most frequently used conflict management style and comprimising was the second most frequently used conflict management style in the sector. Dominating style was the least frequently used conflict management style. The findings of the survey also indicate that strong support has been found to hypotheses 8 of the study, which are about the organizational level (position). There is an important differency in the prefered conflict management style for people in the study by the organizational level. People in the managerial position don't have a tendeny to use a avoiding style. The first seven hypotheses gained little or no support which are about gender, marital status, educational level, age, length of work expereince at present company, length of work experience at present position, length of total work experience.