Conflict management strategies among medical school faculty teaching staff

The purpose of this study is to determine conflict management abilities of the lecturers working in schools of medicine. Participants were asked questions concerning conflict management and strategies through `?Conflict Management Strategy?? questionnaire developed by Robt. E. Quin.The population of the study is professors, associate professors, assistant professors and other teaching staff working in schools of medicine in our country in 2007-2008 academic year. The group was chosen randomly as sample. In analyses and assessments frequency distributions, central and variability measures and in independant groups t-test, one way anova and Pearson test was used. The results of the study can be summarized as follows:The lecturers in schools of medicine choose solution oriented strategy mostly; in terms of conflict management strategies, male teachers prefer attitudes without conflicts when compared with female ones; participants choose solution oriented strategy as they grow older; lecturers? conflict management strategies change in accordance with their academic titles; lecturers choose controlled strategy leastly as their term of office gets longer;managerial positions are not effective in determining conflict management strategies, however among the lecturers in managerial staff, the type of the managerial position does not determine conflict management strategy; conflict management strategies of the participants differ in respect of their departments: internal departments mostly employ solution oriented strategy whereas surgical ones choose controlled strategy. The lecturers have dealt with conflict throughout their academic lives is effective in determining strategy employed and there is a significant difference in accordance with how often they faced conflicts; training on conflict management effects conflict management strategy chosen; there is a significant difference among the ones who are willing, partially-willing, and unwilling to have training with respect to choice of controlled strategy; conflict management strategies differ in effecting lectureres? motivation and performance; the lecturers willing to have training on ?Conflict Management? or ?Educational Administration? mostly choose controlled strategy.