The relationships and differences between school administrators' demographic variables and personality traits and their conflict management style preferences

Conflict is an inevitable reality of both individual and organizational life. Whether the outcomes of the conflict will turn out to be negative or positive is related to true understanding of the source of the conflict and handling the conflict by convenient methods. It can be noted that, in organizations to know the human and the personality traits that direct his/her behaviors is very important for conflict manager to analyze the conflict truly and to manage it well. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between school administrators? conflict management style preferences as determined by the ROCI II and their personality traits as measured by the 16 PF Personality Inventory. Also the relationship between school administrators? conflict management style preferences and the demographic variables was another purpose of this study. Examination data was collected from Fatih district of Istanbul by applying questionnaires to 44 primary school administrators. The data is analyzed by standard deviation, means, t-test and correlation techniques. The research result revealed that there were significant difference between the conflict management styles and demographic variables except gender. It has been found that between the conflict management styles of integrating, avoiding and compromising styles and 16 PF primary factors ?dominance, liveliness, sensitivity, openness to change, liveliness and emotional stability- there are medium level and statistically significant relationships. Also there is a medium level and statistically significant relationships between integrating, avoiding and dominating styles and 16 PF global factors of extraversion, independence and anxiety.