Conflict Management Styles of Faculty and Staff of a State University in Northern Philippines

Abstract

The study explores the Conflict Management Styles (CMS) of faculty and staff and relationship of the CMS with their demographic profiles with an aim to develop a possible training program in Conflict Management. The participants were 26 faculty and 14 staff. Data were gathered using survey, interview and FGD. The instrument used is the Thomas-Killman CMS Inventory. The instrument yielded a CVI of 0.91 and a Cronbach Alpha of 0 .95 which show that the validity and reliability of the instrument is very high The data were analyzed by means of the descriptive statistics, the Z-test for independent sample means to determine the ratio of proportion of difference between the conflict management styles as perceived by the respondents; and the Chi square to determine any relationship between conflict management styles and demographic profiles of respondents. Results of the study reveal that the faculty and staff use different CMS. The dominant conflict management style for the faculty is avoiding and for the staff is compromising. It also shows that the faculty with administrative positions and some staff use combinations of the CMS like compromising-collaborating. The demographic profiles of the faculty and staff do not influence their conflict management styles. The study concludes that existing practices and strategies of faculty and staff in handling conflict needs enhancement on appropriate and effective conflict management styles. Thus, a possible training program on Conflict Management Styles was developed and proposed for implementation.