Impact of Conflict Management Styles on Team Performance on Supervisors of Teams in Universities

Abstract

This study investigates the impact of conflict management (CM) styles on team performance. Conflict Management was conceptualized in terms of five styles: avoiding, integrating, dominating, obliging and compromising. Team performance, on the other hand, was operationalized in terms of team cohesion, team communication, innovativeness, and quality. Five hypotheses regarding the impact of each dimension of CM on team performance were postulated. Gathering data via a questionnaire developed for this study from a sample consisted of 231 employees working at 40 teams in Twenty universities selected from 4 regions. Participants in the work sites were visited by the researcher's assistant to collect data and ensure a high response rate. Two hundred and fifty questionnaires were administered by hand, and 231 were returned completely. Using SPSS and AMOS, research data were entered, coded, analyzed and plotted. The results showed that three conflict management styles (integrating, obliging and compromising) had significant positive effects on team performance while two styles (avoiding and dominating) hadsignificant negative effects on team performance.

Focus on Opportunities or Limitations? Their Effects on Older Workers’ Conflict Management

“…Unlike the use of integrating and compromising which bring together the concerns for both parties, the use of dominating and obliging only focuses on one of the involved parties (e.g., only concern for self: dominating, only concern for others: obliging), whereas avoiding is preferred when the employee simply wants to withdraw from the conflict situation. As a result, these three maladaptive strategies (dominating, obliging, and avoiding) are often associated with negative outcomes, such as amplified strain ( Dijkstra et al, 2009 ) or lowered team performance ( Alhamali, 2019 ), thus a similar result pattern was observed among these three strategies in the present study.…”

“…Limitation = Focus on limitations. * p < 0.05; * * p < 0.01; * * * p < 0.001; + p = 0.051. maladaptive strategies (dominating, obliging, and avoiding) are often associated with negative outcomes, such as amplified strain (Dijkstra et al, 2009) or lowered team performance (Alhamali, 2019), thus a similar result pattern was observed among these three strategies in the present study.…”

“…Destructive strategies, such as dominating and yelling, involve the expression of anger and use of confrontation for forcing the other party to give in to one's demand, resulting in undesirable relationship outcomes (Davis et al, 2009). When consequences of conflict strategies are taken into consideration, integrating and compromising are commonly perceived as adaptive strategies (Gross and Guerrero, 2000), whereas obliging, avoiding, and dominating are often regarded as maladaptive strategies because they are likely to bring unfavorable psychological or work-related outcomes to the employees, such as amplified strain (Dijkstra et al, 2009) and lowered team performance (Alhamali, 2019).…”

The Role of Shared Leadership in Managing Conflicts in Multigenerational Teams: A Research Framework

“…Under cooperative styles, the diversity of views gets harnessed, and “premature closure of debate over policy alternatives” can be avoided, resulting in better decisions (Coggburn et al, 2014, p. 508; Wang et al, 2020). It has been argued that through encouraging team members to explore multiple alternatives and integrating opposing positions through logical argumentation and explanation, cooperative conflict management style results in better solutions and decisions and, subsequently, better team performance (Alhamali, 2019; Behfar et al, 2008; DeChurch et al, 2013; Tjosvold et al, 2014; Yin et al, 2020).…”

“…Finally, by passively ignoring disagreements, avoidant forms of conflict management tend to harm group performance (Alhamali, 2019; Tjosvold et al, 2014). Behfar et al (2008) found that teams with consistently low or decreasing performance, experienced avoidant forms of conflict management, by simply giving in consensus instead of engaging in debate.…”